I’ve had the Blackberry Z3 for a about a week now. Some isolated minor issue with inserting my SIM card ensured that I couldn’t begin reviewing until about a couple of days later. It’s all good now and review has begun in earnest.
I thought I’d share my first battery test result with you guys. As regular readers may already know, I like to review every phone battery by putting them through a series of 2 to 3 custom tests, subject to how much time I have to spend with the device.
The Intensive Everyday Usage test is where I use the phone all day, non-stop, for regular activities, till the battery gives out. I have been reminded that it is not advisable to drain a smartphone battery ever so often within the space of a few days. So I decided to run this test until the battery dropped to the critical 10%. Here’s a breakdown of how I used the phone:
- Brightness equally alternated between 50% and 75%
- Only about 5 to 8 minutes of phone calls. I don’t make too many phone callssee. , you
- Watched a full length (360p) movie, about 2 hours 30 minutes in duration, at 50% – 75% brightness. More than half of the time at 75% brightness (the display is not that bright).
- Some document editing, reading of emails, browsing and refreshing of Twitter timelines
- At least 20 minutes playing a sideloaded version of Temple Run for Android.
- No single GPS feature used.
- About 30 minutes streaming local radio on 3G with TuneIn Radio
- Maybe 10 – 15 minutes of background music.
- 3G mobile internet on. Though Glo tended to switch to Edge a lot in some areas. I was quite mobile for the most part of the battery test.
The device did not leave my hands for more than 5 minutes at a stretch. There may have been about 2 cases were it was idle for 10 minutes at a stretch though. Other than that, me and the Blackberry Z3 were best buddies all day.
And how long did the battery last after all these? 6 hours to the critical 10%. For comparison, the Lumia 630 got similar results, even with 30 minutes of GPS usage, on a 1830 mAh battery. The Blackberry Z3 battery has 2500 mAh capacity.
What do you think? Would 6 hours battery life on intensive usage of the Blackberry Z3 suffice for you? You have remember that “intensive” here is subjective. Depending on your daily usage, you could probably get more or less out of the Blackberry Z3 than I was able to.
