[Galaxy S 4 General] BarryH_GEG:
A forecast is an internal number that can change at will. The slide I posted is HTC's guidance to their shareholders and the analysts that follow them. Missing guidance (positive or negative) is a sign management doesn't know what's going on with their business so it's taken pretty seriously. If a multi-billion dollar company doesn't know how many widgets it's going to sell 90-120 days out that's a pretty scary sign. How do you know how many to build if you can't predict how many you're going to sell? HTC's missed (negatively) the guidance they've provided for the previous five quarters. And things like component supply lines and whether VZW will carry the One are known to HTC months before we hear about it in the media so that is factored in to their guidance; or at least should be. The Facebook phone flopping and AT&T returning unsold inventory isn't going to help their Q2 very much either. The original shipment was counted in their revenue numbers and will have to be reversed when the inventory is returned. They were also planning to sell “X” per month in Q2 that’s now not going to happen and they probably have supplier commitments for components they’ll have to honor which will hose expenses. So Q2 now has an unplanned negative not factored in to their guidance.

I think you're being a little too paranoid about the SGS4's browsing battery life. At least as it applies to getting through the day on a single charge.

The one thing that I always found strange in GSMArena's SGS4 battery test was that the video rating was almost the same as the One's. Video is darker and usually favors AMOLED while browser performance is the opposite because it's primarily light colors. In GSMArena's test the One outperforming the SGS4 at browsing made sense; the SGS4 not outperforming the One in video didn't. After an update GSMArena re-ran the SGS4's battery tests. Video is now ahead of the One where it should be. Interestingly web browsing performance declined. Now the ratios (positive darks/negative whites) are about where they should be. I think this goes back to the SGS4's launch s/w being rushed.

But like all things battery life related it's a big YMMV. To your point, if someone uses their device for an unusually large amount of web browsing in bright lighting conditions they are going to get below what GSMArena's indicating and the One would perform notably better than the SGS4. The lighter the content and brighter the display the worse an AMOLED display will do against an LCD. But if they talk on the phone a lot and/or watch a lot of video that would favor the SGS4. Everyone does some amount of each (voice, stand by, browsing, video) so what their average time spent in each category is what would determine which phone would provides the best

overall

battery life on a single charge. In other words it isn't black and white. Both devices are also significantly better than whatever device someone used before (except maybe the N2 ;) ).

From GSMArena...

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a slight advantage in battery capacity - 2,600mAh over 2,300mAh - but its chipset is overclocked so we'll see how that balances out. Also, the screen types will make a difference,

LCD usually does well on the web browsing test, while AMOLED typically does better in the video test.

Talk Time

Update, May 10: We ran a new battery test on the Samsung Galaxy S4 and updated this page with the results. While before the update, the S4 and HTC One were matched in talk time, now the S4 jumps 4 hours ahead. It's among the longest lasting phones when it comes to talking. The HTC One is pretty good too - we doubt anyone will talk for over 13 hours on a single charge - but the S4 will give you more talk time if you forgot to charge the battery.

Web Browsing

The HTC One topped our web browsing chart by beating the Apple iPhone 5 by a hair. It's also the top droid in this test by about 50 minutes. The Galaxy S4 lagged behind in this test by about an hour, but after the update the gap got even bigger.

The One can last nearly an hour and forty minutes longer, which is a significant win.

Video Playback

At video playback, both phones do very well with times just over 10 hours. Pre-update, the Galaxy S4 had a small advantage (15 minutes or so), but

after the update it added 2 hours and 15 minutes to that lead

. The HTC One shows a good improvement over the Butterfly (up by an hour and a half), while

the Galaxy S4 climbed closer to the top (and beat its predecessor, which had a smaller, lower-res screen, by a nice margin).

Summary

In the individual tests, the Galaxy S4 beat the HTC One in two out of three by several hours, but crucially lost the web browsing test. We suspect users do more web browsing than watching videos, so that one loss keeps the S4 from total domination. Even so,

the Galaxy S4 has plenty of juice for browsing throughout the day and savings in the other categories will allow it to stay ahead of the HTC One in a mixed usage scenario (no one uses their phone just for browsing).

The relatively

low standby power usage of the S4 means that lighter users will go longer with the S4 (which loses less charge during the night)

. Keep in mind too that the battery is easily accessible and Samsung will be selling a dedicated charger for a spare battery.

Still, the HTC One might appeal to heavy browsers, especially if they lower the brightness at less than 50% (the One screen is brighter than that of the Galaxy S4).

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s4_vs_htc_one-review-913p3.php

You guys might find this interesting. It's the battery usage parameters of AMOLED vs. LCD based on the content displayed.