I need a mobile.

It needs to be able to send and receive phone calls, texts and emails.

It needs to be able to browse STW the internet.

It needs to have a battery that lasts at least two days even if you insist on using it (iPhones biggest weakness)

It will be on contract so price is largely irrelevant. Historically I have always had Nokias but they seemed to lag behind on the smart phones.

all smartphones have a rubbish battery life. you cant have a massive screen, always on internet, long battery life and fit it in your pocket.

Desire with a spare battery (or two 🙂 )

The iphone battery does last a while – it’s only because the thing is so damn addictive that it appears to only last a day. For example my wife has my 3 year old 3G and that worked fine for a long weekend (30% odd battery left at the end) with her only making phone calls and texting on it (doesn’t use the net much).

I find my iphone 4 will go a couple of days with a bit of surfing on the bog at work 😆 Lasts a *lot* longer if I don’t use the net and turn off wifi.

What is the Desire battery life like compared to the iPhone?

Are the features on smart phones all much of a muchness?

Can I have your i|Phone then please? Ta.

Sounds like what you need there is a Blackberry.

+1 for the Desire, don’t expect any smartphone battery to last long.

Would you expect a laptop to run for two days without plugging in?

It needs to be able to browse STW the internet.

Sounds like what you need there is a Blackberry

The one thing I’d say about the Blackberries I’ve had is that they’ve all be uniformly rubbish at using the ‘Net. Just awful.

As a phone and email device, however, absolutely excellent.

My SE Xperia X10 will last 2 days depends on how much you use it though. WiFi drains my battery to only 1 day. But there are bigger batteries available.

Unfortunatly you cant get smart phones that do everything and last 3+ days.

No idea about other phones, but the iPhone lets you switch off things like location services, bluetooth etc that use the battery hard.

If I didn’t arse around on the internet/Facebook all the time I reckon mine (a 4) would last a few days.

my iphone 3G lasts 3 days if I turn the screen brightness down abit, switch off 3g, wifi, gps etc… and only use it for calls and texts.

that was an experiment one weekend, the things are so useful it ends up being used a lot – I can go from morning to evening without needing to charge, so it works for me.

Edit – a couple of mates with desires report similar or worse battery life. I guess at least with those you can replace the battery.

My desire need charging daily if I use the internet a lot. If I switch 3G and stuff off it will last for ages but that seems to defeat the object of a smart phone really. There are ways of balancing this depending on your preferences but I think any well used, large screen, smart phone will struggle to last much more on 1 charge.
A big plus with non-iPhones though is the ability to swap to a spare battery.

WCA, Have you considered one of those apple things?

Why dont you just get an external battery pack/charging case for your iphone?

Sounds like what you need there is a Blackberry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

Assuming that internet usage is for fun rather than work, and cost is largely irrelevant, wouldn’t it be more useful to have a Blackberry or similar for phoney/ work type stuff, and keep the iphone for fun stuff?

Just because convergence is possible doesn’t mean it’s desirable.

Smartphone + 2 (or more) days battery, email, internet etc – My last phone was a Nokia e71. Easily lasted 2 days, and had all the smartphone functionality you caould ever want – WiFi, GPS, bluetooth, mapping, interweb, emails, etc, etc.

Screen is a bit small, but hey ho, it’s always going to be a trade off with battery life. The e72 which replaced it is AFAIK equally good, with some slick revisions.

Blackberry’s IMO are pretty unreliable in comparison (sweeping generalisation – no idea which models are good/bad/ugly). Many friends who have them have done nothing but moan about them. My old e71 was sold on to a mate of mine, and he’s still impressed with it a year on.

My Desire will last a couple of days if I make sure I turn off data/wi-fi/gps when I don’t need it.
There’s also programs that will switch to certain modes at certain times so you could tell it to switch to Airplane mode from midnight to 7am Mon-Fri so it’s not connected to the mobile network at these times.
Not sure if running these programs kills the battery quicker than not bothering with them though.

Mobilefun do an extended battery & back for the Desire. Makes it a bit thicker, but perhaps worth considering. I think it almost doubles the capacity.

There have been some interesting test reports about these aftermarket increased capacity batteries for the desire – although they have a higher capacity on paper, they have a much lower capacity under test than the standard HTC ones. I think the issue is more that the HTC ones are very good than these ones are crap.

I have HTC Desire HD, it’s brilliant and ticks all your boxes except battery life. The battery issue is no biggy, I charge via USB at work and have a charger at home and in the car. TBH I charge once every 2 days normally unless heavy use away from home but then its in the cradle in the car so its charging away. Does flash website which I phone cannot, has got good GPS, music, internet, email and it’s all well integrated. I’m bloody addicted to mine, it’s the first time in 10 years of mobile usage that I have deliberately sought insurance as I would be gutted if I lost/broke this one.

blackberry plus the opera browser. The built in browser is a bit pants, but opera mini is good, free and works well. The battery on my Curve (non 3g) lasts 3 days with wifi, bluetooth etc all turned on. It was also free on a £10/month contract, with free internets.

I also love my HTC Desire Z – its excellent and having a keyboard is very handy indeed for typing out messages/emails.

Battery life will depend on what you do with it, though Angry Birds does seem to chew up the battery something rotten 🙁

Cranberry you could have your own ‘phone brand! 🙂

What is it with Apple and Blackberry anyway? Bit ‘English country garden’, in’t it? Racist if you ask me. What’s wrong with Kumquat, or Pomegranate, or Lychee?

Actually I think Lychee is a good name for a mobile telephone. I shall market it…