BF2S Forums Tech: Open thread

the iphones do not have different loads. they have the same innards. minor changes in (extremely low voltage) RAM and trivial differences in core clocks, if that. all the iphones of each generation have the same basic internals. the difference is the size of the screens and the size of the batteries powering them. actually, the larger screens in the expensive iphones up til now have used more battery-efficient technology than the older tech driving the smaller screens.

but your analogy is dumb. you are comparing two phones with a 30% size difference. the batteries in the large iphones are dramatically larger than the mini ones. so you get a longer battery life. they have already engineered and tweaked the hell out of the smaller iphones to get as much juice as possible.

from a product design point-of-view, it makes perfect sense that the most expensive handsets will last longer than than entry-level ones. what the fuck even is this discussion?

Last edited by uziq (2022-04-11 02:56:50)

buying an older iphone with an appreciably worse battery life and 4g rather than 5g is just a dumb purchase in every way.

okay, great move. buy a 4g phone now that 5g is available because, hey, 6g will be available in 2030. let's skip the 5g decade!

we are talking about a receiver bandwidth chip. just get the fucking latest one, it's really not a hill worth dying on. having super fast transfer speeds when in public is nice for any number of reasons. in 4 years time when everyone is uploading all that 4K/60fps video footage from their latest-gen phones to youtube, i'm sure it'll be great having to view everything on a 3g/4g receiver.

why would you commit yourself to a 'new' phone for the next 5/6 years that uses the last generation of technology? for the sake of, what, a $200 saving today by going out your way to buy the last generation of iphone? in which you'll also be committing to smaller hard-drive capacity ... a far worse battery ... a worse screen ... a worse camera ... a worse phone in every way.

a device you will use every day for the next 5 years. and you're going to buy the old version to save $200. lol ok. maketh perfect sense.

@zeek - I don't know where you got the idea that I said buy 4G because 6G is coming out in 2030. I even mentioned it as the 5G successor, or in whatever marketing form all that stuff will take. Maybe step out of combat mode for half a second. Similar arguments (gen vs. +1 increment) have been made for/against tech here in the past, in terms of "what are you really going to do with this thing." The monetary difference should be chump change to an engineer. Whether or not Dilbert saves $200 is utterly inconsequential to me. Has this really taken up a whole page?

On a personal level, I feel disenchanted with gigantic smartphones. My work phone feels like a large, awkward slab of glass in my pocket when I don't have it on my belt, (also not an ideal solution). I would've been chuffed with a flip phone, but whatever. This thing can sit unplugged for the longest time without dropping below half charge (easily its nicest feature for me, when it isn't randomly buzzing or chirping every few days in spite of the cursory job I did of disabling system notifications).

Will probably use it until it gets bricked.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2022-04-12 00:22:30)

the mini has a 'reasonable' battery life, especially for your use-case. you even said yourself you're not a power user. why do you need a giant phablet-sized phone with a 30-hour battery life? are you going out deep into the australian bush for days at a time, where you'll be watching oodles of movies from your device? you don't need the big phone.

the 13 mini has drastically improved battery life over the 12 mini. it was everyone's main complaint with the previous small form-factor iphone: it was a return to previous 'small phone' battery lives. that's because there is a theoretical maximum limit to the battery life of the tiny batteries that go into the smaller phones. duh. by all accounts it seems trying to maximize the battery capacity of the new 13 was their main aim in revising the phone and releasing a new model; they went at it via the route of maximizing the efficiency of their latest apple processor, as there's not much more to be done with the constraints of the battery tech itself.

the current 13 mini gives a 12+ hour plus battery life under heavy use. that's already an order of magnitude better than any previous 'small' smartphone you may have used ... including the first, say, 7-8 generations of iphone. did you find use of them a daily challenge because of their battery lives? no. we have just become accustomed to giant battery charges now, that's all.

unfortunately, if you do want a return to the smaller phones of yore (as i indeed did and do), then you'll have to accept that the 30+ hour, multiple-day battery lives we have become accustomed to with the giant phones has to go, too. you have to compromise when the battery is being physically downsized by 30%. 'why couldn't they just engineer them to have the same battery life?' you ask. are you stupid?

it's pretty exasperating that an engineer needs to have phone tech specs basics explained to him.

on the plus side, unlike smartphone tech and accessories of, say, 10 years ago, where a short battery life really meant a short battery life, today we have a host of solutions to boost the phone's daily longevity. you can get power packs and battery extenders. the iphones even have case-sized ones that attach to the back of your phone or otherwise can be thrown in a backpack. we now have wireless charging, including a host of desktop-charging ports and accessories. it's not like a 12-20 hour battery is a life sentence anymore. if you're going to be sat at a desk for a few hours a day, or, say, in a car with a lighter port, or in a public place with a wireless charging area ... you can handily top-up your phone's daily juice without it inconveniencing you. very rarely are you going to need a full 12+ hours of heavy use without any access to a USB cable or wireless dock.

Last edited by uziq (2022-04-12 00:36:51)

Its exasperating that apple don't just make the phones a bit thicker so they can get more battery in and they don't bend when you sit on them.

Relevant


14% doesn't really fit my engineer definition of "drastically" but there's a clear benefit to turning off 5G which no doubt applies to the mini too.

Seems like 5G is fairly useless and likely to be for a while

are you going out deep into the australian bush for days at a time, where you'll be watching oodles of movies from your device? you don't need the big phone

You don't know me.

Why can't the world just be the way I want it?

These points: what will dilbert mostly be using their phone for, and what coverage can he expect where he lives/works, I'd already made in my second post. Seems quite reasonable to take into consideration. If he can't regularly use 5G, then there's really no point in a buying decision hinging on that.

Regardless of my first posts dismissiveness of tech iterations, it might be worth waiting for some of the iphone 14 (2022?) rumors to be confirmed. The Snapdragon in particular appears to be a juicy potential upgrade.

From qualcomm's pdf blurb:

Leading power efficiency

Combines the power efficiency benefits of a 4 nm process with new Release 16 power-saving features and a tightly integrated₁ modem-RF system, delivering superior power efficiency and all-day battery life.₂

1 OEMs have flexibility to choose RF components.
2 Battery life varies significantly based on device, settings, usage, and other factors.

May be helpful for people looking to squeeze every last bit of life into their phone's power (keeping in mind that you probably don't want your battery at 100% all the time). As zeek points out, there are of course many ways to improve this outside of the phone. Wireless charging (as convenient as just leaving your phone on the desk), battery packs, vehicle adaptors all very convenient. IMO anyone toting around expensive mobile devices along on car trips should invest in a feature-rich inverter for their road kit. Dilbert could even take a solar panel out for camping with the redbacks and crocodiles.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2022-04-12 12:58:51)

I think dilbert wants to download videos of cats and then stream his reactions.

TV’s are not hard to run off a GPU… i can daisy-chain 2-3 monitors off my macbook pro ffs.

as i said in my first post, unless you're going to be playing games and watching HD movies off your phone on a daily basis, you really have absolutely no reason to kvetch about battery life in 2022. all batteries are going to be decent. if you can plug your phone onto a charging dock once every few days, you will surely be fine.

they have low-battery modes in their iOS, the ability to shutdown nonessential processes, revert from 5G to 4G, etc. if you are really worried about battery life. most days when i'm out for a long hike or socializing, i.e. not looking at my phone constantly, i put it into low-power mode and don't worry about it. i don't exactly need all my apps checking for notifications 24/7 when i'm on a mountainside.

i have never had occasion to worry about the battery life of the 13 mini. i would much rather take a battery extender block with me on a long day out/weekend away than buy the fucking huge version of the same phone for the added battery capacity. that's dumb. almost as dumb as purposefully buying a 4G phone in 2022 so that you'll save $15 on the different chipset.

"great advice".

it's almost like product design experts ... have thought this through much better than you.





the wireless/magnetic apple one fits almost perfectly within the form of the 13 mini. for the rare occasions when you'll need it. it probably even increases your palm grip on the much smaller phone, if you want to be totally pedantic about it.

I wanted the 4G to save about $400 on the purchase price.

yeah ... you're also buying a MUCH worse battery, a worse screen, worse cameras, less hard-drive space, a slower and already 3-year-old processor ... amazing saving for a 5-year investment, chap. the reasons the two models are different prices isn't because of the 4G/5G aspect. the cost of these receivers is about as much as the cost of updating the wifi protocol in your laptop's onboard chip, i.e. marginal. $5-15 cost price, i'd imagine.

Last edited by uziq (2022-04-13 01:36:22)

bill nye the science guy told me how magnets work.

the more pertinent question is why are you being so obstinate over a simple purchasing decision? 'wah i want big battery life in a small phone ... but wow adding a battery pack to my tiny phone is so laborious ... why can't apple engineers magically make a tiny battery have as much life as the really big one?'