Apple iPhone battery life woes and Samsung Galaxy S II's stellar battery life
Apple recently releases iOS 5.01 for its iPhone, iPad and iPod devices. One off the main reasons for the release has been complaints by iPhone 4S owners of short battery life and in general complaints the iOS 5 reduces battery life in older devices. Is the problem fixed? After iOS 5.01 many users report improvements in battery life, while some report no improvement. GSM Arena reports that Apple acknowledges that their are still remaining battery life issues, which it is investigating.
As iOS 5 incorporates more Android like features like notifications, location services, two widgets and Cloud sync which run in the background, I think a fair number of the complaints are based on users not understanding or refusing to accept that as the phone becomes more capable and does more, its battery life will diminish.
The problem is that it looks like Apple's iPhone 4S may not be the best platform for a multitasking OS. It looks like Android phone manufacturers which have long have to tackle the issue of a configurable operating system which could become very power hungry depending on how it is configured by the user have done much more to address battery life issues. PC Mag conducted a battery life test using talk time. Listing the top ten phones, none of Apple's phones made it to the top ten. Topping the list is Samsungs massive and powerful Galaxy S II. That the Samsung Galaxy S II has a better battery life than Apple's iPhone 4S was also confirmed by the Inquirer.net in a head-to-head conducted by it.