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Immediately after I posted the iPhone 4S review last week, I sent the phone to CNET Labs for talk time battery tests.
Battery life is terribly important, as any smartphone owner knows, and we wanted to make sure Apple’s promises weren’t just that. And now, the results are in, courtesy of Senior Editor Eric Franklin.
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When used with Sprint’s 3G EV-DO Rev. A network, we beat Apple’s promised talk time of 8 hours by an additional hour and 18 minutes. That’s our strongest iPhone battery test to date, surpassing each of the previous three iPhones that run on 3G (the first iPhone only supported EDGE).
Since carrier networks can affect performance, we’ll repeat the process once we get AT&T’s and Verizon Wireless’ 4S in house. But here’s that we have so far. All times are in hours.
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| Model | iPhone 4S (Sprint) | 4 (Verizon) | 4 (AT&T) | 3GS | 3G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Talk time | 9.2 | 7.08 | 7.76 | 5.36 | 4.95 |
We’re also running battery tests for music and video playback and we’ll compare the download speeds on the 4S between all three carriers. We’re still collecting data, but I’ll report our findings here as they come in. And for everything you need to new about the newest iPhone, check our full review of the iPhone 4S.
