How Do You Test a Battery?

I’ll say one thing for the Fandroid army: when they don’t like something, they let you know.

This week, I tried out Flash on an Android cellphone. I noted that I didn’t actually run battery checks, but that Adobe says you may expect three or three.5 hours of battery living if all you do is watch Flash movies.

Android fans didn’t care much for that. “I’m really disappointed how sloppy this article is,” wrote one particular. “You say that battery living could be an problem, but you are too lazy to analyze it.”

An additional: “You totally made a side situation of the most crucial aspect to mobile users: battery lifestyle.”

And: “Thanks for not doing the battery analyze. That could have been the only interesting part of this piece.”

Then: “You didn’t conduct battery exams?!!! That’s only One From the BIGGEST ARGUMENTS AGAINST FLASH ON A MOBILE OS. Jeez, get a NYT intern to check the battery.”

And of course: “How could you then blithely just skip a battery consumption take a look at?”

Hmm. It nearly appears like you guys think I ought to have run some battery tests.

To you, my failure to examination Flash’s battery hit is “lazy.”

To me, it’s just a little more complicated. My problem was, “How do you fairly test the battery?”

1 way to do the take a look at: spend a entire day visiting Flash Web web-sites and playing Flash movies. On a second day, go to exclusively non-Flash websites. Evaluate the battery lifestyle.

But come on: how several men and women really use their phones that way? Who would use the cellphone for nothing but watching Flash videos, all day long? Isn’t it a lot more likely that the typical person will, in the course of a standard day, make some cell phone calls, do some e-mail, play a game or two, surf a bunch of non-Flash websites, and maybe visit a few Flash websites? In that real-world situation, how measurable would Flash’s hit on your battery living be?

Furthermore, practically nobody uses the battery continuously, draining it until it’s dead. Most people today use their phones sporadically for the duration of the day—a pattern which will offer totally diverse battery-life results. How do factor that in?

Some of you suggested making use of web sites like YouTube, where films are available in both Flash and HTML5 (the kind that the iPhone can view)!!! Take a look at the battery by playing Flash movies on an Android cellphone, and compare with watching the same video clips in HTML5 format on an iPhone.

Well, surely you see the dilemma with that protocol. You are not testing the impact of Flash. You’re testing two fully distinct phones. They have various processors, storage, batteries and other components. It’s not a meaningful analyze at all.

So here’s my challenge to you: Design a testing protocol for Flash’s impact on an Android phone’s battery living, and I’ll do it.