Which phone has the best battery life?

Mobile phones have become an essential part of daily life and there’s nothing more frustrating than when your phones battery can’t last all day. Having to carry a charger with you everywhere you go so you can keep your phones power topped up, or needing to use an external power pack, or, worst of all, your phones battery dying without any means of recharging it are now common issues that we all have to face. But, does it really need to be that way? In this article I will consider which of the newest, market-leading smartphones have the best battery life and suggest a few tips to help preserve the battery life of any handset.

How is battery life measured?

In order to better understand which smartphones have the best battery life it is helpful to understand some of the fundamentals about phone batteries so, let’s start by considering how a phones battery life is measured.

The battery capacity of a smartphone is measured in milliampere hours. Milliampere hours – mAh – measure the rate of flow of the electrical current within the battery itself and, essentially, calculate the amount of power that a phone can provide for an hour. So, the higher the mAh of a battery, the higher that battery’s capacity.

But, unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple; there are many different factors that can affect your phones battery life.

What can affect the battery life of your smartphone?

With all the modern advances in technology smartphones have become more powerful and have more features than ever, however, sometimes this can have a negative effect on the battery life of your phone. Also, as you might expect, the factor that has the largest contributing effect on the battery life of your phone is the use; simply put, the more you use your phone, the faster the battery power will be drained.

However, there is some hope for the newer, more powerful handsets. The newest smartphones often come with more powerful batteries to accommodate for the power they need to run effectively. And their processors have been made more efficient so they are capable of running the complicated processes without draining the power as much as some older models.

Which phone is best?

Despite the common thought that the newest smartphones will, by default, have poorer battery life due to their extensive features and high resolution displays I hope to convince you that this is not necessarily the case.

Considering the top 3 market-leading smartphones – the Samsung Galaxy S9, the Apple iPhone XS, and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro – it would be easy to think that these would be three phones that, despite their beautiful design and high quality performance, would not be able to withstand a day’s use on one charge, but that is thankfully not the case.

The iPhone XS, unlike some of its predecessors which have been known for having poor battery life, comes with a powerful 2658mAh battery capable of proving up to 20hrs of talk time – more than enough to last all day on a single charge. Finally, an iPhone that can keep up with you!

The Samsung Galaxy S9 comes with a slightly more impressive 3000 mAh battery so you can be safe if the knowledge that your S9 will be able to keep up with your schedule and provide enough power to last all day on a single charge.

But, top of the list, is the Huawei Mate 20 Pro which comes with an incredible 4200 mAh battery! A powerful battery that will certainly be capable of keeping up with you all day, even if you’re taking advantage of the Mate 20 Pro’s amazing camera.

What you can do to help preserve your phone’s battery life

One final thought, there are things that you can do to help preserve your phones battery life if you are concerned that it may run out of power before you are able to charge it.

The biggest and easiest changes you could make to help preserve your phones power would be the turn down the brightness of the screen, use Wifi as opposed to data as much as possible, and close any apps that you are not actively using.

The newest smartphones all come with amazing high quality displays but constant use of a high brightness setting will require a lot of power from the battery, so, if you can and are comfortable doing so, you can help prolong your battery life by turning down the brightness while you’re using you smartphone.

Using data all the time requires a lot from your phone and can significantly reduce the battery life, so make use of Wifi hotspots as much as possible and while at home make sure you switch to a Wifi network if you can to take some pressure of your phones processor and help the battery to last longer.

Any open apps, even ones that are not actively being used but are still running in the background, will require power from your phone so, once you’re done using a specific app considering closing it fully to help your phones battery to last longer. It will still be there ready to open again the next time you want to use it but it won’t be draining your phones power while you’re not.