Why would three respected journalists claim incredible iPhone battery life when it’s simply not the truth.

Some days back, the standard fleet of journalists that tend to be given Apple products early to provide in depth reviews, published their thoughts.

Those journalists included Walt Mossberg from WSJ, Joshua Topolsky from Engadget and Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing. All gave positive reviews of the device and all commented on the remarkable length of the iPhone’s battery life.

As someone who’s constantly been frustrated by the iPhone’s shoddy battery, I was ecstatic and immediately wrote a brief post highlighting each of their comments. With Topolsky claiming 38 hours of battery under heavy use, Jardin claiming 4 days on light use, you couldn’t help but believe this was Jobs’ secret little gift to us – his “one more thing”. Something he wanted bloggers and journo’s to be raving about days after the launch. A battery life of potentially 38 hours with the functionality the iPhone brings is mind blowing.

The fact of the matter is, that was those figures were all bullsh*t.

I have an iPhone 4 now and while there *may* be some improvements in battery life, they’re genuinely insignificant, insignificant enough for me to wonder if there are any. It’s now completely understandable why Jobs didn’t include it as a stand out feature of the new phone during his WWDC keynote.

Comments under the original post of ours say it all:

“I’m the same. My 16Gb iPhone is as bad as my old iPhone 3G.
I really don’t get it – as it’s nowhere near the figures quoted by apple or these journos.”

“My phone has all three of the issues I’ve seen discussed-yellow spot on the screen, poor battery life, and the reception problems when the phone is held. It must be a defective unit if reviews show it getting 38 hours with heavy use! I doubt I’d get 38 minutes with heavy use! (slight exaggeration, but maybe not far off!)”

“Count me among those with a very poor battery, or whatever the issue. Way worse than my 3GS. I got mine a day early and charged it overnight. After half a day at work, hardly using it, I was down in the 50% range.”

“I concur, I just got my iphone4 today and with moderate data usage to the battery, its down to 50% in 5-6 hours.”

…and there are many many more.

My personal experience is the iPhone barely lasts 24 hours under light use and that’s with keeping an eye on background apps, few phone calls, 8 photos taken and a 30 second video. Very little difference, if any, to the iPhone 3GS.

Where I’m puzzled is what phone were the three respected journalists using when they reviewed this aspect of the iPhone? What are your experiences with the iPhone 4 battery life, do share below.

Update:

Just to be abundantly clear, I’m not intending to insinuate that either of the three journalists are liars and if it came across that way (which it clearly has to at least one) – I apologise. I am however trying to establish exactly why three journalists I genuinely respect had very different experiences to most when it came to the iPhone’s battery life.