It may be an issue of longer battery life between charging, without multiple battery packs.
Hand helds are very sophisticated now. Almost all have fairly high standby current.
I remember helping build repeaters for mountain top installation with Repco transmitters and receivers. They were used because of the low quiescent current. If I remember correctly the CMOS controlled repeater with Repco boards drew 50 ma quiescent current in standby. It had solar panels and huge capacity deep discharge batteries, was on a 9,020 ft. mountain top. Nearest commercial power was 2 miles.
“quiescent”. I learned a new word.
Thanks.
L