While smartphones have gotten smarter, and cellular networks have gotten faster, battery life has struggled to keep pace. In my own use, recent iPhone models and most Android phones manage to get through a day on one charge. However, for many others, smartphones don’t make it through a long workday, and that is especially true for Android phones using the new, faster, 4G networks, which can drain power at an alarming rate.
Even assessing cellphone-battery life has become trickier. In the old days, voice-call “talk time” was pretty much all that mattered. But today, people use the devices for a variety of tasks, including voice calls, Web browsing, playing local or remote audio and video, running apps, and gaming. The battery drain varies, depending on factors such as the kind of connection or how far you are from a cellular tower.
Now, Motorola has introduced a 4G Android smartphone on Verizon Wireless that seeks to erase battery worries. It is called the Droid Razr Maxx and it attacks the power problem with a huge battery almost twice the capacity of the one in the company’s similar Droid Razr, and more than double the capacity of the one in Apple’s iPhone 4S.
