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October 2, 2009
Lumia

Comment of the week – dreaming of limitless power



The new universal charger will use a Micro-USB connectionGLOBAL – Battery life and phone charging remains one of those intriguing and forever passionate topics of chatter here on Conversations – over the past year we’ve set our brains buzzing with the big phone charger debate and been impressed by environment and sustainability announcements, security shake-ups, and explored how important long-lasting mobile power is for many groups with different unique requirements.

This week’s comment of the week winner responds to the results of our recent business phone reader poll, which saw long-haul battery life come out on top as the most important feature in an enterprise device. Read on to find out who has won a copy of Gravity for Twitter, and to join the discussion and share your thoughts.

Congratulations to Alex Whiteside, a copy of Gravity for Twitter will be fluttering your direction shortly. Here is his comment and thoughts on battery lives and charging:

Alex Whiteside: “Charging a phone’s battery is a complete nonsequeter in comparison to your other interactions with the device. You have a handset which can pull down music, video, documents, email, maps and calls at any time and in any place. It’s as free as you are, most of the time.

When you have to charge it, you’re now pinned down to one spot for two or three hours. If you get called away to do something, you either have to abort the charg and get by with what you’ve got until you can get some peace, or leave the phone behind. So obviously the longer you can go between charges, the less pointless thumb-twiddling you encounter.

If you’re travelling, you might – god forbid – find yourself with a dead and useless phone. The better the battery life, the less likely you are to find yourself carrying around a brick.

There are other, smaller annoyances like digging out the charger and finding a free outlet near something you can sit the phone on, somewhere you can see or hear incoming calls, and with the wire positioned sensibly so it doesn’t get tripped over. You have to take the charger with you, or have multiple chargers in different places.

Battery charging is an annoying, tethering relic in a wireless world. The less of it we have to do, the better.”

What do you think? Join the debate, and keep your comments flooding in.