Battery Life Still Bane Of Apple iPhone User Experience

I love/hate my iPhone. Enjoy the call quality, Safari browsing, iPod listening, iTunes Store applicationing, and e-mail accessing (especially the Microsoft Outlook sync). But all of that is marred by the constant suspicion -- verified by my obsessive checks of the battery indicator -- that the thing will be fully drained of juice well before my day runs out of work.Which leads me to my question for Apple CEO Steve Jobs: Hey, Steve, is the iPhone supposed to be a real business tool, or a fun gadget? Because right now, when I absolutely, positively need a device I can count on to be there for me when I need to return an important e-mail, or to last through an hour-long, end-of-day conference call, I turn to my BlackBerry 8300.

This is an apt time of year to re-raise my question, and not only because the iPhone is high on many people's Christmas lists. With the annual Apple launch fest known as the Macworld Conference & Expo looming -- it begins Jan. 5 in San Francisco -- speculation has begun as to what major product the Mac maker will launch to the immediate and universal public acclaim it sees as its due.

OK, my sarcasm is getting the better of me here. But I come not to bash Apple (well, a little) but to vent my frustration as to why the company seems to resist efforts to take a great product and make it insanely greater. Short battery life is the iPhone's elephant in the room. It's been acknowledged since the device was launched nearly two years ago. (See my "Top 7 iPhone Questions Steve Jobs Doesn't Want You To Ask".)

More vexingly, when Apple rolled out its second-generation handset, in the form of the iPhone 3G this past July, battery life got worse. The situation is triply annoying when you note that Apple has fixed many of the other initial product nuisances, by, for example, adding missing functionality to the iPhone's software. (That's why I'm not complaining about the lack of e-mail cut-and-paste, because I assume it's coming soon.)

Of course, Apple doesn't need me to tell them this stuff. (Hey, I'm only a customer.) And I know that I'm as likely to have Jobs listen to my product wish-lists as I am to see Starbucks return to brewing bold coffee in the afternoon.

But that doesn't make me wrong, and I'd venture to say that it's not something unnoticed by the Google Android handset makers, either.

What phone do you rely on? Please leave a comment below, or shoot me an e-mail directly at [email protected].

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Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.