[P3300, MDA Compact III General] JulianL:
I'm a new poster here so I'll just say a bit about where I'm coming from before posting some comments on the Polaris.

Where am I coming from? In a word (or abbreviation), PDAs. I've carried a PalmOS PDA around in my wallet for the last 9 years but now that my Sony Clie TH55 is coming out of its 3 year warranty I've decided that it's time to accept reality, that the stand-alone PDA has had its day, and that the best (possibly only) way to get PDA functionality in the future is via a smartphone. I'm actually a bit of a mobile-phobe, I'm about to downgrade my 100 minute per month contract to a PAYG because I typically use about 5 minutes a month calling out and if anyone calls me then if they call me on my mobile it might be days and days before I bother to look at it and see a message waiting. Obviously when my phone becomes my PDA I suspect my mobile usage will change but really I'm coming to smartphones mainly to get my next PDA to replace my TH-55.

So, onto the Polaris. Is anyone else concerned about the battery life on this device? To characterise the Polaris really crudely it seems to me to be essentially a Trinity shrunk down into an Artemis form factor and then a bit of technology refresh like more memory and WM6 added. This is said on the basis that the eye-catching feature of 3.5" VGA screen seems to be pretty widely accepted as a much-propogated (around the web) typo in the original spec sheet. If the VGA is actually correct then my concerns become even more extreme, possibly to the extent of ruling out the Polaris as the device for me.

Don't get me wrong, the "Trinity in Artemis clothes" concept is exactly what I want but my concern is that the Trinity has a 1500mAh battery and the Artemis a 1250mAh so unless something changes on this equation (either the battery gets a boost and/or the electronics inside get less power-hungry) then we'll be looking at a device with about 83% of the battery life of the current Trinity or Artemis (which I believe have similar battery performance at the moment, i.e. about 10 hours on the <play constant MP3 off SD card with screen forced on> battery test). The reduction is essentially due to asking a 3G device (which the Artemis isn't) to run off a 1250mAh battery. This also doesn't factor in the RAM expansion but if that's just using double-density chips then maybe that won't actually increase power draw at all.

I can see some things that I hope might counter the situation:

1) Put in a bigger battery. If the flush-screen is true then this should mean that the interior of the casing is a mm or so bigger (i.e. by the volume of the screen rebate currently on the outside). I know that doesn't sound a lot but if there are also any other space savings then even getting another couple of mm on the battery compartment could make quite a difference.

2) More power-efficient electronics. The CPU is different isn't it (Qualcom MSM7200 vs TI OMAP 850 in the Artemis) so I'm not sure how those compare power-wise and if any other worthwhile power savings have been realised or even if the 400MHz Qualcom will be worse than the 200MHz TI.

Anyway, I'd be interested if anyone else has concerns (i.e. is as obsessed about battery life as me!) and/or can shed any light on the battery size, battery life, or power characteristics of the internal components of the new Polaris.

- Julian

P.S. On my Clie TH55, with a fresh battery I could typically get about 16 hours of un-demanding PDA use, i.e. about 8 hours ebook reading, 4 hours taking notes in meetings and another 4 hours misc stuff like Excel, Word, the odd card game. etc. On this useage my TH-55 goes anywhere from 3-5 days between charges. This is what I'm hoping for on any new smartphone device on the basis that during that time I don't make any calls at all and probably even have the phone capabilities disabled for at least 12 hours of any day.