Poll results – what’s better than battery life?

GLOBAL – Last week, Rhiain asked what you felt was more important than battery life. Would you rather have a phone that does everything, or is an extra day’s use from your device the top priority? Now the results are in and it’s time to share them with you, so read on for more details.

The top answer – as you might have expected – was that nothing is more important than battery life. Just under 38 per cent of you said that you’d be content with the most basic phone, just so long as it kept on working. As some people pointed out in the comments, it doesn’t really matter what your phone can potentially do if it’s run out of juice, but it was interesting to see that so many of you would give up everything for an extra few hours.

The majority of people are prepared to make some compromises for better specifications and features, though. Data-connectivity was the key ‘must-have’, with 25 per cent of the vote. Access to email and the Web at all times, whether through your browser or through apps, is fast-becoming the norm. The days of talking about ‘going online’ will soon be over, because we’ll never be offline.

Around 17 per cent of you would sacrifice battery life for multimedia features. There aren’t many phones nowadays that don’t do dual-service as a music player, and increasingly, people are using their phones to watch video on the move. Being able to create media, in the form of photos and videos, is another popular requirement.

Thirteen per cent of you would be content with a lower battery rating so long as your device had a large screen – mobile web, gaming and email all require a bigger screen. The least popular answer was size. Not that many people are concerned about carrying around larger devices – an interesting result since it’s not long since the most fashionable phones were the smallest ones available. Now it seems that the tide has turned and big is beautiful.