Experiences in Day 4

Google Nexus S is fully charged on day 4, and it is ready to go for a *rough* battery life test under optimized settings and average usage. The optimized settings I am talking about including lowest brightness (thanks to the Super LCD, it is still very viewable at lowest brightness), no vibration, no 3G mode, no push email, no auto-sync. With these settings, the phone is used for a few callings, text messaging, manual email and calendar synchronization with WiFi, some gaming, a few photo shooting etc.

Well, you might think that this test isn’t too useful to tell the battery life of Nexus S since 3G mode is turned off. However, it really depends on the end user. I believe some of the end users will have wireless internet connection for the entire day – both in office and home, without the need of the mobile internet, therefore I believe it is still an interesting test, though I am sure it is not for everyone.

Day 4 with Nexus S started with GPS booting for the first time. Using the GPS Status app under clear sky, the cold boot take about 5 minutes to lock, which is pretty disappointing because it seems to inherit the same GPS quality from Samsung Galaxy S. GPS hot boot tested after a few hours wasn’t too bad though; it manage to lock within 15 seconds. As expected, GPS is a big battery life eater; within a few minutes, a few percent of battery life is gone. Thus, an in-car charger is still pretty useful accessory in my opinion.

After a few days with Nexus S, I slowly found that the speaker doesn’t seems to be placed at an ideal location – it tends to attenuate the sound output quite a lot when the phone is sitting flat on the table. At outdoor condition, the notification tone have high tendency to be missed. It will be ideal if the speaker is placed at the side of the phone (like in Nokia X6), though a longer and louder tone could compensate the issue.

Day 4 with Nexus S is then ended with the remaining 67% of battery life for Day 5. Based on simple calculation, if the same usage occurs in Day 5, Nexus S definitely can last for at least 2 full days! But let see if I am right.