Interesting. Batteries in smartphones usually have five times more battery capacity then feature phones, it should last over a month!

It depends on how often he uses his phone and where he backpacks. Being in a low-signal environment will eat up a lot of battery even on a feature phone plus having screens 5x bigger than feature phones also lead to more battery usage when being used. My old OnePlus3 which at this point is only used for alarms and has apps set to auto update (doze is on, but battery saver is off) in the background lasts around a month before I have to charge it again.

Smartphones also have 5x more screen to light up, too.

Reminds me of YotaPhone 2 eInk display - pretty crummy, but the Snapdragon 820 device stayed on a week on without additional power saving...

My old Turbo 2 could, in fact, sleep for a month in airplane mode (with crappy apps removed). However that would quickly drop to about a week with light usage, e.g. connecting to WiFi somewhere to get directions or pull email for the day.

In my experience, Sony Android devices are pretty well architected. I had a tablet for a long time with a built-in IR transceiver for acting as a TV remote. Seems like a silly add-on, but I used that thing until it broke.

I wanted to say exactly the same. The Sony page is horribly misinformed.

Calling Sony "toxic" for including a useful OPT-IN feature to extend battery life? Pfff...

A much better (in my mind) solution to your backpacking battery life issue is to carry a phone with a removable battery. If you're turning off all services including calls and SMS, there's simply no reason for the device to be powered on at all, and removing the battery guarantees there's not even a trickle of power being drained. For your alarm, well I assume you wear a watch backpacking, so you can use its alarm feature.

Of course, then you have the issue of finding a quality midrange or higher end phone with a removable battery in the first place. They are an endangered species due to the thinness war.

> Of course, then you have the issue of finding a quality midrange or higher end phone with a removable battery in the first place. They are an endangered species due to the thinness war.

I prefer external charging bricks -- if you upgrade your phone, you might need to buy a new cable with an external brick, but you are more likely to need a replaceable battery with a new form factor or output.

> If you're turning off all services including calls and SMS,

The way I read GP he disabled everything except calls, SMS and alarms.

Which kinda makes sense, you want something for authorities to track you in case you end up missing and unable to call for help yourself.

Yep I completely misread that, sorry.