From the very beginning, one of the main issues that people had with smartphones, aside from the fact that they were taking cell phones in a crazy new direction, was that their battery life sucked. It was pretty much a given that when you switched from something like a flip phone or a messaging phone to a smartphone that you were going to have to get friendly with your charger. Smartphones were better at almost everything over flip or messaging phones, and did a lot more. But with every good comes some bad, and that bad happened to come in the form of sucky battery life.

It's not that the phones were unusable. I mean, you would at least get a good 5-6 hours with them generally. Back then, this was considered good. But as time passed and more and more features were being pumped into these phones, people started using them longer and many could even be considered addicted to them - I know I was. So when somebody is spending a good portion of their day on their smartphone, it comes as no surprise that the battery is going to drain awfully fast. The biggest drainage on a smartphone is the screen, and when you're constantly using that screen or waking the screen up to check the time then yeah, you're going to run into some problems. 

I had always known that smartphone batteries were not that good, especially after owning my HTC EVO 4G and my EVO 3D. Never phone ever lasted even half a day with normal use. When I eventually found myself using the iPhone 4S, I was more than happy to see about 8 hours of battery life at the start. But even though it was enough to get me through a normal work day, it was still kind of a hassle to have to still stick it on a charger after a work shift. Battery life was better, but it still wasn't in a great place.

It's with my most recent upgrade that I'm realizing that battery life is in a relatively good place right now.

I found myself in a situation the other night, the first of this kind with my HTC One, where I didn't have a charger. After a full day of normal use, I found myself at about 47% battery life before bed. It was extremely good for 14 hours of battery life, but I was still convinced that by the time I woke up my phone would somehow be dead. The next day, I woke up and checked my phone. 45%. Not only did my phone not die, but it also only went down 2% in battery life. Curious as to how long it would stay powered, I let the HTC One run until the battery died through a normal day of use. It died in the late afternoon.

I don't know about you guys, but that's pretty impressive to me. 8 hours a day is good, but being able to last through an entire night without needing a charge and still able to last through the next afternoon is even more awesome. I keep saying that smartphones need better battery life, but I think as long as we can keep them charged overnight without any hassle, they should at least be considered to be in a decent place right now. Then again, battery life is one of those things that could probably always be improved upon and have no ill effects. Either way, I know that I'm currently happy with where my smartphone battery life is. It has definitely come a long way since their earlier days, and I don't have much to complain about now.

Readers, what are your thoughts regarding battery life? Have you noticed improvements from one phone to the next? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images via CNN, Brewed Tech