Cellphone purveyors quote lots of appealing talk time specs, but we want to know the truth about how much time you can get in the real world. Now after months of testing, Norwegian website amobil has the goods on 45 of their favorite phones, with telling results:
“Not surprisingly, there were huge differences from phone to phone. The winning phone let you chat away for two-and-a-half times as long as the phone at the bottom of the chart. The phone with the best talk time is Sony Ericsson Z530i. Our sample could keep a conversation going for an entire 8 hours. Actually, all the phones that survived for more than 7 hours were Sony Ericsson phones – Z530i, K750i and W700i. The model that came out worst was the Siemens SL75. It dropped the call after only 3 hours of talking.”
The testers noticed that the price of the cellphone didn’t make any difference, but how you use it does. For example, if you’re listening to a lot of music or taking numerous pictures, of course you’re going to run the battery down faster. They also decried the unreliable specs touted by the various cellphone vendors.
Their bottom line? Using a combination of amobil’s regular phone reviews and the results of their talk time tests, the top three models (and their talk times) were the Sony Ericsson W800i (7 hours), Sony Ericsson K800i (GSM: 6 hours 30 minutes, 3G: 5 hours 40 minutes) and the Nokia N72 (5 hours 51 minutes). See the full test results tables and methods after the jump.
Talk time testing, for real [amobil]