HP Veer 4G Review - Getting Us Excited for Pre 3

We ran the Veer though our battery life testing suite, which consists of endlessly loading a few dozen pages over both WiFi and 3G with the screen set to half brightness (200 nits) until the battery runs out and the device powers down. On the Veer, there’s a bit of a possibility for some discrepancy due to the auto brightness that is impossible to disable. However its small display (and thus less backlight drain) no doubt also are a big factor that help it have good battery life. 

I also ran the Veer through our hotspot test, which consists of four tabs of our battery life test being loaded endlessly in addition to a 128 kbps audio stream.

The Veer’s mobile hotspot application is actually very impressive, allowing configuration of both the DHCP sever and wireless AP channel. 

We’ve talked about discharge time a lot so far in our smartphone reviews, but what of actual charge time? About half of my battery life testing time is spent carefully monitoring devices and their charge status (so they can be unplugged, test, and then shuffled onto the next test). The Veer includes built-in Touchstone charge compatibility, and unlike other devices doesn’t require a special back to leverage it. I used the same old touchstone from the original Pre with the Veer, no problem. 

One of the things I always wondered about with the original Pre was whether charge time was slower on the Touchstone than simply plugged in. The old Pre got alarmingly hot on the touchstone sometimes, and I never was totally convinced it was charging as fast as it could have just plugged in. The Veer doesn’t heat up anywhere near as much as I remember the Pre heating up. 

I timed charge time from completely empty after our tests to 100% full, and found that the time is virtually the same between the two. Even though the Touchstone looks a bit faster, I think we’re just seeing how not every charge cycle is completely the same.