Eight hours of iPhone battery life? Ain't gonna happen too often

Pardon me if I come a bit late to this party, but I have been in the air all day.

Now on the ground, I've been reading that Apple now says the iPhone will get eight hours of battery life as a phone, and six hours as an Internet device. That's up from previous estimates of five hours battery life.

To these claims, I say, "Show me. Prove it."

I say this not so much as a judgement on Apple's claims.

But given that I have long experience tracking battery life claims out in the wild, among real people with various usage patterns, knowing the effects of even a little erratic service on said battery life, understanding that handset manufacturers have long underestimated the effects of high-powered programs on batteries, the fact that some users aren't very bright in terms of handset TLC.

OK, I'll give you this. You can get six hours of iPhone battery life with the device primarily used as an Internet connection. You may get eight hours of talk battery life. But test results or not, I've just seen too many of these battery life claims to automatically settle for what Apple is telling us. I know a best-case scenario when I see one.

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