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Dear HTC: I’d Take Good Battery Life Over a Thin Phone

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According to HTC’s vice president of product strategy Bjorn Kilburn, the company has been doing diligent research over the last year or so in an effort to figure out whether customers prefer a thin phone or good battery life. Apparently the results from that research led the company to conclude that customers prefer thinness over good battery life.

I have a question of my own though:

Just who was it that HTC was talking to?

Clearly, it was not owners of the company’s HTC ThunderBolt, HTC’s first 4G LTE smartphone. And they apparently didn’t talk to Samsung Galaxy Nexus owners on Verizon. In fact, I find it hard to believe that they talked to anyone who owns a smartphone, 4G LTE enabled or not.

Dear HTC: I'd Rather Have Good Battery Life Than a Thin Phone

4G LTE smartphones tend to have worse battery life than their 3G counterparts and, this may come as a surprise to HTC, but we’re now living in a world that will soon be dominated by 4G LTE.

I know plenty of people that own 4G LTE smartphones and guess what?

Every single one of them said that they would sacrifice thinness if it meant having a full day of battery life along with access to 4G LTE data speeds.

I agree. I’ve said it before in my critiques of the Galaxy Nexus. If the phone was three, four, five millimeters bigger and that meant a bigger battery, I wouldn’t care at all.

Dear HTC: I'd Rather Have Good Battery Life Than a Thin PhoneI’d welcome it and I’m confident that a majority of smartphone owners out there would too.

HTC has apparently bought into this research because it’s releasing a 4G LTE phone, the HTC One X, that is thin but doesn’t feature a massive battery.

Had they gone a little further and taken a look at what customers are actually buying they might have found different results.

One look at Amazon’s most popular smartphones reveals that the Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX is one of the site’s most widely bought smartphones.

It features a 3,300 mAh battery and an 8.9mm frame. It’s counterpart, the Droid RAZR, features a smaller battery and a 7.1mm design.

I’d wager that its success has a lot to do with that massive battery that’s on board and I didn’t need to spend an entire year doing research.

Look at Apple’s iPad. The company had to beef up the device’s design by a milimeter in order to put in a larger battery and guess what? No one cared.

In fact, the device went on to sell three million units in three days.

I’ll take better battery life over a thin smartphone any day of the week.

How about you?

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. Jeff Leitman

    04/20/2012 at 7:19 am

    I am so upset that you guys finally woke up to this. You guys gush over these new phones and never hold the makers accountable to battery life. I hate my phone but have no reason to go change it yet. What is the point if it means charging throughput the day

  2. londono83

    04/20/2012 at 11:00 am

    Thin and with great battery life…..why not both??? 

  3. Enoel69

    04/22/2012 at 2:11 pm

    Will happily trade more juice for a little girth. The Nexus one is about 11.5mm thick but still feel thin in ur hand..why not make devices of such a thickness with ample battery storage ala the Razr MAXX with 3000+mAh battery. What ever study HTC did was flawed..it doesn’t mean we want phones that are 15mm in thickness but most of us will accept less than 12mm thick devices if it mean longer lasting batteries(20hrs or so).

  4. duh

    04/22/2012 at 9:33 pm

    I think i agree with everyone except in one area. There are new batteries with new technology being developed. I think mobile cell phone makers need to stop being greedy waiting for it to happen and fund making a new technological battery. If they would throw some money into the development of a new battery then we will have very thin and plentiful juice to last a week.

  5. TonyZ

    05/02/2012 at 11:42 pm

    Better battery life, this coming from a Tbolt owner.

  6. Jake

    05/30/2012 at 8:29 pm

    I wouldn’t mind my phone being twice as thick as long as the battery lasted longer.

    I don’t care about a faster processor or better graphics. My 2 year old HTC Desire is just fine. I just want a battery that will last.

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