Better Battery, Better Device

The iPhone 4 may be making waves in the cellular world with its bigger, better battery, but let it not be forgotten that the iPad really got the ball rolling with its phenomenal battery life. In fact, it has more or less redefined my mobile device habits and usage.

Although my wife is enjoying her iPhone 3GS, I'm still sporting an iPhone 3G, and unlike many who were given an early upgrade option, AT&T still lists me as not eligible for a full discount until next February. My phone is jam packed with apps, and without the use of the System Activity Monitor app that allows me to free up memory, I'd have to reboot this thing constantly to prevent it from chugging. Which it does. Frequently.

On top of this, I'm lucky to get a full day of charge anymore. I have 3G always turned on, Wi-Fi usually turned off, and I only pull it out of my pocket a few times a day for Twitter, Facebook, or web surfing. The rest of the time is spent making the occasional call or playing a few minutes of a game. By the time my head hits the pillow, though, the phone has died or has received the dreaded 20% battery warning. In short, my iPhone's battery is not what it used to be.

Because of this, I less and less often actually use my iPhone for anything fun. Every time I play a game, I feel like I have to ration my time so I don't have to charge the phone halfway through the day. It's become a device of necessity rather than one for entertainment, which is why I splurged on the phone in the first place.

The iPad, then, with it's close-to-10-hour battery life has completely reinvigorated my mobile device usage. I still use the device casually, but I'm going on my third day without having to charge the iPad, hovering around a 50% battery mark. This is magical for me. In fact, although I still find myself checking the battery indicator up top more often than I need to, I rarely worry about my iPad dying on me.

Netflix coming to the iPhone this summer? Great news, right? Not for me. I can only imagine how fast that will suck the very life out of my 3G. Do I worry about that on the iPad? Not really.

When notebooks became the device to own, I never really though too much about battery life. Due to the nature and structure of the device, more often than not I was sitting with it at a desk (be that at home or at school) or a table (coffee shop or kitchen table). In most of these cases, I was able to locate a plug to keep the computer from dying. The iPad, though, is about having much of that same functionality but being completely unplugged. If the iPad had a 3- to 4-hour battery life, as older laptops did, its value would be tremendously lowered. I'm not sure that I would even want an iPad if this were the case.

So, all you iPhone 4 early adopters (in a few weeks), enjoy that battery life and all the other nifty features being shoved into the tiny device. But don't forget how the iPad paved the way.