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I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this. Then I realized that I had laughed so hard that I was crying which solved my problem. Speaking of problems, as soon as the iPhone was launched people were worrying about the battery ‘problem’, how long would it hold it’s charge, how long could you use the iPhone for, how to replace it without sending it into Apple etc etc. Well here is one problem solved for you - you can now know when the battery will actually pack up on you!

Like most things in this cruel world, your iPhone’s battery must die someday. Unlike most things, it is easy to predict the exact date and time it will permanently crap out. To help you panic, er, prepare, try the iPhone Death Watch; simply enter the date you purchased your phone, and, based on scientific calculations, the calculator will provide an estimate for the day your precious device’s battery will bite the dust.

For those brave enough to test this out, here is the link. Madness? Maybe not as much as you think as there is a certain logic to their approach:

“Our methods for finding a date were simple: we used a fully-charged iPhone the way one typically would. That meant four phone calls, between three and ten minutes each; listening to the iPod on a 40-minute commute to and from work; checking Google Maps at one point when we were lost on the way to a meeting; and checking e-mail a whole bunch of times over both Wi-Fi and EDGE. The phone lasted about 30 hours. Counting in the four hours or so it takes to trickle-charge over a USB port, the iPhone gets about 34 hours, or roughly 1.5 days, per charge.”

Apple says that after 400 charges, the phone will hold 80% of a charge. Alas, they wouldn’t tell us any more than that. (When we inquired, they skirted the issue.) Regardless, we’ll push it a bit beyond 400 charges and say that you’ll really feel like replacing your battery at 450 charges.

Thus, 450 x 1.5 = 675 days.

So, if you bought your iPhone at 6 PM on June 29, 2007, your phone will kick the bucket on May 4, 2009 at 6 PM

Personally I think that you will have got fed up with the ‘old’ technology by then and will be hankering after the next ‘must have’ product from Steve and his team, so you probably don’t have too much to worry about.