Is it time to take a step backwards?

Image via Wikipedia

Perhaps in this rat race of features and more features and powerful processors, the importance of good battery life for a mobile phone has been lost. Battery life used to be a serious buying criteria back in the 90s and the first half of this decade. But today, its no longer a leading criteria, perhaps lost in the jungle of featues and apps and processors and GPUs.

However the neglect and perhaps the lack of innovation in this regard is quite astonishing. Nokia's once flagship device, the N95 had a fierce reputation of having the worst battery life among mobile phones of the age. The same reputation is being carried forward by the new generation touchscreen devices of the company. The N97 Mini has a hilariously short battery life for a smartphone. Its not just Nokia which is facing problems. Even the hallowed iPhone 4 has battery issues, as in the battery life isnt as impressive as the 3GS. The same problem can be found with the Samsung Galaxy S. Reason? Well for starters, its the super heavy duty processor and battery life-unfriendly OSes. Now tell me somerhing, whats a smartphone which cannot be used for extended hours? Whats the use of a device which requires you to carry chargers or cables as daughter packages wherever you go?

Now would you go back to a simple good old blackberry, or a N70? These truly had awesome battery lives. I guess most would say no. Hence whats required is a better battery management system where every single app will be able to utilise the battery power only as per the minimum requirement. I am hoping that the manufacturers already have this in mind and are working towards a solution. This also goes with the 'green' theme everyone's suddenly obsessed about, hence makes good marketing sense. Else we consumers would be forced to used dated devices with poor functionality.

Make the N97 Mini battery last longer

Its an open secret that the N97 Mini battery sucks ass. Its terrible to say the least, completely unworthy of the 'N' series tag. A 1200mAh battery is completely insufficient to run a Symbian^1 OS. Anyway, all curses and slangs aside, here are a few ways you can make your N97 Mini battery last longer:

1. Remove all online widgets: Yes I know that sucks and that Nokia has always proudly advertised widgets one of the strong points of the newer N-series devices, but fact is given the less than standard battery quality of the N97 Mini, you'll have to live without these online widgets. In short make your phone look naked, like this:



2. Make changes to the Display settings: This might inconvenience a lot of people but this has to be done. Change your display settings to as minimalistic as it can get. Something like this is less than tolerable but will make your phone last about 6-8 hours (thats a long time for the N97 Mini actually as you'll discover later in the post).



3. Switch off all connectivity options when not in use: This applies to Bluetooth, WAP services, 3G as well as WiFi. All of these draw insane amount of power from the battery. Remember this, if you switch on the WiFi on your phone manually, you'll have to switch it off manually as well, it wont disconnect automatically. In short, remember to disconnect WiFi on your device as soon as you're done. I had unknowingly used an online music streaming client for around 2 hrs and the battery drained to level zero in 2 hrs flat.

(Just for your info, WiFi connectivity is indicated by a small symbol on the top right corner of your N97 Mini display:



WAP/3G connectivity is indicated by another small symbol on the top left corner:



So make sure you aren't leaving these in their "on" state when you're done. I wont talk about GPS here since the N97 Mini does not come with a free GPS package, no sir, not even for a month. And since GPS rates in India are almost worth a new iPhone, I havent tried it out. But I believe the same rule of switch it off when not in use applies to it as well.

Oh wait, I almost forgot, using the WiFi for a long time, well 2 hours is all it can run anyway, makes the device suffer from SERIOUS heating issues. So make sure you have ice cold water near you just in case when you switch WiFi on)

3. Dont leave any games open: I know the N97 Mini does multitasking but its useless coz of the battery that has been packed in it. The N97 Mini seems to be screaming for more power and Nokia seems to have turned a deaf ear to all its cries. Anyway, if you're into multitasking, make sure you're multitasking with simple stuff like say, a music app and a calendar. Dont try multitasking with a game and a web browser or youtube app. The you're gonna be pretty much in for a rough ride. So, if you leave any games running in the background, you can be sure that the next time you look at your phone, it will have run out of power and switched itself off.

4. Dont run constantly updating online apps for more than 5-10 mins at a time: This applies to Twitter clients like Gravity and Snaptu. If you're using these apps, dont leave them running for hours. That way, you can be pretty sure of immense power wastage. I fell asleep the other day for around an hour or so and had left gravity running, to my utter shock when I woke up, the battery was nearly dead by then.

So, in conclusion what can I say?

Well lets say the N97 Mini looks better and performs better when its switched off.

Make sure you take utmost care of the device when its on, or else....bleeeeeeeeeeeep.

N97 Mini Battery Life Woes

I am currently being forced to write this post as I have recently been affected by the unimaginably poor battery life of Nokia N97 Mini. Yesterday some of my friends came over and I had to put the N97 Mini for the first time to the test. The Mini has a 1200mAh battery (substantially reduced from the original N97 which had a 1500mAh one). And yes, expectedly the battery life or the extreme lack of it, is giving me serious problems. I will in detail list my points below.

1. Widgets: Nokia has somehow been fascinated by widgets and is proudly hailing it as a USP in current devices. However what is missed especially in case of the N97 Mini is that these widgets, the ones which require internet connectivity eg. facebook, email widgets etc. draw a huge amount of power from the battery.

2. WiFi - Cool technology eh? Yeah I guess and Nokia thinks so as well, only if it had been serious enough to give it a proper thought before implementing it in devices. (Read on for more details on this)

3. Screen Display Brightness - Oh well, the one time I tested the device using full brightness, it didnt even last me 6 hours! So, forget about using your device outside an air conditioned chamber (read indoors).

Okay, so here's what I tested. I enabled the facebook and email widgets and waited for it to see how long it lasted. To my utter shock and surprise, on normal use which included occasional phone calls and using offline games (oh well I do have Quake 2 installed on my N97 Mini, coz thats the only decent game available for the device. If you're getting an N97 Mini make sure you're NOT a gamer, it has NO GPU, so forget about gaming, just for the info, all recent devices including lower end Android ones and of course the iPhone have dedicated GPUs), the battery hardly lasted me 5-6 hours. Hence, if you're using the N97 Mini, dont use online widgets, or else make sure you carry the charging cables (USB or charger) with you all the time and stay close to a PC or a socket, always.

Next came the acid test. WiFi. I was using Mobbler, a highly popular LastFM client and Tune Wiki. It took me simply 2-3 hours to reduce a fully charged N97 Mini to a completely battery life famished device. Which is like saying, dont use this device to use if you're a heavy WiFi user.

And for the sake of decency I am not comparing this with recent Android and the iPhone, but you get the point.

So, not only is this device underpowered (memory and processing capability wise), its also under-powered (quite literally) as well.

I was completely unaware of this aspect of the N97 Mini till I put it to the test yesterday and today in the morning. Bottomline, I am hating it. I am looking at options to sell this device and get an Android powered one. The severe lack of processing capabilities, softwares, proper usable OS and now a less than usable battery is too much for me to bear. This is my last Nokia. I really dont care if the company comes up with a better device in the future. I am currently ruing my decision, and feeling really crap coz of having spent a substantial amount of moolah on this. May Nokia be a better company and may it produce better devices in the future, but I honestly dont give a damn.

iPad...finally

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeAfter months, no wait, years of rumours about the elusive tablet, Apple today came out with the new iPad. (The name sucks. Doesnt it sound like a feminine hygiene device? iTampon trended on Twitter today for some unknown reason, in case you didnt know.)

It has a super awesome touch screen, uses the same precision techniques as the iphone or itouch. Has a brilliant interface which is totally customisable, has perfect integration with itunes among starters. It has a sleek, sexy, stylish 9.7 inch IPS screen, 0.5 inches thin, weighing at just 1.5 pounds, with 10 hours of battery life, has bluetooth (thank god!), WiFi, 1Ghz Apple A4 Chip, 16-64GB of flash storage, iWorks, iBook Store (which looks pretty awesome!) unprecedented reading and gaming experience...the list goes on!

And the price? Well its amazing how they have managed to price it at just $499 for the 16GB! The 3G version though costs $629. 32GB is priced at $599 and $729 for the WiFi and WiFi+3G versions respectively and the 64GB is priced at $699 and $829 for the WiFi and WiFi+3G versions respectively.

They will start shipping in 90 days time. For the time being AT&T has made a pretty pathbreaking deal with Apple but international deals will be ready by June.

That was the Apple iPad.

Erm, just before I end I think I should mention some of my concerns here. For starters, it still doesnt feature multitasking. Now that might not be a dealbreaker but its a dampener for sure. Next, I really dont think 64GB is enough of a storage really. I mean even a few mp3 files and videos these days take up quite a large amount of space. So, I'm really not sure if the iPad is really a replacement for a netbook. But if you can overlook these shortcomings, I think the sleek, stylish, uber cool iPad is one hell of a device you must own!