Bad battery days
Does your phone have bad hair, oops, battery days? Mid afternoon and suddenly the battery low light has come on, despite no special activity? I know my G1 does, and the N95 I used before that.
Looking carefully at the network activity indicator has given me an idea why this might happen. Sometimes data connections are effectively instant, particularly checking for new e-mail. All the networking ducks are aligned between me and our mail server and, lo, the radio goes on, the data comes over the air, and the radio is off again.
Other times the connnection sits for long seconds before either failing or finally returning some data. Clearly the radio circuitry is working a lot longer, chewing down the power. The delay could be coming in at any point from weak signal, busy basestation or any point back right up to the mail server itself.
