Netgear Skype phone: Disappointing battery life
by Volker Weber
Netgear claims the Skype phone has 50 hours of standby and up to three hours of talk time. I have not talked more than one hour so far — and I was kicked out of one call because the battery died on me.
I am getting exactly ten hours of standby (and no talk time in those ten hours). I tried this both yesterday and today, with a complete recharge in between. The on screen indicator shows a full charge for seven hours or so, and then you start to see it go down to 80%. Two to three hours later it sends a warning beep that it needs to be recharged. The behaviour is pretty much like the RAZR: Show a full charge and then die off quickly.
Update: The US site has different specifications: Up to 2 hours talk time, and up to 20 hours standby. These numbers look much better. Yesterday I have not been able to run down the battery in 12 hours and I will see how it does today.
Comments
That's good to know. I was just looking at one of those and if the actual performance is that bad I'll just wait for something else. Have you used any Skype Wifi phones that do better on battery life?
So at the beginnnig you got 10 hrs standby and now you are getting 12 hrs or more. If you haven't done a firmeware update, that's a bit strange isn't it?
And even 12 hrs standby and no talktime doesn't sound that good, does it?
No, it isn't strange. One reason may be that you have to break in the battery, the other that the power management is not good enough yet. Remember, that after 12 hours the battery was not run down. So it may as well be that it would have lasted 20 hours.
The phone is the only device I have seen so far which does 12 hours on WLAN and battery. In this respect it sounds good. But of course we all have phones which lasts for days if not not weeks on GSM.
I have this phone, and I too have experienced the same problems. I only get 1 hours talk time. The whole point of skype is to talk to your friends for hours and hours for free or at next to nothing. I feel this phone cannot do this.
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