Finally after the recent update my battery icon shows full charge and my counter resets. So I decided to do an unofficial test of my iPhone's battery life by constantly playing movies/TV shows. I turned off the WiFi and set the brightness to ~45% with auto off. 45% brightness was more than enough to view the screen comfortably. My email was set to check every hour and since I still needed to receive calls, I didn't set the phone to airplane mode. I had several animes encoded using Handbrake so I used them along with some TV shows from iTunes. My encoded movies were at ~850kbps, 320x240 H.264 and 128 kbps sound. Surprisingly, lower resolution still looked very good on the iPhone. I used these movies half the time and the other half was iTunes downloads that were encoded at ~1580/128 kbps, 640x360 H.264 format. The sound was played through Rivet stereo headset at ~35% of max volume. The following is the breakdown of my usage for today:
Movies/TV: ~7:01 (20% battery warning) and ~7:37 (10% warning)
Music only (screen off): ~2:30
Phone: < ~5 min
EDGE: checking email every hour, only one email received so very light use
Idle: ~35 min
BTW, mine has series 7 LCD.
Man, it was painful to wait until the battery was drained to 10%. It took way too long.
I decided not to fully drain the battery, but if I did I probably could've got another 30 min before battery dying. The tech spec on the Apple site is 7 hr for video playback and my unit definitely surpassed that mark. Again, Apple delivered as promised. I don't know if Apple tested their units at max brightness.
On a side note, I purchased the Rivet iPhone headset from Amazon and I'm glad I did. http://www.rivetnow.com/home/file/product/iproduct_id/109/product.html
I purchased this for $19.99, but now Amazon raised it to MSRP ~$30. I think this headset is very good for ~$20, but decent at ~$30. It's much more comfortable and is on par with the Apple headset in sound quality. However, this headset is much better than the included Apple headset in terms of microphone quality when driving at high speeds. I've found that the microphone on the Apple headset is way too sensitive and severely breaks up my voice when driving on the freeway even with the windows up. The Rivet seems to be much better in this respect and also the lanyard style is ingenious. And yes, the button on the microphone can be used exactly like the one on Apple headset. I regret not purchasing 2 of these.
Movies/TV: ~7:01 (20% battery warning) and ~7:37 (10% warning)
Music only (screen off): ~2:30
Phone: < ~5 min
EDGE: checking email every hour, only one email received so very light use
Idle: ~35 min
BTW, mine has series 7 LCD.
Man, it was painful to wait until the battery was drained to 10%. It took way too long.
I decided not to fully drain the battery, but if I did I probably could've got another 30 min before battery dying. The tech spec on the Apple site is 7 hr for video playback and my unit definitely surpassed that mark. Again, Apple delivered as promised. I don't know if Apple tested their units at max brightness.On a side note, I purchased the Rivet iPhone headset from Amazon and I'm glad I did. http://www.rivetnow.com/home/file/product/iproduct_id/109/product.html
I purchased this for $19.99, but now Amazon raised it to MSRP ~$30. I think this headset is very good for ~$20, but decent at ~$30. It's much more comfortable and is on par with the Apple headset in sound quality. However, this headset is much better than the included Apple headset in terms of microphone quality when driving at high speeds. I've found that the microphone on the Apple headset is way too sensitive and severely breaks up my voice when driving on the freeway even with the windows up. The Rivet seems to be much better in this respect and also the lanyard style is ingenious. And yes, the button on the microphone can be used exactly like the one on Apple headset. I regret not purchasing 2 of these.