Re: New iPhone's Battery is Achilles' Heel ==> telecom contributing to climate change?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: July 3, 2009 1:34:59 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "'Lauren Weinstein'" <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: RE: [IP] New iPhone's Battery is Achilles' Heel ==> telecom  
contributing to climate change?

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that 3G uses so much power. Is it  
because you must contact a faraway base station rather than simply  
using the nearest access point – and cities they are typically very  
near? Is the protocol itself power hungry? Are 4G or WiMax any better?  
How much of the energy usage is due to the complexity of cellular  
protocols—supposedly 2G is lower usage than 3G? I’d be interested in  
numbers from those who have done the analysis.

If you multiple this by a hundreds of millions of phones and another  
billion devices such medical monitoring devices then we have a huge  
unnecessary energy footprint in order to give each entity its own  
billable path rather than allowing more efficient sharing of bit  
paths. Same with “broadband”.

Simply using the nearest Wi-Fi access point makes a lot more sense.  
But we still need to do work – I don’t think that 802.11 puts much  
emphasis on managing power levels (does it?).

Just as important are the post-ICANN protocols to address the problems  
with today’s protocols which are dependent upon those (billable) paths  
and on the DNS for faux stability.


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Friday, July 03, 2009 12:58
To: ip
Subject: [IP] New iPhone's Battery is Achilles' Heel

This battery problem has nothing to do with the new iPhone. The old
iPhone had basically the same problem. If you leave the phone in 3G
mode power consumption is quite heavy. If you leave the phone in
non-3G mode but with WiFi and Bluetooth enabled, I find on either
generation phone I can go most of the day and not go below 60% battery.

I have always berated Apple for stealing the battery on general
principles. But if anything I find the new iPhone 3GS to be better on
the battery again as long as you keep it out of 3G mode unless you
need it.

Dave

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: July 3, 2009 12:15:54 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: New iPhone's Battery is Achilles' Heel



                     New iPhone's Battery is Achilles' Heel

                  http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000591.html


Greetings.  Before you even think about rushing out to buy the new
iPhone, you might want to read an interesting story about continuing
negative reactions to the iPhone 3GS' battery life
( http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-iphone3-2009jul03,0,2546606.story
  ).

Of course, all smartphones are power hungry, and we use these
Internet-enabled phones for so much more than just talking.  But the
iPhone is a particularly egregious case since the battery is sealed
inside and not considered to be a "user replaceable" item.

My G1 phone also sucks a lot of juice, but I can pop in an extra
charged battery anytime, and I have an extended duration battery
(bigger is better!) to use in there as well.

With the iPhone, since battery life sucks, you're really stuck.

There are, however, some comparatively ugly workarounds.  One person
responding just now to a tweet of mine on this topic says that he uses
a solar charger.  I guess that's OK if you don't leave the iPhone
itself out in direct sun, and don't keep smashing your head into the
solar array (OK, so the solar array isn't really that big ...)

A more practical way to deal with the problem may be something like
this external battery pack
( http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2767656 -- only
$20 on sale -- 50% discount -- at Radio Shack through July 11).  You
can always duct tape it to your iPhone.  Won't that be pretty?

More generally, the whole concept of sealed-in batteries in Apple
devices strikes me as the epitome of "those suckers will buy anything
with our name on it -- boot to the head!" consumer relations.

But hey, whatever turns you on.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
   - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
   for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein




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