Steve compares the important, but often ignored, metric of standby time between a i-mate JAM (Windows Mobile 5) and a Nokia 9500 (Symbian OS 8). He comes away with an interesting result which may bear on purchase decisions for true mobile warriors.
Read on in the full article.
Far be it for me to support a Windows Mobile device (my blood type is Symbian) - pretty much all of my Nokia Smartphones have lasted for ages with a 'full' battery, but once the bar drops by one, the rest spend hardly any time at all in falling.
Any chance of a lok at how long the other bars last on the Nokia device (I'm toying with the idea of getting one of those y'see)?
Top article though - anything that shows the world how pants Windows Mobile actually is has got to be good 😉
Yes, I had thought about this, but you're right, it should be in the article. I've added a sentence about the 'bar' system and have tweaked the wording elsewhere.
Anyone else got anecdotal evidence about the bars? My gut feeling is that it goes something like 100%=7 bars, 90%=7, 80%=7, 70%=7, 60%=6, 50%=5, and so on.
Steve Litchfield
Firstly, I agree completely with the findings. My MiniS (O2's K-Jam) went with me on a long weekend. After three and a bit days of virtually no use (two phone calls, half a dozen texts) I had just over 70% left. And the power reporting characteristics of a WM5 device are, in fact, similar to that of a Symbian device. They report very little power drain to start with and then the drain seems to accelerate. It's caught me out a few times.
I do think the results for the K-Jam are pretty outstanding though. I mean, have you compared the size of the battery to that in the 9500? My first digital watch had a bigger battery than the K-Jam (well, almost 😉 ).
And my P900 does something similar. Shows little drain for ages then the flood gates open. but you'll still get 6-7 days out of a P900 whereas I wouldn't push the K-Jam beyond 5 days.
And I agree with TANKERx that, for the results to be meaningful, you really have to let them die and then work the percentages out backwards. Without a min and a max to tell you what the 100% is of, you might as well measure one in cm's and one in doughnuts.