You’re not paying attention. He has a magical iPhone with a battery powered by unicorn tears. And he turns off every actual useful feature that a smartphone is intended to provide. But those features can be disabled very fast. Much faster than pleebs using an Android device. Have you seen the benchmarks for turning off notifications? Milliseconds! Literally unusable.
It’s a good thing I’m only on my second mimosa of the Glorious Day of Minnesota Sunday Inebriation or I’d be really mad about the state of my keyboard right now. Well done.
But why are the unicorns crying?
What are you doing to the unicorns?
This isn’t how computers work; the latest cpus are both faster and more power efficient due to smaller process and better idle states. Also, improved efficiency in instructions per clock means they do more work with less energy.
Being notified in real time by a constant barrage of spammers and promotions (and other low value notifications) may be a feature to you, but it is not to me.
Newer CPUs might be more power efficient, but what do you generally find on phones with the latest CPUs? Quad HD screens (or similar) that suck out all the power saved and more. It’s one of the reasons I don’t mind one bit that the OnePlus 3T “only” has a 1080p screen.
As for switching off notifications, I only keep emails, texts, WhatsApp and a couple of select apps. All the rest is blocked off. It’s mostly a background noise issue for me. If my phone beeps, it needs to be for something I’m likely to care about.
But switching off automated email pulls and all notifications is just silly. That negates a big part of the point of having that computer in your pocket.
Or maybe it makes sense if you don’t have a wife and children, parents living abroad, … When I’m contacted by someone, I want my phone to tell me.
That does not happen. Google is a lot smarter about that. I only get notified about emails that make the cut to my primary Inbox. Everything sent to updates, promotions and social doesn’t generate notifications at all.
In other words, when I get a pop up email notification on android, 95%+ of the time, it’s something I want to read soonish.
Anything really urgent will come in as SMS or the equivalent. (Or an actual phone call!) If people send me a 911 email they are in for a rude awakening.
I control my schedule, rather than allowing others to interrupt me at will. And whenever I feel like I have a few minutes to check in, I can.
It’s good advice on every platform.
As for battery life, it’s complicated. Screen is definitely a factor but so is a LOT of stuff. “Old CPU = better battery life” isn’t true.
If you want absolute worst case battery life, that would be encoding video while playing a graphically intensive game. Everything else is many layers of “it depends”, but it is my opinion that the best available realistic battery test is light web browsing on real websites.
Hey has anyone seen this article I keep hearing about, something about emails and batching and behavioral science? I’ve been looking for a link, but just can’t seem to find it.
It’s life changing. You really should read it.
Thanks Pod!
While you’re at it, make sure you read every email.
Whatever happens you must stop everything you’re doing and check immediately when your phone pings. Every. Single. Time. Otherwise you might miss an important message!
https://blog.codinghorror.com/email-the-variable-reinforcement-machine/
I think you mis-linked. Maybe you meant this one?
Turning off notifications isn’t what makes you only need to charge your phone once every 3 days.
If that’s the case, it means you basically aren’t USING it.
You know one of the worst things about the Apple ecosystem? The damned mail program. That’s why he’s seeing all those notices, probably. I love Apple, but Apple Mail sucks big hairy donkey doodles.
If you’re not using Spark (or Outlook, or Airmail) you’re doing it wrong on iOS.
Please do not change the goalposts. I know my desire is unrealistic due to the trend for more recent chips to be more powerful while also drawing less power in use. However you said that no one wants an older CPU even if it gives them better battery life. I do and I think Android is a sign that others do also.
For many people the power of an ultrabook in our pocket is not important because the ultrabook is actually way more computer than we need with us constantly.
Never heard of either.
Spark and Outlook are both free, and I’ve used both extensively. I prefer Spark, for its better integration with its macOS version (also free). Airmail is more for power users with all kinds of integration, and it’s about $4.99, I think. I’ve never used it so I can’t speak to its strengths.
Spark is what a modern email client on iOS should be. I was shocked that in all the iOS 11 announcements, they didn’t make any significant UI changes to the default Mail.app, keeping Spark and its fellow travellers still viable. I guess Apple was feeling merciful or something.