Samsung product innovation VP Kevin Packingham in an interview from CES claimed his company had a goal of true all-day battery life on smartphones this year. Along with getting higher battery capacities, Samsung would optimize the wireless activity on cellular and Wi-Fi, as well as tune other components, he told CNET. He admitted that phones like the Droid Charge weren't ideal, in part because of the use of new technologies like LTE that still had young chipssets.
"When you wake up to when you go to bed, we don't want you feeling anxiety about your battery life," Packingham summarized.
Which devices and what components would contribute to the extension weren't mentioned, although Samsung is known to have access to multiple technologies that will help extend battery life. Qualcomm may be the biggest contributor on 4G networks: it has promised an all-in-one chipset that merges LTE with 3G, greatly reducing the amount of power it needs. Samsung's AMOLED likewise shrinks the amount of power needed to drive a large display, and newer processors will be more efficient as a matter of course.
Most of Samsung's hand is likely to be played at Mobile World Congress in late February, an even which it regularly uses to introduce its flagship smartphones.
The battery life claim is an indirect shot at Apple, its next-closest competitor. Usually, the iPhone has been held up as a standard for battery life relative to power-hungry Android devices, but Samsung could establish itself as a new benchmark. Unofficially, Apple isn't expected to refresh the iPhone until mid-year or later, and whether or not it tackles battery life is still far from known.
