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The author asserts that "The first company—whether it’s an incumbent phone maker or Ph.D.-laden start-up in a garage—that figures out how to solve the smartphon

The author asserts that "The first company—whether it’s an incumbent phone maker or Ph.D.-laden start-up in a garage—that figures out how to solve the smartphone battery problem will see enormous gains." Nope. Blackberry has had battery life nailed for years and they're steadily losing market share in the U.S. I owned a Blackberry 9700 for a couple years and recently replaced it with an iPhone 4s. When using for a similar set of apps and voice calls, I get less than half the battery life I did with the Blackberry 9700. I wrote a detailed comparison between these two devices (http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/12/23/blackberry-vs-iphone-4s-after-two-months-of-use/ http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/12/23/blackberry-vs-iphone-4s-...) and there are actually a few ways Blackberry beats the iPhone 4s. The most important to me is voice call quality, where the difference is stark and impacts me every day. Battery? I just keep it plugged in when I'm at home or at the office. Problem solved.

jsight 15y ago
I believe that the Blackberry 9700 has a 624Mhz processor, 256MB or RAM, and a relatively low resolution 2.44" screen. The battery is about the same size as that of a modern smartphone, though (1500Mah). I don't think it's fair to say that they have battery life nailed, as their approach to nailing it (low hardware specs) is one of several things that is killing them in the marketplace.
- FilterJoe 15y ago
  Fair point but the 9700 is over 2 years old - and when it came out it had better battery life than the competition. The 9900 which recently came out has better specs and still a good battery life. What's killing Blackberry IMO is that it's nowhere near as good a pocket computer as iPhone or high end Android devices. The apps are much more difficult to install and upgrade as far too many reboots are required. And the difficult app development environment means there are far fewer apps. I think consumers have spoken: "We love great pocket computers and we're willing to sacrifice voice quality, battery life, and data efficiency to get it."
  - jsight 15y ago
    The 9700 is over 2 years old, but it had a smaller (much less power draw) screen and a slower CPU even by 2 year old Android/iPhone standards. The 9900 has better specs, but still has a small screen and a single-core CPU. If they fix those limitations, the battery life will likely drop to iPhone levels. I don't really think they can be competitive in applications without fixing the hardware, though.

jsight 15y ago

I believe that the Blackberry 9700 has a 624Mhz processor, 256MB or RAM, and a relatively low resolution 2.44" screen. The battery is about the same size as that of a modern smartphone, though (1500Mah). I don't think it's fair to say that they have battery life nailed, as their approach to nailing it (low hardware specs) is one of several things that is killing them in the marketplace.

FilterJoe 15y ago
Fair point but the 9700 is over 2 years old - and when it came out it had better battery life than the competition. The 9900 which recently came out has better specs and still a good battery life. What's killing Blackberry IMO is that it's nowhere near as good a pocket computer as iPhone or high end Android devices. The apps are much more difficult to install and upgrade as far too many reboots are required. And the difficult app development environment means there are far fewer apps. I think consumers have spoken: "We love great pocket computers and we're willing to sacrifice voice quality, battery life, and data efficiency to get it."
- jsight 15y ago
  The 9700 is over 2 years old, but it had a smaller (much less power draw) screen and a slower CPU even by 2 year old Android/iPhone standards. The 9900 has better specs, but still has a small screen and a single-core CPU. If they fix those limitations, the battery life will likely drop to iPhone levels. I don't really think they can be competitive in applications without fixing the hardware, though.