Nexus One, Day Two: iPhone Comparison – It’s All About Battery Management

We get complaints all the time from people regarding the iPhone's battery life.  In general, if you have
all of your services turned on, you will flatline your battery in less than 4
hours.   (Check out our iPhone battery management guide, How To Actually
Extend Your iPhone's Battery Life.  Long story short, you should turn off unnecessary services and plan ahead, based on
your activities during the day.)

Well,
being a new Nexus One user on AT&T network, we totally ignored all the lessons learned from iPhone
use and battery management.  Our phone
died in less than 4 hours while being on the road without a car or USB charger.

They say you only learn from your mistakes.  Lesson
learned.

Actually,
battery power management on the Nexus One (and Android phones in general) is better
implemented than on an iPhone. Right out of the box, the Nexus
One comes with the Power Management Widget installed.  If for some reason you DON'T have that widget on your screen, it's easy to get it back:

Just tap on phone's home screen and you will get Add to Home screen selection screen

From that screen select Widgets.

On the Widgets screen, locate "Power Control Widget."

Once the Power Control Widget is installed, you can better manage power usage right from the home screen. You can switch Wi-Fi, BlueTooth, GPS, and/or Sync with the Cloud on or off, as well as change brightness levels.  Compare this to power/battery management on the iPhone, which forces you to go to multiple settings to turn
on or off.  (Yes, the SBSettings app for jailbroken iPhones
helps with access to power management options, but it still doesn't compare to the widget
implementation on Android/Nexus One.)

Day Two impressions:  We have not missed a beat using our Nexus One as a 100% replacement for our
iPhone.  We like the tight integration with the cloud, and the Android Market is stocked
with all the essential free apps available on the iPhone (see 30 Top Free iPhone Apps for New iPhone & iPod Touch Owners).  We'll do a comparison later on as to which free essential apps from the App Store made it into the Android Market.

Over
the course of the second day, we started to play around with media
(specifically, music and movies) — and this is where the Nexus shows its weaknesses.  But more
on that on Day Three.

Nexus One, Day One: iPhone Comparison (Initial Impressions)

Nexus One, Day Two: iPhone Comparison – It's All About Battery Management

Nexus One, Day Three And Four: iPhone Comparison – Picture/Video Management, Android User Interface

Nexus Vs. iPhone Comparison (Day 5): Battle of the Typing – Typing Speed And Accuracy

Nexus One, Day 6: Nexus One and Speech Recognition from Google

Nexus One, Day 7 & 8: Nexus One And Google Voice Integration

Check out our Nexus Coverage here.

Hands-On Report: How to Set-up Nexus One on AT&T