Observations of Battery Life

Having lived with The Sony UX-50 for a few weeks now, although I love it, I have to comment on the absolutely awful battery life.

When designing the UX-50, Sony obviously wanted to keep the size down. They succeeded, because the unit is very light, slim and portable.

The obvious sacrifice to achieve this, was battery size. I certainly noticed that today, as the buttons at the edge of the unit kept getting pressed while in my pocket at work today, and I got it out when I got home to find the battery completely drained.

Suffice to say, I have now found the switch to lock they keyboard, so hope for this not to happen again. Nevertheless, I find myself putting the Clie back on the charging cradle at every available opportunity.

I read my eBooks on this for about half an hour in bed at night and find I have to charge it again first thing in the morning to give myself confidence that it will last the working day. If you want to use Wi-Fi on this thing, you better make sure you use it for long, or it'll waste the battery in no time.

It's okay though, I can live with it, but I'll definitely looking into the extended battery if I can get one as well as doing the USB charging hardware MOD I have read a bit about on 1src forums. Why Sony didn't include USB charging out of the box I'll never know.

It got me thinking in more general terms about battery life. I have pretty much got used to daily charging of previous iPhones, tablets, and Android blowers, and battery life these days seem to be slowly getting better, despite that battery technology seems to have hit a bit of a developmental brick wall. It is probably more to do with tech becoming less power hungry and more efficient.

In total contrast however, is my Samsung E700 which I am using as my main phone now. It has a tiny battery and easily lasts three whole days on a single charge!

This was the advantage of having lots of different gadgets: separate batteries for separate t functions. My phone has a battery, my PDA has a battery, my Satnav has a battery, my eBook reader has a battery and my iPod had a battery. Collectively, they probably have a week or more worth of charge between them.

I guess, the point of this ramble is that while convergence in technology has added the convenience of having everything you need in one device, battery technology simply hasn't caught up yet.