X

Droid Bionic impresses with long battery life

We're done with our initial set of talk time tests with the Droid Bionic, and we have to say, it's impressive.

Nicole Lee Former Editor
Nicole Lee is a senior associate editor for CNET, covering cell phones, Bluetooth headsets, and all things mobile. She's also a fan of comic books, video games, and of course, shiny gadgets.
Nicole Lee
2 min read
Motorola Droid Bionic keeps going and going.
Motorola Droid Bionic keeps going and going. Josh Miller/CNET

Verizon hasn't had a great history of long-lasting phones with its 4G handsets. We've heard many complaints about the dismal battery life of the HTC Thunderbolt and the Samsung Droid Charge, and LG Revolution didn't fare much better.

With the recently launched Motorola Droid Bionic, however, we have to say we're quite impressed with its battery life after the initial set of talk time tests. The Droid Bionic delivered an average of 7 hours and 55 minutes talk time with 4G enabled. When we turned LTE off to go 3G only, we managed to squeeze out a very impressive 10 hours and 21 minutes talk time. We should note here that LTE is only used for data and not voice, so the latter is mostly to rid the possibility of background processes.

Anecdotally, the Droid Bionic performed well in day-to-day usage. From a fully charged phone at the start of the day, we surfed the Web, navigated with Maps, watched a few Flash video clips, checked e-mail, and used it as we would normally. By the end of the day, we had only used about 15 to 20 percent of the battery. We did this with the 4G LTE speeds enabled.

We've yet to put it through more specific 4G tests, and we'll update you once we're done with them. So far, we're impressed that a dual-core smartphone with 4G speeds can offer such good battery life. For more on the phone, you can read our full review of the Motorola Droid Bionic.

(This post has been edited for clarity.)