Cell Phone Battery Life Issues

[vortalexfan]

Greetings everyone, I work a 3rd shift custodial job cleaning bathrooms at a local Amish Themed Restaurant and Gift Shop that also has an Inn attached to it, and when I'm working I like to listen to either music or podcasts on my phone and I usually use blutooth earbuds when I'm doing this, but sometimes I forget to charge my earbuds at home before going into work and so I have to just listen to my stuff using my phone's built-in speaker turned up all the way so I can hear it above the sound of the toilets being flushed (they have vacuum break flush valves on some of the toilets that when they flush they are loud enough to drown out the audio even when using earbuds unless I use "noise cancelling" earbuds.)

Anyways, I've noticed that my cell phone which is an iPhone SE 3rd Generation model, has a strange issue with it where, when I listen to my Podcast app or Music app on my phone with earbuds, the phone runs as cool as a cucumber and only drains about 20% of the battery over the course of a 5 hour shift from a full charge, but when I use the phone's built-in speakers the phone runs hot, and is dead by the end of the shift from a full charge.

What's different between the two operating modes that would cause that much of a difference in battery drain/battery life in my cell phone?

Any help with this issue would be appreciated.

[Electronic M]

Audio amps need power to work as do D to A converters.

Remembering your headphones would be the cheap solution, next cheapest would be a portable power bank, followed by getting the longest battery life phone out there....Which is basically why I choose a Motorola G Power as my phone. The longest battery life out there and a low price point.

[zeno]

A good example is an AM-FM battery radio. If you listen to AM the
battery life if higher than if you listen to FM only.
The first symptom of weakening batteries is distorted FM, good AM.
This is due mostly to the audio out demanding more power to cover the FM audio band width. As the bats get weaker AM gets drifty etc. If
you listen at VERY low volume symptoms are reduced.
I dont know what they are called but there are power packs that can
get around this, rechargeable bigger batteries. You can wear them.
I never used one but a lot of metal detector hobbyists use them to
run there machines for days....

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by zeno

A good example is an AM-FM battery radio. If you listen to AM the
battery life if higher than if you listen to FM only.
The first symptom of weakening batteries is distorted FM, good AM.
This is due mostly to the audio out demanding more power to cover the FM audio band width. As the bats get weaker AM gets drifty etc. If
you listen at VERY low volume symptoms are reduced.
I dont know what they are called but there are power packs that can
get around this, rechargeable bigger batteries. You can wear them.
I never used one but a lot of metal detector hobbyists use them to
run there machines for days....

73 Zeno
LFOD !

I know what you're talking about, I have one of those that is about the size of a credit card and is specifically for plugging into a cell phone to charge it or keep it charged but unfortunately I lost track of it during the move into my new house from my apartment.

[dishdude]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Audio amps need power to work as do D to A converters.

Remembering your headphones would be the cheap solution, next cheapest would be a portable power bank, followed by getting the longest battery life phone out there....Which is basically why I choose a Motorola G Power as my phone. The longest battery life out there and a low price point.

Tough to beat Motorola phones for value. Great phones at an excellent price point.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by dishdude

Tough to beat Motorola phones for value. Great phones at an excellent price point.

Unfortunately my experience with Motorola wasn't all that great, because I've had a couple of the Motorola Razors back in the day and they were absolutely garbage and didn't even last 3 hours on a charge (and that was before smart phones came into being and the ability for phones to go on the internet) So even though I would normally agree with you that anything with the Motorola name on it would be a great choice if it would of been the original Motorola that was based out of Chicago, illinois, the Motorola company today isn't the same company it was 30+ years ago, that Motorola was bought out by some Chinese firm that makes complete garbage while using (and shaming) the once great Motorola name (basically like what happened with Zenith back in the 1970s, when they were bought out by Goldstar, now known as LG.)

[dishdude]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

Unfortunately my experience with Motorola wasn't all that great, because I've had a couple of the Motorola Razors back in the day and they were absolutely garbage and didn't even last 3 hours on a charge (and that was before smart phones came into being and the ability for phones to go on the internet) So even though I would normally agree with you that anything with the Motorola name on it would be a great choice if it would of been the original Motorola that was based out of Chicago, illinois, the Motorola company today isn't the same company it was 30+ years ago, that Motorola was bought out by some Chinese firm that makes complete garbage while using (and shaming) the once great Motorola name (basically like what happened with Zenith back in the 1970s, when they were bought out by Goldstar, now known as LG.)

Razors? The flip phone from almost 20 years ago?

The company that owns Motorola's cell phone division is Lenovo.

You don't know what you're talking about.

[Ed in Tx]

Does anyone make a smart phone with a user replaceable battery these days?

I thought Motorola did but I see do-it-yourself "kits" for sale with a battery and tools to pry the phone apart.

I may eventually need to buy a smart phone to replace my dumb 4G flip phone.

[Electronic M]

I've been using Motorola G series smartphones since 2017. They're nowhere close to garbage. Battery life has been better than the flip phones of various brands that preceded them. If I'm using the screen and audio less than 2 hours a day and not doing extreme roaming the battery will last a week.
Granted I only use mine as a mobile web browser (the browser probably gets the most use), phone, camera, media player, and navigation system.... I'm not doing gaming or anything especially processor heavy.
Also Motorola phones are essentially stock android with moto gestures added on (they're a way to open camera, toggle flashlight mode on and off, etc without unlocking which is very handy.
I think my older Moto G power is better designed/made than some of the tube TVs they used to make!

[Electronic M]

The average consumer replaces their phone before it's 3 years old. Some of the more diehard apple people swap iPhones every year when the new ones come out.

Android often only updates the OS once or twice max for any device before dropping support, and the updates often hamper performance and battery life to encourage getting a new phone.
There's been systems in place to copy everything on a phone to another during an upgrade... Android phones prompt users to do so on activation.

Even non-replacable batteries can usually be replaced by a phone repair shop.

The same planned obsolescence is baked into computers, cars and other stuff, it's just a bit more aggressive with phones.

[vortalexfan]

The other thing I forgot to mention, I was a loyal Android user for years (mainly the lower end Samsung Galaxy phones) but when I kept having issues with dropping my phone in the toilet at work when I was cleaning the bathrooms there I needed to find a phone that was waterproof or at least water resistant and the only phone that T-Mobile had that fit that description was the iPhone SE.

[Electronic M]

You know you can buy a smartphone unlocked from anywhere walk into a T-Mobile store and have them drop in a sim card and activate it right?

That's what I've done everytime I switched or broke a phone under warranty (the box stores even the ones with a maintenance team don't really fix phones)... Granted until recently it was Sprint before they got bought out.
The nice thing about unlocked is if your carrier starts trying to screw you over you can just cancel service, toss the sim card, walk into a different carrier's store, pop a different sim card in and be on a different carrier just like that.

It's also handy for vacationing in the middle of nowhere. My family has a place so far out in the boonies that sprint didn't have coverage so I'd get one month of month to month coverage on another carrier that worked there, swap that sim card in while there and bounce back once I returned to an area of coverage of my main network...It worked great.