Main iPhone Information Page

When consumers navigate to the main iPhone page, about ¾ of the page down you see a link that says, “iPhone 3GS or Iphone 3G: Compare”.

Compare iPhones Page

Click this and you go to a comparison page of the iPhone 3G versus iPhone 3GS.  About ¾ down the page, you see a battery life comparison:

These seems like intuitive figures to provide a consumer, yet Apple is already operating in rarefied air in providing this much consumer information.  But wait, what about the details on what was tested, you ask?  Apple iPhone delivers, again.  When you click on the disclaimer (3) you are brought down to a line that says, “3) All battery claims depend on network configuration and many other factors; actual results will vary. For more details of iPhone performance tests for talk time, standby time, Internet use over 3G, Internet use over Wi-Fi, video playback, and audio playback, see www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html.”

Full Battery Life Performance Testing Disclosure Page

Click on the link in the disclaimer above and you are brought to a page that contains more battery life procedure testing than I have ever seen before. These 1,173 words of technical bliss scream detail.  Sure, someone could chose to pick at the way the testing was done, but you cannot complain about the detailed disclosure.  The page meticulously goes through the tests performed, the hardware used, and how it was done.

Who Cares?

We have made it very public and clear that AMD is striving to guide the PC industry to deliver better notebook PC battery life information for consumers.  Nigel and I have articulated the challenges and provided suggestions to this.  We expect some in the industry to adopt these, but some will sit on the sidelines.  To those who choose to sit I ask, how do you feel about better battery life information being disclosed on a $99 iPhone than a $799 notebook PC?  Industry, we can do better than the cell phone industry.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

I do a lot of hands-on research on smartphones. I do this for two reasons. First, I believe they are fast becoming one of the prevalent cloud clients, and second, they are fast becoming a popular device to consume video. AMD obviously is involved in building the cloud with the AMD Opteron^TM Processors but also conversion to make a video smartphone-friendly can take a tremendous amount of compute power, and ATI Radeon ^TM HD 4800 series graphics and AMD Phenom ^TM II X4 processors do those conversions quite well.

One smartphone element that needs some more discussion is the value of battery life figures that one finds at the point of purchase or research. Whether it’s the iPhone, Blackberry Bold, Blackberry Storm, or Nokia N96, there initially appears to be variability between claims, tests, and personal usage. Let’s take a look at each phone and see if that’s the case.

iPhone

Apple’s web site lists the following for the 3G iPhone:

• Talk time: up to 5 hours on 3G, 10 hours on 2G
• Standby time: up to 300 hours
• Internet use: up to 5 hours on 3G, 6 hours on WiFi
• Video playback: Up to 7 hours
• Audio playback: Up to 24 hours

The birdseed print states that the testing was done with pre-production handsets back in June, 2008. I also found the methodology interesting in that different features were sometimes toggled on/off during the tests: WiFi association, WiFi “ask to join networks”, call forwarding, and auto-brightness.

Anandtech did their own testing and reported the following battery life for the 3G iPhone:

• Talk time: 4 hours 44 mins (284 mins) on 3G; 6 hours 4 mins (364 mins) on EDGE
• Web browsing: 3 hours 17 mins (197 minutes) on 3G; 6 hours, 40 mins (400 minutes) on WiFi; 4 hours and 3 mins (243 minutes) on EDGE

Anandtech’s number confirmed and disputed some of the numbers listed by Apple, but then again they may not have tested exactly the same way. I am impressed by Apple’s depth and transparency of information as you will soon see why…

Blackberry Bold

RIM’s web site lists the following for the Bold:

• Talk time: 4 hours, 30 mins
• Standby time: 324 hours (13.5 days)

I found it interesting that there were no disclaimers evident anywhere on the web site and there were no battery life scores for internet, video or audio.

I looked long and hard and found some testing reviews by Boy Genius and Asian One that listed what I would describe as good “compilation battery remarks”, but couldn’t find as detailed a review as Anandtech had for the iPhone.

BoyGenius commented that their testing had included:

• 300-500 emails a day,
• one hour of web surfing over 3G,
• Wi-Fi usually turned on, Bluetooth turned off,
• JiveTalk connected, and around one hour of phone calling (although they admitted that they didn’t normally use the BlackBerry as a phone), and that their test phone’s battery lasted from 9AM until 4:30AM (or 7 ½ hours).

The talk time figure is around what I get, but I would like to see more granularity by usage model with more details around specific usages around internet use and video playback.

Blackberry Storm

RIM’s web site lists the following for the Storm:

• Talk time: 6 hours
• Standby time: 356 hours (15 days)

As with the Bold, I also found it interesting on the Storm that there were no disclaimers evident anywhere and again there were no battery life scores for internet, video or audio.

CNet reported the following test results for the Storm:

• Talk time: 7 hours
• Music: 14 hours, 45 mins

As with the Bold, the Storm’s talk time figure is around what I get, but I would like to see more granularity by usage model with more details around specific usages around internet use and video playback.

Nokia N96

Nokia’s web site lists the following for the Nokia N96:

• Talk time: up to 150 / 220 minutes (WCDMA / GSM)
• Stand-by time: up to 8 / 9 days (WCDMA / GSM)
• Video playback: up to 5 hours (offline mode)
• Music playback: up to 14 hours (offline mode)

There is an asterisk that disclaims that “Operation times may vary depending on radio access technology, used operator network configuration and usage.”

All About Symbian reported the following activities they could complete in 16.5 hours on the N96 on one charge:

• YouTube Videos: approx 1 Hour playing using the S60 browser through 3.5G
• General Web Surfing: approx 1 Hour using both WiFi and 3.5G
• Mucking about with settings and navigating menus, etc.: approx 1 hour
• Setup Profimail and synced my IMAP account, 3,200 Emails, approx 400MB using WiFi, 3.5G and GPRS
• Downloaded the AAS Podcast, approx 20MB directly on the N96, and played the file using a stereo Bluetooth headset

End users may even find this test methodology the most valuable in that it shows a “day in a life” given a particular charge. This data is impossible to compare against Nokia’s corporate website, but it was nice that Nokia would, like Apple, provide video and music playback numbers. I would like to see Nokia commit to an internet battery life figure.

Conclusions

So what can we take away from this mash-up of smartphone battery life figures? First, there are some significant variances from vendor to vendor in the terminology and the information depth and transparency provided. Secondly, when a third-party review was conducted, it could sometimes be compared to the manufacturer’s specs, sometimes not. In some cases, the third-party review supported the claim, sometimes not. But that could be attributed to a difference in methodology. Net-net, not a whole lot of consistency exists with audio, video and internet battery life scoring.

My single biggest positive takeaway was the consistency with almost everyone on the usage and application of “talk time” and “standby time.” While not as cool as “internet battery” life, if you believe that talking is the primary use for your smartphone, this is good for the consumer.

What do you think about smartphone battery life marks? How is their accuracy and value?

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

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Cloud computing is rising in interest even during these uncertain world economic times and AMD is taking an important leadership role in the creation of the cloud. And in opinion, smartphones are increasingly becoming one of the most important cloud clients. What makes smartphones cloud-unique is their portability and versatility. One minute a phone, the next a web browser, the next a video broadcast client. After blogging on the Android G1 and the BlackBerry Storm, and as co-owner of an iPhone (wife’s), people asked me why I didn’t blog on my personal workhorse, the BlackBerry Bold. Well, I aim to please and here it is.

(L to R: iPod touch, BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Bold, Android G1)

Net-net, the Blackberry Bold is my preferred device for work and also serves many good consumer functions as well. At work, I live off of email messaging, then the web, then phone functionality, and the Bold hits high marks on all fronts.

What I Like

• Email Messaging: If you have Blackberry Enterprise Server, the Bold becomes the Godzilla of messaging. Many times I will get email on my Blackberry before it even hits my desktop. Spooky. You can also easily configure accounts from Yahoo Mail, GMail and Outlook. Fast and reliable, for work.

• Upgradeable storage and replaceable battery: Android G1, Storm, and Bold all have upgradable memory and replaceable battery. It’s kind of a pet peeve I have with the iPhone. Call me conservative, but I don’t like the thought of being on a long business trip and not have a spare battery. I carry a 16GB microSD in an externally accessible memory slot. No need to remove batteries, just a side door. It fits my documents, videos, and music quite well and theoretically limitless with every added card.

MicroSD door closed

MicroSD door open

• MS Office File Support: Built-in and free, you can download, save, view, and even edit the latest PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files. Excel wasn’t that useful given column width issues, but Word and especially PowerPoint was impressive. For an added fee, you can even create these documents.

• Rock solid: The Storm was solid physically, but the Bold is rock-solid. I have dropped it on every axis, 25x with no issues. Whenever I dropped my Pearl, I would get a SIM card error or the battery would pop out. Drop the Bold… pick it up where you left off. I suspect my Bold could easily survive a 5′ drop onto its screen. Would you say that for your iPhone?

From an application stability standpoint, I only get lockups or issues on some of the more sophisticated video streaming apps like Qik, but for the other 99.9% of the time, rock solid.

• Multitasking & Copy Paste: Unlike some phones, the Bold can multitask. If you are anything like me, you are bouncing between the phone, Google maps, the browser, email, address book, and want to go back at the stage where you left off, not start the app over again.

I can copy and paste literally between EVERY application on the Bold and its add-on apps. Very impressive and a huge time-saver.

• Screen: This display is 480×320 pixels and strikingly crisp. It’s only about half the size of an iPhone, but then again it’s 100% screen, and doesn’t share it with a keyboard. The only situation I want more screen is for videos, some web sites, and maybe some PowerPoint.

On web surfing, Bold makes up for the screen size with a very ingenious toggle. If you are on a web page that is wider than the page or the text too small, just press the “z” key and the browser reorients into column mode and you can see the web site much, much better. Press “z” again and it pops into page view mode. The trackball also lets you navigate web pages in 360 degree movement and magnify the area by clicking on it.

• Standard mini-USB port: Bold uses a standard mini-USB port and cable to charge and transfer data. I have a lot of gadgets and don’t have time for proprietary USB implementations. I can handle USB, mini-USB, and micro-USB, but have no time for Palm Centro’s or iPhone proprietary connectors.

• Digital camera: The Bold takes decent pictures at 2MP with 1600×1200 max resolution. The built-in flash is very bright, and I always get comments from envious iPhone owners wishing they had a flash. The Bold supports geo-tagging which uses the GPS capability to log the long/lat data to use with supported photo packages.

• Music player: Same as the Storm. I easily synched my iTunes playlists and all my non-DRM’d songs played. The album art also transferred which was a nice “extra” I didn’t expect. The speaker volume was unexpectedly loud, but not louder than the Storm.

• Video player and recorder: I am very impressed with the breadth of video formats supported; unlike other popular phones…. uh iPhone. The Bold supports DivX 4, DivX 5/6 is partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264, and WMV3 are supported. For me, it did play non-DRM’d video from my iPod and Nano with no alterations, very convenient. You can reconvert loads of video which can take advantage of four processor cores. I used an AMD Phenom TM X4 9950 quad core processor overclocked to 3.2Ghz (using AMD Fusion for Gaming utility) and was appreciating all four of those wonderful cores.¹

The video recorder function is awesome, but only in medium or high lighting. It records in .3gp format in low density quality, fine for streaming real-time to the internet or even emailing. I use Qik to real-time stream video to the internet.

Improvements I would like to See

• Faster web Java-script: Like the Storm, web surfing was fast on most sites until I hit java-script-laden sites, then the browser appeared to slow down. The default browser setting is “off” and if a site really needs Java-script to accomplish a major task, it asks you. My point of reference here is the iPhone and the Touch which has fast browsing with or without Java-script turned on.

• Improved popular applications: I can live without iPhone “Fart” or G1’s “Level” app, but not without a better functioning FaceBook and Twitter application. What a faux pas when compared to the iPhone. It has been months and would expect more from RIM. If iPhone ever got a physical keyboard and multitasking, I could be swayed. With that said, BlackBerry has some very good and differentiated applications like Qik for real-time video streaming, Flickr for photo uploads, SlingPlayer TV, YouVersion Bible and E*Trade Mobile Pro.

Summary

Today I prefer the Bold as my cloud workhorse to the alternatives (iPhone, Storm, Android G1) and has enough good consumer features to keep me happy and interested for the time being. RIM will need to improve web Java-script execution time and up the ante on the popular applications if they want folks to continue to cheer them on. With talk of iPhone’s improved multitasking, copy-paste, and video recorder functionality, I hope this will provide impetus for some improvements. If not, maybe the Palm Pre’.

I would love to hear from your experiences with the BlackBerry Bold.

¹ AMD’s PRODUCT WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY OVERCLOCKING, EVEN WHEN OVERCLOCKING IS ENABLED VUA AMD SOFTWARE. THE AMD FUSION FOR GAMING UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/02/17/blackberry-bold-my-mobile-cloud-workhorse/feed/ 1 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/27/unlocking-some-secrets-of-the-android-g1-video-capabilities/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/27/unlocking-some-secrets-of-the-android-g1-video-capabilities/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:17:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2008/10/27/unlock-some-secret-of-the-android-g1-video-encode-decode.aspx

In my last blog, I covered my first experiences with T-Mobile’s G1 Android-based phone. I liked it, but could learn to love it if the promise of open-source software comes true. One of the drawbacks I saw on Day 1 was the lack of a video player to playback videos on the phone, and I would like to provide an update to that. I will provide the good news, the bad news, and then provide some suggestions on how to improve the situation.

The Good News

The good news is that on Day 2, one day after launch, a video player became available on Android Market, right off the phone. Android Market says “Video Player 1.0” comes from a chap named “Jeff Hamilton”, and states that, the “File should be MPEG4 or 3GPP with H.264 or H.263 video and MP3, AAC, or AMR audio. Videos need to be 480×352 or smaller to play back properly.” This is a good start, but not the whole equation.

The Bad News

The bad news is that if anyone has played around moving video onto mobile devices, there are a lot more variables you need to know to make the video play well. For example, video bit rate, profiles (ie baseline, simple), and frames per second are important. For the audio inside the video file, sample frequency, bit rate, and channels are key.

The Apple iPhone provides all this data. As an example, data from the iPhone’s technical specifications page clearly states:

“Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats .”

While to many, this sounds like gibberish, whoever wants to put their own content (not purchased from iTunes, like family videos) it gives you enough to work from.

The Android G1 didn’t have any of these detailed support statements, which provided a medium-sized challenge. :>

Some Suggestions

After some hunting on the internet and about 12 hours of my own testing this weekend, I found some interim solutions that I hope can help.

The first thing you need is a program out there that can convert video from one specification to another specification. For example, you want to take video from your digital camcorder and put it on your Android G1, you must change the format of the file and key specifications (listed above) inside the file. Software packages come in a wide range from consumer, to prosumer, and to professional versions, priced from free to $600, and everything in-between. I use Movavi Video Converter, Nero 8 Recoder/Vision, Pinnacle Studio, and sometimes Sony Vegas for tasks like this, but it’s your choice.

So below, please find what worked for me:

· Apple nano-optimized setting: If you have any videos already in iPod nano-optimized format, most of mine worked OK, but the quality wasn’t as good because the nano has a smaller 320×240 screen.

· IPod generic video down-scaled settings: Take that profile and reduce some of the quality settings: 426×240 pixels, progressive, MPEG4 L1, 350-600 Kbps, 30fps, AAC audio, 48 KHz.

· IPod Generation 5 video down-scaled settings: 426×240 pixels, progressive, MPEG4 L1, 300-900 kbps, 30fps, AAC audio 48 kHz.

· MPEG 4 home-made brew: .mp4 format, 480×320 pixels, MPEG 4 Simple profile, 384 kbps, 25 fps, AAC audio, 22050 sample frequency, 64 kbps bit rate.

· H.264 home-made brew: .mp4 format, 480×320 pixels, H.264 Baseline, 384 kbps, 25 fps, AAC audio, 22050 sample frequency, 64 kbps bit rate.

So there we have it, video on your Android G1. One thing I failed to mention here is that most of this video recoding requires a heavy-duty processor. Of all the packages I tried, all but one heavily taxed all four cores of my AMD Phenom ™ X4 9950 processor, some up to 100%. So don’t skimp on CPU performance, it matters on video encoding. Having moved from a dual core to quad core CPU configuration was one of the best upgrades I made at home.

I hope this is helpful and I would love to hear about your suggestions.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

It was Day 1 yesterday for the T-Mobile G1 Android phone and I wanted to share my early impressions of the device. 24 hours is NOT enough time to complete a full evaluation, as mobile devices like this are very personal and take months to fully explore and judge. But I think within 24 hours it is safe to say that you can do about 75% of an evaluation on its capabilities on that single day. My basis for comparison is the two phones I have used the most: the iPhone and the BlackBerry Pearl. While these phones aren’t exactly positioned the same, it is what I have used and you may have also.

G1 Android Plusses

• Size: I carry a BlackBerry Pearl for business and while the Android G1 larger; it is still in that size range to be carried comfortably in a pocket or even a front shirt pocket. (From R to L, BlackBerry Pearl, Android G1, iPod touch)

• Trackball: This rocks…completely. With one thumb, I could basically control every application. Using the trackball with Google StreetView was absolutely amazing.

• Back button: To the right of the trackball, it enhances one thumb control. Other popular phones require two hands to do most anything.
• QWERTY keyboard: Just slide the display out and you get a complete QWERTY keyboard, just like your computer except you use your two thumbs to type. I have above-average sized fingers and it worked well. I would have preferred higher-rise keys, but they work OK.

• High-quality, touch-screen: If this is what you get into, you have it. It lacks auto-orientation like the iPhone/Touch, but pull out the keyboard and the orientation chances.

• Vision of an open software ecosystem: While not very many apps existed on Day 1 in the Android Market, I think there will be based on the Android Open Source Project , and they will be very cool and useful. I was very impressed that I could directly download and install an application (Twitroid, Twitter for Android), something I cannot do on my iPhone/Touch.
• 3MP camera: The photos I took looked good and comparable to many digital cameras I have owned in the past. More mega-pixels, better headroom if you need to crop, cut or blow up.
• GPS with Street View and Compass View: Unbelievable. Physically walk around and the G1 will show you what you will be seeing, in panoramic view. You turn around and its view turns around.
• Replaceable battery: I get a little grumpy stuck at the Moscow airport at 2AM with no juice. ‘Nuff said.

G1 Android Minuses

• No video player: Many $49 phones (with plan like my daughter’s) offer MP4 or AVI video. I don’t get it with a device priced from $179-$399. The manual talks about storing “video clips” on the microSD memory card, so I am expecting this in the future.
• T-Mobile Austin 3G network: Seemed spotty, even near downtown. Could barely get EDGE in my house located in a highly populated neighborhood.
• Wi-Fi range and speed: Compared to the iPhone/Touch, it seemed much, much slower and with lower range, but I didn’t do any scientific tests.
• 8GB memory limitation: Will be hard to keep multitudes of applications, pictures, music, and (hopefully) video on 8GB. Subsets of subsets of your media collection are a bummer.
• 14-day evaluation period: iPhone offers 30 days through AT&T. A new phone, particularly a new concept phone, should have at least as many days as the de-facto “cool” phone.

Too Early to Determine

• Battery life: Much shorter than my BlackBerry Pearl, but then again it does a lot more.
• Open software implications: A few of the applications I downloaded gave me some errors, but I expected it because I experienced the same with the first iPhone and also because the platform is more “open” than the alternatives.
• Exchange Support: iPhone didn’t have it at launch and neither does Android G1. Can’t imagine that staying the same if Android G1 wants to ever get into medium and large businesses.

I like the Android G1 after 24 hours but as I said, the true test comes after weeks of real use. The exciting part is that I think like a fine wine, it will get better with time as the reported hoard of open source software shows up and the basics like Wi-Fi are improved, just as they were with the iPhone. Then I could love it. If you have tried out one of the Android G1s, I would love to hear from you and your experiences.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.