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You'd think the 910mAh battery on the HP Veer would last for many hours, given the small size and small screen, even though it's a tiny power pack. Oddly, the device only lasted for about four hours of occasional use that involved playing a video clip, listening to music and browsing the web.
That's close to the rated time of five hours of continual use. When we made a few phone calls and checked the web during a second test day, the Veer actually lasted about eight hours, but for a good percentage of that time the Veer was just sitting on a desk.
We used the Veer in a car for a long drive, playing Daft Punk records one after the other, and the phone only lasted three hours before we needed to hook up a charger.
The battery life is not that surprising given the size of the battery. Serious HP Veer owners might consider getting an extra back-up battery, and the case is easy to remove. The smaller the battery, the easier it is to carry a second or even third one around all day.
Yet, even the iPhone 4, which isn't known for superbly long-lasting battery life, easily outlasted the Veer in roughly the same activities during the day. The Veer is not really an "all day" phone, which means you'll need to think about bringing a charger along at all times - although we're struggling to think who might be willing to accept such poor battery performance.
Connectivity
The Veer supports Bluetooth stereo for music playback, can connect up to an 802.11n router for very fast Wi-Fi access and runs at 1Mbps 4G speeds. Those higher-end networking features are surprising on such a small pocket device, and these extra wireless features all contributed to the less than stellar battery life.
The Veer also lets you create a mobile hotspot, and this worked extremely well – we found the signal from a laptop in a lower level of a home with no problems and the connection remained stable throughout.
The Veer supports drag and drop for sending files to and from a computer, but there's no DLNA support for streaming media over a wireless signal to a games console or set-top box in the other room.
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