Originally Posted by The Lord Lucan:
“First generation 3G chips were dire on batteries... The scientists are far better prepared for mobile technology now, so i'd expect the LTE battery drain to be much better in forthcoming chips much faster roll out than the energy efficient chips were at the start of the 3G roll out. The phones themselves will come out quick enough, but no point in releasing a phone when there is no market once again proving the roll out world wide is very sparse... they will accommodate the UK's frequency choice quickly too.
The UK isn't behind by much and as the networks have already been integrating this into current network designs as soon as we get 800mhz granted there roll out will be one of the fastest we've ever seen..... far faster than it took the UK networks to roll out UTMS! This time in two years we will have caught up with this USA.”
They haven't even sorted out battery for our normal 3G phone... I don't know of any phones or devices that can last more than a day when it is awake for more then 6 hours (ok it is due to the screen but hey, it is still part of the device)... They need a phone with at least 10000mAh. What they have in the HTC Thunderbolt or even the new LTE Galaxy Nexus is just not good enough. I think it last like 8-10 hours idle...
At the moment there is no chipsets out there for dual modes... I think the new Qualcomm S4 chipset allows for this (not out yet) but it still doesn't solves to power consumption. There are research out there to improve battery by 10x, using new battery methods or improving the way your mobile talks to the network, but within the next 2-3 years nothing is going to change.
At the moment, I only see 4G (it isn't even 4G) to provide rual areas with fast broadband of upto 100Mbps which is what this country needs... this is where the gains will be seen and we are in desprate need for this, but for mobile devices LTE won't make too much of a difference. Until they sort out the power demands LTE won't really work on mobiles. At best you will just turn it on when you need to.
I do hope roll out of so call 4G means better investment in battery technology, or even self wireless charging... but LTE on Verizon has been out since 2010 and nothing has improved in battery. I think this is the biggest barrier in widespread 4G adoption.
In some ways you have to respect Apple for not making the iPhone 4S LTE compatible. If it did it will die within 2 hours instead of 8 hours on HSPA+ 14.4Mbps... LOL