I have found that my newest phone (Samsung S23) has significantly better battery life than my old Pixel 3a ever did. I really have to try hard to run the battery down and with my normal usage it easily lasts two days.

I only charge my iPhone 12 about every 2 days as well - at least with normal usage. But I can also easily run it down with an audiobook playing all afternoon over Bluetooth. No idea why that uses so much power.

When I’m at home I’m so close to charge points all day that I don’t worry about it. And when I’m travelling, I bring an external usb-c battery pack that can fully charge my phone about 6 more times or give my laptop another few hours of use.

Sure, more battery life would be strictly better. But I’m happy with the state of things right now.

Apparently the EU has legislated toolless user replaceable phone batteries by 2027. I’m curious if apple plays ball and if so, what iPhones will look like in a few years.

> Apparently the EU has legislated toolless user replaceable phone batteries by 2027.

The legislation calls for phone owners to be able to remove batteries “with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble it.”

Essentially, no glueing the screen to the battery, which is sensible. I take umbrage with the "without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge". Manufacturers should make available specialised tools commercially and be allowed to request deposits for specialised tools by individuals looking to perform one-off repairs to ensure return. Otherwise, it's reasonable. I doubt we'll see a significant change in the form factor.

You can still buy basic phones that last all week, they're very cheap.

But nobody wants a phone, they want a tiny portable computer.

> But nobody wants a phone, they want a tiny portable computer.

Yes, including me. I want everything :/

A modern smartphone will last for literally weeks if you turn off all data and only use it for calls, the batteries are massive to support streaming video and playing games.

I charge my Pixel 5 pretty infrequently, couldn't give a number though. I leave it in battery saver mode automatically when it's below 70%, and often I will just plug it in to a quick charging cable (the one from my steam deck actually) for 20 minutes to "top up" (may not fully charge but who cares). I only notice my battery life about once every other week. Other than frequent photography, I guess I don't do very much intensive processing on my phone though.

I recently bought a Sony Xperia 10 IV and the battery easily lasts 4 days. Performance is great too, at least for my usage (I don't play games on the phone though).

It's largely the background data-hungry apps and the obsessive screen time with foreground apps. As someone who almost uses their phone like a dumb phone, I charge my Pixel 5a about once every 7 days now, when it gets to around 20% remaining. It was more like 10+ days when I first got it, but that was also before I decided that avoiding the 0-20% range might be better for long-term battery health.

The most power-hungry apps I run are Slack, the built-in GMail and Messages clients, the Garmin app to periodically sync with my watch, and sometimes Firefox if I actually spend time browsing there instead of on my preferred laptop environment. The camera app also eats power when actually taking pictures or video, but I guess I rarely do.

When I first start using a phone, I go through a little effort to disable things I don't want via the system apps menu. For me, that includes the Google Assistant and their native launcher, because the last thing I actually want is to trigger search functions willy-nilly. If I want to search, I'll open Firefox and search...

I don't get these battery issues people have. I use a 3 year old Huawei P30 Pro, and I still get 2 days of battery life when charged to full. Apparently I average around 4 hours of screen time per day.