Measuring iPhone Battery Life with Time?
I’ve complained in the past about the iPhone’s battery life though those issues have been somewhat resolved. But there’s another issue that I think is worth considering for an upgrade. I was playing around with my iPhone 3Gs Settings > General > Usage > Battery Percentage. With a simple switch of the button you can see what percentage of battery life is left. It’s an interesting info note, but it doesn’t really help me in terms of guessing how much time that actually means. My question is that if a percentage can be displayed why not take it a step further and show how much time is left at the current usage state. If I’m watching YouTube video, let me know that I only have forty minutes of continuous play. If I’m listening to music, maybe the usage time is two hours. Obviously I’m not an engineer so I don’t really know what it would take to do this, but my guess is that if a percentage can be calculated the effort to display time shouldn’t take that much more thought.
There are a few apps that do this sort of thing in the store like this one: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mybatterylife-ba...
Thanks, just bought it. I hope it's good or you'll owe me a buck!
Shit! I wasn't vouching for that one, merely suggesting they existed!
ha, don't worry—I won't hold it against you. It will be good learning experience either way, plus this app just gave me an idea for a new post.
There's a good reason why the battery life meter isn't in minutes: it's because the indicator lies to you.
Mobile carriers force phone manufacturers — even Apple — to “tweak” the battery meter and radio reception bars to indicate that you have more juice/signal than you actually do, especially when the juice/signal is weak. This is because users are far less likely to attempt to make a call when the battery is low or if the signal is weak. So they'll tell you you have 20% battery left when you only have, really, 10%. This is why, as you may have noticed, if you have 5% battery life left on your iPhone, it usually means you have maybe a minute or two left of phone time.
That's kind of too bad.