Your smartphone has a terrible battery life. I can say this with confidence because it is universally true. Phones today have ludicrous screens and processors that rival the supercomputers of days gone by, but they can’t last a day. We need more thick phones that make it through the weekend.
Verizon’s Droid Turbo, announced today, is a step in the right direction. With its girth and insane 3900mAh battery, battery life (an advertised 48 hours!) is one of its main attractions. That’s great! But we could still use more.
There should be a whole fleet of these phones that make battery a front-and-centre spec. The Droid RAZR MAXX HD (what a name!) and the Droid MAXX have put the battery-foot forward in the past, but outside of Verizon’s (exclusive) pet Droid line, there’s no option for the “I just want it to last for a little while” crowd. Other flagship phones like the Galaxy Note 4 and the LG G3 are chasing battery killing features like pixel density; meanwhile Motorola and HTC are sliding their phones up the scale to bigger screen-dom.
These bigger, better phones tend to scale up their batteries to compensate sure, but only so far. In fact, it’s starting to seem like even the big guys stall out around the 3200mAh range. The new Galaxy Note 4, for instance, shot its pixel density up to an eye-shattering 518 PPI, but its battery remains unchanged. Thanks to better power efficiency, its battery life didn’t really take a hit, but if it had just been a little thicker, it could have lasted so much longer.
The lack of phones with bigger batteries is especially absurd when you consider that battery life is the most important spec a phone can have. Going longer between charges is worth the weight. If you don’t believe me, take a look around the next time you’re out and count the battery packs you see. The same goes for bigger phones. When you’re already making room for a phone that flirts with six inches, a couple extra millimetres of thickness is a very small ergonomic price to pay to keep the phablet that’s stuffing your pocket from turning into a portable paperweight. And I mean look at the difference between the Droid Turbo and the Moto X 2014. You don’t have to add much:
And it’s not even always a compromise. Some phones straight-up need to be thicker. Yes, I’m looking at you iPhone 6, with your infuriating little camera nub. Why not just give up the twisted compulsion for “thinner thinner thinner” and fill that shit out with battery. Yes, the absurdly thin iPhone 6 Plus lasts plenty long, but it could always be better. It could have been a full weekender and still slim as hell! Until we’ve reached the wonderland of “24-hours of constant use”, there’s still room to grow, and it is ridiculous that almost no one is trying to push that envelope.
Phones are only getting bigger, faster and more battery-hogging. So far, battery life is somehow managing to keep stride, but it’s still in short enough supply that we all have to go to annoying lengths to make sure we don’t run dry. Insane battery life is a killer feature every phone should strive for. Surely someone other than Verizon can get this right.