Two OMAP 3430 Phones: Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid
by Brian Klug on June 10, 2010 9:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- N900
- Maemo
- Motorola Droid
- Droid
- MeeGo
- Android
- Mobile
Battery Life
The OMAP 3430 delivered an interesting mix of battery life conclusions. It's interesting to see how much of the battery savings is implementation, radio chipset, and OS. Thankfully, we have the opportunity to do so here with the N900 and Motorola Droid.
Of course, the Motorola Droid is on Verizon, meaning our call test uses a CDMA 1xRTT '2.5G' network for voice, and '3G'r EV-DO for data. Our N900 came with an AT&T SIM, and unfortunately I don't have any T-Mobile SIMs laying around, so the call test used '2G' GSM voice, and '2.75G' EDGE-GPRS for data. That makes direct comparisons a bit tricky - though in practice it's easy to get a feel for what 3G calling and data on the N900 will be - it will be less than what we measured here for the 2G case.
I was shocked when I saw the call time numbers for the Motorola Droid, and ran the test 2 more times - all with the same outcome. If call time is what's important to you, the choice is a no-brainer. On the other hand, the N900 easily bests the Motorola Droid for WiFi browsing time, though 3G web browsing isn't a good comparison because of the EV-DO versus EDGE difference.
It's clear that battery life is very much an OS stack and radio stack dependent problem, even though we're running the same SoC. Remember that the N900 is running the 3430 at 600 MHz, and the Motorola Droid is running at 550 MHz.
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Zebo - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
with 750mhz processor convex keys and ditching the lame D pad making this the best smart phone for my use talking 5-6 hours a day plus on best network instead of T or TM.krazyfrog - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Dude, you chat like an eight year-old lol.CityBlue - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
The latest Maemo5 PR1.2 does bring a welcome improvement to battery life, in some cases as much as 50% improvement to standby time.The recently released Opera Mobile on the N900 is lightning fast - it would be interesting to see how that performs in your comparison tests, or the latest Fennec (Firefox Mobile 1.1). The stock MicroB browser is beginning to look a little long in the tooth what with all the Javascript run-time improvements in competing browsers, but it does still offer the most complete web experience on pretty much any mobile device.
Overall though, a very good and welcome review of Maemo5 which is much misunderstood by a world obsessed with Android and iPhone.
achipa - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Two small corrections:Nokia's next MeeGo device is still going to be ARM (MeeGo is a two-platform OS, ARM and Atom), if there is a Moorestown device far along in the pipelines, it's not Nokia's.
PR1.2 is very likely not the last update. Nokia has pledged to deliver QtMobility (the mobile device Qt APIs) in a future update, and there is an active Qt4.7 branch for Maemo5 which also suggests work is being done there.
The Solutor - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Not all the Droid/Milestone's keyboard are flat.http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/5872/dsc00180.png
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6551/dsc00176.p...
This is my milestone (bought in december).
So there's no need to wait droid 2 to get the raised keys.
Brian Klug - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Interesting... looks like they definitely identified that issue somewhere between finishing the CDMA 'Droid' design and the GSM Milestone. Cool stuff!-Brian
strikeback03 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
I read that elsewhere as well. Would be nice if the verizon stores got the newer keyboard models out on display to tryBoyBawang - Sunday, June 13, 2010 - link
Sorry to break your heart dude but the ones with raised keyboard were the early builds. Motorola changed it to flat after reported sliding problems with the raised designstrikeback03 - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Actually one of my friends got a Moto Droid Thursday and I had a chance to play with it Friday, it did feel like they had improved the key feel slightly. IIRC the Droids on display had concave keys, this one was slightly convex.solipsism - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
I understand that's because they are in the same package is the reason why you need the BT to be on to get FM, but that can't be too common. After all, most smartphones seem to have WiFi and BT(+EDR) and FM all the same transceiver.For comparison, the iPhone 3GS uses a <a href="http://www.broadcom.com/products/Wireless-LAN/802.... BCM4325</ a>