Battery technology - or lack thereof

You know, I wanted to love Android. That is, Google's mobile operating system. I owned an HTC Hero from day one and bought the HTV EVO on day one. The Hero was laggy, crash-prone but a decent phone. The EVO, while absolutely cutting edge, was great for a while, then went south once I upgraded to the 2.2 software over-the-air. The "Froyo" version of Google's operating system killed my enthusiasm for Android. How? 1) The 2.2 software made all my streaming audio apps sound like AM radio (Pandora, last.fm and Slacker to name a few). 2) The HTC Sense system crashed more often (no, I didn't have any task killers installed). 3) The built-in Exchange client provided by HTC was far from useful - no real-time email push (even set to "as items arrive") and when it did work, it was reallllly slow. 4) the final nail in the coffin: battery life. The EVO has had pretty crappy battery life from the day I bought it, but with 2.2 I could not make it through a workday with light usage before the thing went dead. I was a slave to chargers everywhere: by the bed at home, in the kitchen at home (near the living room), on my desk at work and in the car. I had to keep this thing plugged in *constantly* to ensure I would not be holding a fully discharged phone every day, even with light usage.

So, the deal: while there were some world-class features on the EVO (and in Android in general), what is the point of having a smartphone if you're not mobile? That is, having to be charging all the time (making you "wired" instead of "wireless"). There were more apps I installed that I never used (they seemed cool at the time), like Fring, Ustream, Google gesture search, Chrome to phone and others. If I thought of even using some of these features, the battery would laugh at me and die instantly. Google: you've created a state-of-the-art mobile OS here (not flawless, but excellent). If you could test things before releasing them in a wide distribution, I'd be happier. How Froyo 2.2 got out of testing while being able to destroy the sound quality of the largest streaming audio app in the Android Market (Pandora) is quite unfathomable. But even worse (and this will continue to stymie most smartphones): battery technology. It HAS to catch up to the phone hardware and software. If folks are going to carry pocket computers all day, they can't have them going dead after half a 24-hour day (or in a quarter of a day if used). There are different expectations from consumers here: folks don't consider Android smartphones as equitable as laptop computers. They expect all-day performance, not five hours or less. It may not be fair, but it is what it is.

So, after a two-month love affair, I am going back to BlackBerry, and specifically the 8530. Before I started this Android experiment with the Hero last October, the aging Curve 8330 was a tank of a machine. Yes, the screen was ancient insofar as resolution and the features looked paltry compared to all the new touchscreen smartphones everywhere, but it worked perfectly at its core competencies. They are: email, texting, MMS, twitter, facebook, ebay, sprint TV, bank of america and on and on. Yeah, the browser stunk a bit -- and it still does in the 8530 compared to the WebKit offerings in the iPhone 4 and EVO. But, I'm prepared to step down from a mobile supercomputer to a functional smartphone if it can get me through the day (or a few days) with moderate usage and gives me the core functions I need (not the dozens of flashy apps that are svelte, but that don't get used). If Verizon gets the iPhone 4, I could honestly step into Jobsland; locked-down, totalitarian mobile atmosphere and all. I can't stand AT&T so the iPhone 4, for now, is not an option for me. It could be early next year. Maybe.

Or, if RIM decides to roll out newer phones with the BlackBerry OS6 onboard (like the new Torch has), I could stay with BlackBerry. A few things have proven true: the BlackBerry App World has all the apps I used frequently and the battery life on the newer units (like the Curve 8530 I bought this weekend after getting fed up with the EVO) is stellar. Or maybe it's just marginally better since my battery life expectations have gone true south ever since I've been on the Android bandwagon.

So, welcome back, physical keyboard and smaller screen. It's been a while. And the EVO? Fetched $420 on eBay within 24 hours of posting the auction. It seems they are sold out online and in most Sprint stores. I am assuming home and car charger sales are also spiking as folks realize they must have the EVO plugged in everywhere they are.

Maybe later, Google. For now, some serious engineering is in order with your platform and/or the Android smartphone manufacturers in terms of shoehorning basic core competencies into your smartphones.