Stretch Your Phone’s Battery Life by…

Choosing the Right Network? Not really. In part maybe, but not the most important part. Let’s consider some other factors, keep in mind we’re talking about battery-life here:

While it’s true CDMA uses slightly more power than a GSM network, it’s a well-known fact that if you don’t have coverage your cell phone battery will be drained even quicker searching for signal.

Also consider this, while the iPhone is a great phone, it doesn’t have the ability for consumers to swap batteries. This leaves you with only a couple options: Turn off your iPhone when you know you won’t have coverage, find an app that will help you manage your transmitting settings based on location, time, or battery-life status, or lastly buy a hideous external battery option. Otherwise you’re left to manage all these settings as put forth by Apple.

If you’re using an android phone, chances are you have the option of carrying an extra battery if needed, ~$25

• Nexus One Spare Battery via Google
• Motorola Droid Spare Battery via Overstock

In an ideal world you’d likely want an android phone on a CDMA network like Verizon, then you have better coverage equating to less signal searching, coupled with user-swappable batteries, along with the JuiceDefender app.  JuiceDefender & UltimateJuice gives you the options for all the battery draining settings and will AUTOMATICALLY change each setting according to your location, time-of-day, or battery-life status.  Can’t get much better than that.

Of course there’s always the quality, type and rating of the battery.  As put forth by the manufacturer specs:

iPhone (GSM):
Talk Time: Up to 5 hours on 3G
Standby time: Up to 300 hours

Droid (CDMA):
Talk Time: Up to 6.4 hours on 3G
Standby time: Up to 270 hours

Palm Pre Plus (CDMA):
Talk Time: Up to 5.5 hours on 3G
Standby time: Up to 350 hours