Battery Life - Palm vs. PocketPC Phone Edition

[Marvinh]

Hello,

I just purchased an Audiovox Thera yesterday and I am a little concerned about the battery life. It looks like I can get about 12 hours of use from one battery charge. That includes about 90 minutes of cell phone/PDA usage and the rest standby time. I am a light user so that is acceptable to me. The unit is very new and I have also read that it requires a few charge cycles for the battery to take a complete charge.

I was wondering why PocketPC/Cell phone combinations use so much battery 'juice'. Also are Palms easier on batteries? Does it have a lot to do with processor power demands.

[ECOslin]

Thats been my major peeve with the Maestro, usage of 3 hours or less, I've never timed how long my standby is. I've bought a 4 AA battery pack as an external, just to have it and recharge the internal battery whilst away from the cradle.

Palms may be better on battery usage, I'm not sure. My brother just bought a Sprint PCS Springboard card to turn his Handspring into a cell/internet enabled phone. The module came with it's own removable rechargable battery and a new higher amp charger for the Handspring to charge both the module and the PDA as one unit. I'm interested in seeing if it works out.

I'd rather have a device thicker by half with strong battery life than an asthetic product that doesn't do the job.

Edward

[Janak Parekh]

Couple things:

- The Thera is not a Pocket PC Phone Edition. It is a Pocket PC with a CDMA phone, but the software is specialized Sierra Wireless, IIRC.

- The Thera unit is based off the Maestro/Toshiba e570. As such it has absolutely terrible battery life for a wireless device. Look at the T-Mobile/O2/HTC Pocket PC Phone - it has standby times of 100+ hours and hours of phone/PPC usage.

So, you really can't conclude the PPCPE's power drain from the Thera's battery life. The lack of battery is the main reason I didn't get the Thera...

--bdj

[Marvinh]

To BigDaddy,

Thanks for your reply. I considered the T-Mobile phones. Unfortunately, T-Mobile has poor cell phone coverage in the NY Metro area (as you probably know) and many 'dead' areas. So that's why I could not consider T-Mobile as a service provider.

[mccollin]

You find T-Mobile poor in NY... It's great in the Albany area... way better than Verizon. The thing the Thera has, however, is better wireless speed.