The LA Times published a nauseous piece of journalism a few days ago:
Buyers are finding that the device, introduced two weeks ago, has trouble making it through a workday without a rest stop at the electrical outlet. It’s proving to be something of an Achilles’ heel on Apple Inc.’s flagship device, more than 1 million of which were sold in the first weekend.
Even the company suggests on its website that users disable some of the phone’s most vaunted features, including the faster 3G network itself, to keep it from shutting down during the day.
Expecting a smartphone — let alone a mobile computer like the iPhone — to last all day after extensive use is absurd. Imagine how much power the different radio chipsets in the phone use; that’s power that regular phones would have for extra runtime.
Easy access to functions means that users are likely to use it more than a regular phone, reducing battery life. This is in addition to the extra technology that needs to be powered within the device.
It’s simple logic, yet people insist that if it doesn’t last as long as that monochromatic Nokia they picked up back in 2002, it has a crappy battery.
The newspaper goes on to miss some basic facts about the phone:
The new model is smaller and sleeker, however, and Apple may have sacrificed some battery capacity in favor of a lighter phone, analysts said. The phone’s battery performance has disappointed customers, many of whom waited in lines for hours to buy the latest device. But the battery life is only marginally better than the handset it replaced, and lags well behind the original.
The phones are the same: same size, same design, and almost the same weight. Apple didn’t “sacrifice battery capacity for a lighter phone.”
Of course the battery life isn’t as good as the 2G iPhone: 3G networks demand much more power consumption for a connection. It’s a common problem among all phones that run on 3G, not just the 3GS.
Articles like this, ones that spread a negative impression of battery life of the iPhone, are often misinformed and can only base their assumptions on anecdotal evidence. The battery life of the 3GS is still better than most smartphones and often lasts an entire day without shutting down.
Fear of the any device, including the iPhone, is propagated with writing like this; people who aren’t savvy with technology can often read this and decide that more advanced phones aren’t worth the trouble. Acceptance of new innovations in mainstream is stunted because of journalism like this.
So please, LA Times, try to get the facts right next time.