Tested, a consumer research group, did a formal test of some of the more popular smartphones out there to see if their manufacturers' claims were accurate. What they found was that, for the most part, the manufacturer's reported talk-time is a pretty honest figure.
The top performer in battery life was the Motorola DROID 2, at 465 minutes of talk-time. The DROID 2, however, also had the most inaccurately optimistic reported talk-time (575). The iPhone 4 had the next most disparate times, with 382 minutes of real time versus 420 reported.
The Samsung Captivate, HTC DROID Incredible, Palm Pre Plus, and iPhone 3GS all lasted about as long as their claims. The Samsung Captivate actually outperformed its estimate by 4 minutes. Yes, it's only 4 minutes, but we have to appreciate their modesty.
The phones were tested from the same location with music played throughout the calls (to simulate a conversation's battery drain), with Wi-Fi connected but Bluetooth disconnected.
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Ken N. is a former news writer at PhoneArena. He produced a significant number of news stories for PhoneArena in the 2010-2011 period. During this period, Ken reported on various topics from the mobile tech industry, including Apple products, Android software, and US carriers.
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