I did review the Verizon HTC Thunderbolt last week. During this week I have been using this first LTE device from Verizon and did notice a quick power consumption on this device. There are many other reports from users and reviewers having the same problem.

LTE is not widely available yet, but the huge power consumption seems to be affecting users in the non-LTE covered area as well as in the LTE covered area. The HTC ThunderBolt has no settings for turning off the LTE signal on the device to see if this is the cause of the fast battery drainage.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an HTC ThundeBolt Extended Battery with the cover. The Extended Battery has a capacity of 2750 mAh which is almost double the size of the 1400 mAh battery that comes standard with the HTC ThunderBolt. The replacement cover will add double the thickness in on the middle part of the device but the cover is an official HTC  4G LTE branded cover.

The Verizon HTC ThunderBolt Extended Battery with Battery Cover cost $49.99.

Don’t forget to check out my earlier review of the Verizon HTC Thunderbolt.

The Verizon HTC ThunderBolt is available now for $249.99 with a 2 year contact with a required data plan package.

Comparising Video

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAtScTSXKPo

I really like iOS4 – It gives me a lot features I use every single day (Every hour to be quite honest).
But there’s one major downside to iOS 4: It’s batterylife.

The iPhone’s battery life never really was very good – Therefore I bought a Morphie Juice Pack Air last year, but with iOS4 on the iPhone 3GS the battery drain is significantly more than iPhone OS 3.1.2. Eventhough Johan already posted a nice post with a few tips how to keep your battery drain at a low level, I thought it would be good to share this tip as well.

I think the battery drain mainly is because of the new multitasking feature in iOS 4. Multitasking lets you quickly switch from one app to another, and return to the first app and go on where you left with the first application. But with heavy applications like Navigon or TomTom (which use a lot of battery anyway) it’s sometimes not good to have them running in the background all the time. With these applications, when I reach my destination I’d like to completely close the application and start it whenever I need it again.

Walk-through

Now there’s a solution to that – and the solution is directly in iOS4, but a lot of people don’t know about it.
When double-clicking the home-tab you’ll get a list of all ‘open’ applications. This list can become very long.

Now tab-and-hold with your finger on an application in the multitasking list.

You’ll get to see a close button on every single application. Pushing the close-button closes the application and removes it from the multitasking list. This can be done with every application in the list. In the example above I closed NAVIGON, becasue It took to many resources and I didn’t need to get directions anymore. So after pushing the close-button on the Navigon tab – all the other applications move to the left and the blank spot is filled with an other open application (In this case WunderRadio)

Update from comment Johan: When scrolling your finger to the left, You’ll get to see the next 4 ‘open’ applications. In this way you can more specifically select which application you want to close.

By repeating this on all the other open applications it is possible to completely get the list Empty so that no application is open anymore (And therefore doesn’t take any system resources)

Return to the default home-screen just like you’re used to do by pushing the Home-button once.

Concluding Thoughts

In my opinion this is the best way to get more out of the battery-life during the day on the iPhone (3GS). By closing an application in stead of just hitting the Home-button I honestly can say that the battery drain of my iPhone 3GS is significantly less than just leave the app ‘open’ in the background.
If you think your iPhone’s battery drains more after the iOS 4 update, I’d recommend this procedure and hope your battery drain problem is solved as well.

It has happened to many iPhone users. Suddenly your iPhone is draining very quickly, even without using the iPhone at all.

This has happened to my iPhone now for two times. On many blogs and forums people are complaining about it and many tips are given but not a real good answer to the sudden quick drain of your battery.  Below are these tips to save on battery power but won’t fix the sudden extreme drainage of your battery.

We have changed the title to include Android and Windows Phone devices now as well. We experienced the same battery drain on other mobile platforms. It seems that the exchange sync funtion (possibly calendar) hangs on the devices. In which it means it constantly is asking for data transfer in which your battery drains very fast. The device will feel hot as well. The solution is simple but takes some time.

• You need to delete to exchange account on your device
• After is is finished deleting your synced information you turn off your device and restart it.
• Set up your exchange account as before, the device will sync all your information back to your device.

The tips below will preserve more battery power:

• Turn off 3G (saves battery and is almost a must in area’s where you have Edge coverage)
• Turn off Notifications
• Turn off Push for e-mail
• Turn off  WiFi
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Set your Fetch schedule on all your other emails to manually
• Turn your Brightness down

Again these tips above will not fix your sudden battery drain on your iPhone. And really turning off all these options, kinda makes your iPhone a phone like any other. You really don’t have to do this.

I have discovered that the sudden extreme battery drain has to do with your Exchange Account that has been set up on your iPhone.  For some odd reason it keeps check and checking for new info and it won’t stop. Before trying to do a restore on your iPhone I would first recommend deleting your Exchange Push Account on your iPhone and set it up again as a new account. This will save some time in the fix for the extreme fast battery drainage.

Follow the steps below to fix the extreme battery drainage on your iPhone.

1. Go to your “Settings” on your iPhone.
2. Select “Mail,Contact,Calendars“.
3. Select your account that has been set up with an exchange server.
4. Select “Account Info“.
5. Copy down the information which you will need to set up this account again later on.
6. Select the “Arrow back ” on the top of your screen with the name of your account.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select “Delete Account“
8. Let the iPhone do its work. It will remove all e-mails, contacts and calendar items from your iPhone associated with your account.
9. When done Turn off your iPhone and Turn it back on.
10. Once your iPhone is turned back on you can go back to Step 1,2
11. Back in the “Mail,Contacts,Calendar” Settings you have to select  “Add Account“
12. Select the “Microsoft Exchange” and enter the credentials you copied down before.
13. The server information is not visible in this field yet, it will appear after you set up your E-mail, Domain, Username and Password are entered and “Next” has been selected.
14. Now your account has been set up again. It will take some time for the iPhone to synchronize everything back. Give it some 5-10 minutes.

Now your Exchange Push account has been set up again and your extreme battery drainage has been stopped. If you think that after these steps you still have this issue, I would recommend using the “Restore” function in iTunes while your iPhone is connected.

Boston-Power is a company we have been following for a while due to their great technology in improving Batteries. Today I got an press release from them stating that HP has a new Long Life battery that now standard is included in the HP Pavilion dv8 series in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The HP Long Life Battery in the US is available as a configurable option in the v4, dv6 and the HDX18.

THis HP Long Life Battery is based on Boston-Power’s Sonata next-generation lithium-ion battery cells, HP’s Long Life Battery (formerly named the Enviro Series) delivers like-new performance for 1,000 charge/recharge cycles. That’s three to five times longer than conventional batteries.

It is great to see that HP is taking the step to include Longer Lasting and Longer Life batteries in their line. Who will follow the green trail?

Read the full press release below

Boston-Power’s Sonata Batteries Power New HP Pavilion dv8

Newly Announced HP Model is a Full HD Entertainment Notebook PC with a Visually Captivating Exterior and a Battery That Lives Up to

Three Times Longer Than Conventional Batteries

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. – October 14, 2009 – Boston-Power, Inc., the rapidly growing provider of next-generation lithium-ion batteries, today announced that its award-winning Sonata battery will ship with the new HP Pavilion dv8 Entertainment Notebook PC. The new model is among an impressive array of products being unveiled by HP this week in Geneva, Switzerland.

The HP Pavilion dv8 boasts a stunning 18.4-inch, full high-definition, ultra-widescreen, ultra BrightView display with built-in TV tuner, Blu-ray disk reader and subwoofer that delivers home theatre-quality audio and video for an outstanding entertainment experience. Strikingly crafted, the scratch-proof liquid metallic surface in the chic HP Espresso Imprint pattern will add a touch of style to any room of the house.

Notably, the HP Pavilion dv8 includes the revolutionary HP Long Life Battery, powered by Sonata cells from Boston-Power, which supports more than 1,000 recharges, an improvement of three to five times over conventional lithium-ion batteries. Not only does the HP Long Life Battery offer better performance, but it is better for the environment as the need to replace batteries less frequently means that fewer batteries are disposed of and less landfill is used. It is the only battery with the prestigious Nordic Ecolabel certification.

“Boston-Power and HP have long shared the mission to bring notebook PC customers a high-performance, environmentally sustainable battery – one that continues to keep pace with the demands placed on it by even the most demanding leisure and business users,” said Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud, Founder and CEO, Boston-Power. “The HP Pavilion dv8 is another compelling and demonstrable example of this commitment and we are excited to be the battery of choice for this model.”

The HP Pavilion dv8’s Intel® Core™ i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M graphics card with 1GB DDR3 SDRAM, as well as the DDR3 memory, guarantee more than enough power for even the most demanding entertainment needs. The HP Pavilion dv8 will be available throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia starting October 22, 2009, at a recommended retail price of €1499 (approximately $2,217 U.S. dollars).

About Boston-Power

Boston-Power, Inc.is an award-winning provider of next-generation lithium-ion battery technology. Designed to fuel a wide range of applications, its flagship offering, Sonata, serves as the foundation for HP’s new brand of longer lasting notebook batteries that also help the environment – the HP Long Life Battery. The company’s Swing product delivers unmatched capabilities for Plug-In Hybrid and Battery Electric Vehicles (PHEV/BEV). Founded in 2005 and with more than 60 patents filed, Boston-Power is led by Founder and CEO Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud, an internationally recognized innovator, entrepreneur and technology advisor with regard to portable power, energy storage and climate change. To date, the company has raised $125 million in venture funding from Foundation Asset Management, Oak Investment Partners, Venrock, GGV Capital and Gabriel Venture Partners. Boston-Power is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, and has Six Sigma-level mass manufacturing operations in Asia.

Since I own my iPhone 3GS, I’ve only come up with one downside: Its battery life. When the day is long I really need to be careful not to use the iPhone a lot, because the battery might not make it through the whole day. The Morphie Juice Pack Air is a solution to this problem.

Extra Battery & Protective Case

The Morphie Juice Pack Air is not only an extra battery for your iPhone. It is also a protective case.
When you think about protective cases; you think of extra size and weight. And Yes, the Morphie Juice Pack Air adds weight and size to your iPhone. To put it in numbers here are the specifications of the dimensions:

Look & Feel

The Morphie Juice Pack Air consist out of 2 parts. The bottom part, in which you slide the iPhone, and the top part which keeps the case and the iPhone together

On top there is a free space for the headphones and the power-button. The right part has an opening for the mute and volume buttons.

On the bottom of the Juice pack there is a power-switch for the Morphie’s battery. If this is switched to “green” the iPhone gets charged via the Morphie. If this is switched to “red” the iPhone uses it’s own battery.
On the bottom left there is a USB-connector. This connector sadly is not the standard iPhone connector, but a specific connector from Morphie. The Morphie USB cable is included, but nevertheless I hoped they used a more standard cable and connector.

On the back there is an opening for the camera. On the bottom from the backside  there is an indicator button and 4 LED’s to show how full the Juice Pack Air is charged.

Added Battery capacity

The Juice Pack has an on- and off button. When the Juice Pack is turned “on” and the iPhone is in the Juice Pack the battery of the iPhone is charged untill 100%. When the iPhone’s battery reached 100% the power of the Juice Pack is used untill that battery is drained. After the battery of the Juice Pack is drained, the iPhones battery is used.

The battery capacity of the Morphie Juice Pack Air is 1200mAh. My experiences are that when I use the iPhone A LOT I can’t make it through the day with the built-in battery.
Now when I use the Morphie Juice Pack Air I let the battery of the iPhone drain to around 30%  when. This usually is around 4-5 PM. Then I turn on the Juice Pack Air. Now the iPhone will charge back to 100%. When the iPhone is back at 100% (usually around 70-90 minutes later) I have used a lot of the capacity of the Juice Pack Air (normally 1 or 0 LED’s light up when checking after a charge from 30-100 %).

This comes down to when it’s around 10 PM the iPhone is still charged for around 80%.

The Morphie Juice Pack Air really brings me more than enought battery capacity to make it though the day. Even when I use a lot of power, like a 3 hour wifi-skype conference call, the iPhone isn’t completly empty at the end of the day.

Thoughts & Wrap-up

To find out if the extra weight and size is acceptable to you, I would suggest to go to an Apple store that sells the Morphie Juice Pack Air and try out. I did too and realized that for me the extra weight and size is not as much as I expected. With the Morphie Juice Pack Air I really don’t have to worry anymore if the battery of the iPhone makes it through the day. I know that I have more than enough Juice with me.

Today Apple announced the iPhone 3GS on the WWDC in San Francisco. In this article a shot wrap-up about what has been announced today.

Speed

The new iPhone 3GS is not really different from the “normal” 3G. The “S” stands for speed: The iPhone 3GS is over 2 times faster than the normal 3G in most applications.

Camera

The camera of the iPhone 3G is a 2 Megapixel camera. From day 1 people have been complaining about camera. So Apple built in a new camera in the iPhone 3GS. The new camera is a 3 Megapixel camera with autofocus AND with this camera it is also possible to record videos. The videos can be edited directly on the iPhone and when done they can be sent to several services like MobileMe, Youtube or Email.

Voice Control

Voice Control is a feature with great potential. Just tell your device what you want to do with it. With the Voice Control feature it is possible to tell your device to call Remo Knops just by saying “Call Remo Knops” or dial a numer by saying “Call 123456789″. You then get a voice returning your command with what the iPhone is doing like “Calling Remo Knops”. Unfortunately the demo on the Apple website did not convince me. The quality of the pronouncination is just not good enough I think.

With Voice Control it is also possible to control the builtin iPod. You can start all songs from a particular artist, start playlists or ask the iPhone 3GS which song is playing right now.

Compass

The iPhone 3G will have a digital compass. With the digital compass the maps application reorientates when you are tuning. I hope there will be an application like Google Sky Map available soon for iPhone users.

Battery

The iPhone 3G S has a battery improvement. Using internet (on Wifi) lasts 9 hours (this was 6 hours on the 3G), Video 10 hours (was 7 hours), Audio 30 hours (was 24 hours), 2G talk 12 hours (was 10 hours) and the 3G talk time stays at 5 hours.

Overall I think its a good improvement for people listening to songs and using the internet a lot.

iPhone OS 3.o

iPhone OS 3.0 will be a major software improvement for exiting iPhone users. The new OS has more than 100 additional features compared to the previous OS versions. The most important feature updates will be:

• Cut, Copy & Paste
• Landscape Keyboard
• Tethering
• MMS
• Spotlight Search
• Voice Memos
• Improved Calendar

OS3.0 will be availabe for the iPod Touch (upgrade will cost $9,95) for the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS (free)

TomTom for iPhone

Finally – after way too long waiting TomTom comes up with an iPhone application. The TomTom applicaion looks very much the same as the familiar TomTom Go, One and Navigator interface. Luckily TomTom is not exclusively for the iPhone 3GS, but can also be installed on the iPhone 3G. The TomTom application should be in the iTunes Store “soon”.

TomTom will sell an accessoire (the TomTom car kit) for secure docking of the iPhone and better GPS Performance. I hope this means that this accessoire does not NEED to be used becasue the GPS-signal would be to weak - We’ll see.

Conclusion

I think the new iPhone 3G S is a cool device, but far from mindblowing. There’s no really convincing WOW!! in the presentation we saw today. The only thing I couldn’t have thought was TomTom, but that’s because they waited way too long with a decent TomTom iPhone application. So to be honest: I’m a little disappointed, but let’s wait for a final conclusion before we have the iPhone in our hands .

Boston Power is at it again. The 4 year old company located in Westborough, Mass is scheduled to hold a press conference this Monday June 1st, 2009 in Auburn, MA where it proposes to build a factory to make lithium-ion batteries for laptops and electric cars.

We have been covering Boston Power since we met them at CntrStg during CES 2009 about their great Sonata battery that came to the market at with the Enviro batteries for the major consumer HP notebooks.

Going green is their their vision is durable and  longer lasting batteries that maintain their capacity. In line with their green vision they don’t want to waist any of the federal grant money on a new building, but will plan to convert and old Filene’s Basement warehouse into a 600 employee factory.

The move to add the automobile industry for their battery technology is major step for Boston Power. The battery developed for the automobile industry will be called Swing.

References:

1. Boston-Power
2. Xconomy Boston: Boston-Power Asks Feds for $100 Million to Build Better Batteries for Electric Vehicles; Filenes Basement Warehouse Could be Reborn as 600-Employee Factory
3. Cnet:  Boston Power plans battery plant for cars, laptops

Boston Power and HP are Celebrating Earth Day together. As a strong believer in making the earth a greener place I think it will be good again to let you know about the great new battery HP has available that can last three years. These batteries are the Boston-Power Enviro series notebook batteries. Besides lasting longer on a single charge and in a lifetime, it also takes less energy to recharge it and it will not loose it’s value in battery power over time with many recharges.

Boston-Power is a great company that is behind this battery and as a special, the price has been reduced from $149.99 to $119.99 to promote a greener work environment.

This deal will bring the price down of this great green replacement battery to the price of a standard replacement battery, however it is going to last you three times as long. Check out their compatibility chart and see if you can make a commitment to make your notebook greener.

2 weeks ago Jack Cook (ExperienceMobility.com), Steven Hughes(BostonPocketPC.com) and I went to visit Boston-Power. We had an amazing time there. They showed how the company was made and what their vision is for the future. We first met Christina Lampe-Onnerud and Boston-Power at CntrStg during the CES 2009 in Las Vegas. The news today is that they have their green, longer lasting batteries technology now available to consumers with HP notebooks.

See the full press release below;

“Boston-Power’s longer lasting, Ecolabel-certified battery technology, Sonata, is available to consumer notebook PC customers starting today via HP.

New HP batteries based on Sonata technology are available as accessories for 18 existing notebook models representing approximately 70 percent of HP’s consumer notebook PC portfolio.

In addition to first-of-its-kind environmental certifications, Sonata Li-ion battery cells deliver sustainable performance for three years – three times longer than most other notebook computer batteries. In fact, HP is providing a three-year warranty on the batteries – the first and only notebook computer provider in the industry to offer such a warranty.

Now available at HP Shopping the new HP battery based on Sonata is available as an accessory priced at $149.99. Later this month, the HP battery will be available as a point-of-sale option for consumers buying new HP notebooks at www.hpshopping.com. The battery’s “drop-in” form factor enables it to be used with existing computers – including models in the HP Pavilion, HP HDX, Compaq Presario and HP G series. A complete list of compatible individual models is available HERE. More information can also be found on Boston-Power’s site at http://www.boston-power.com/enviro .

“From the beginning, our goal has been to help notebook computer users benefit from optimal mobility with dependable, high-performance, environmentally sustainable batteries,” said Boston-Power Founder and CEO Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud. “HP’s endorsement of Sonata is a great step forward in popularizing this battery technology.”

“HP delivers customers innovative products that respect our planet,” said Jonathan Kaye, director of consumer notebooks marketing at HP. “The Enviro Series program gives PC users longer lasting batteries that improve their computing experience while reducing the number of batteries that need to be recycled. That’s a win for everyone.”

Boston-Power is the first and only provider whose rechargeable Li-ion battery cells have earned the prestigious Nordic Ecolabel certification. The company has additionally earned a similar world’s-first certification for its battery cells from the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency. Sonata’s patent-pending, whole-system design makes it capable of benefiting a wide range of end-applications – from consumer electronics to transportation. As a result, total cost of ownership benefits inherent in notebook computer batteries prove increasingly impressive in cases where even greater power is required.”