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Run for the sockets: the battery life of many new smartphones is shrinking.
Phone manufacturers promise "a long battery life". Of course, you have not stolen any Halloween candy for kids.
If you have recently bought a new flagship phone, it is likely that the life of its battery is worse than that of an older model.
In the last few weeks, I have repeated the same battery test on 13 phones. With a few exceptions, this year's best models underperformed last year's performance. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than the iPhone X last year. Google's Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2.
Phone manufacturers offer all sorts of tips for extending battery life, including more efficient processors, low power modes, and artificial intelligence to manage application consumption. Yet, my results and Tests by other people I've talked to have revealed an open secret in the industry: smartphones' lithium-ion batteries are reaching an inflection point where they just can not keep up.
[iPhone XR review: The best $250 you ever saved on a new phone]
"The batteries are improving very slowly, about 5% per year," says Nadim Maluf, CEO of a Silicon Valley company, Qnovo, which is helping to optimize the batteries. "But the power consumption of phones is growing faster than 5%."
The fault is high resolution screens, more complicated applications and, above all, our apparent inability to put the phone. Lithium-ion batteries, despite their rechargeable wonders, also have certain physical limitations, including a capacity that decreases over time – and a risk of explosion if they are damaged or if they are discarded improperly.
And the phone's power situation is about to worsen. The new ultra-fast 5G wireless technology, which will soon be available in US neighborhoods, will put even greater demands on our besieged batteries.
My test has limits. Your experience will depend on how you use your phone. You can also follow certain steps to extend the life of your phone.
We are not without hope. Two phones that worked well in my tests, the Samsung Note9 and the Apple iPhone XR, give ideas on how to design phones that last longer, at least until a technology totally new battery appears.
The post battery test, which we see here in action, allows phones to have equal brightness, browse and scroll through the same set of websites while supplies last. (Geoffrey Fowler / San Francisco)
Why the battery of your phone dies
My results have encouraged me to double-take. I have therefore called a team of other technical journalists equally obsessed with the tests at CNET, Tom's Guide and Consumer Reports. "The average battery life is going down," says Mark Spoonauer, editor-in-chief of Tom's Guide, who said The battery of the iPhone XS is also dead earlier than that of the iPhone X. He adds that most phones with the longest battery life have a year.
But not all other critics have noticed the same declines – and the differences in our results help us better understand what is happening.
Big phones often last longer, but it's not as simple as the size of the battery. Do you remember the Blackberry? These had much smaller batteries than today's smartphones, but could remain days without being recharged.
There is no perfect test of the battery. Mine, which I borrowed from an industrial group called Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, has a special focus on the screen.
I use a light meter to set all phones to the same brightness, then force their web browsers to reload and scroll through a series of sites that I serve on a local WiFi network. I restart the tests as many times as possible, then I average the results.
CNET, who, like me, has seen a drastic decrease in battery life between the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X (and the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S9), tests screens at 50 % brightness when playing a video loop when Airplane mode is on.
What we have discovered is that phones with sophisticated high-resolution displays or technologies such as OLED technologies perform poorly. (This technology may require more power to turn off the light.) So, if you want your phone to last longer, lower the brightness of the screen. Or stop looking at your phone as many times a day if you can break our national phone dependency period.
Tom's Guide adds another factor: the cellular connection. It allows phones to run a series of streaming websites on LTE. Unlike me, the Pixel 3 XL has also experienced a significant battery life compared to the Pixel 2 XL.
Another lesson: if you want the battery to last longer, use WiFi if possible – or even Airplane mode when you do not need to be reachable. Apple and Android phones also offer low-power modes (which are not included in our tests), which reduce some large data features without disconnecting.
The counter-example is Consumer Reports, which revealed that the new iPhone XS had lasted 25% longer than the iPhone X of last year. His test uses a digital robot – yes, you read it right – so that phones scroll through many different functions and applications, including breaks. in use when the screen is off.
Consumer Reports will probably test the phone's processor better, an area in which a number of companies – but in particular Apple – have achieved efficiency gains.
Overall, is battery life decreasing or increasing? "You can not follow a clear trend," said Maria Rerecich, director of consumer electronics testing at Consumer Reports.
I would like companies to have more standardized ways to talk about battery life. Since the early days of the iPhone, Apple has described battery life through specific measures, including "talk time" and "use of the Internet". Recently, he has also adopted a more viscous language: the iPhone XS "lasts up to 30 minutes longer than the iPhone X," he says, a measure based on data on the time people spend before reconnecting.
Consumer Reports tests the life of the phone's battery with this robotic finger, programmed to run the phone through a range of tasks designed to simulate an average day. (Consumer reports)
How phones treat
So what about the two 2018 phones that did better in my tests?
Samsung Note9 succeeds by inserting more battery. It contains a battery capacity of 4000 mAh, against 3300 mAh in the Note8. (The battery of the iPhone XS is only 2659 mAh, and it is slightly degraded compared to X.)
Many phones have followed the broader trend of the battery. iFixit, a repair community that analyzes phone components for disassembly, says battery capacity has nearly doubled in the last five years.
Where can go the size game? Huawei has launched a phone called Mate 20 Pro, not sold in the United States, with a battery of 4,200 mAh. Larger and denser batteries can be more dangerous (remember Samsung's Note7 exploding), not to mention heavier batteries. Note9, which also has a giant screen and stylus, weighs 7.1 ounces, more than twice a deck of cards.
The Apple iPhone XR, the new phone I recommend to most people, takes a different approach. It reduces screen technologies – lower resolution, less bright colors, and lower quality – to dramatically maximize battery life: the XR lasted 3 hours longer than the latest iPhone XS, even if its screen is a little bigger. (Bonus: it also costs $ 250 less.)
"Consumers need to start preparing for the compromise," says Maluf, CEO of Battery Optimization Company.
Maybe the market will fragment further, making phones more like cars. This market was eventually reversed by the fuel economy models; instead of the energy-hungry Cadillac, you can choose the Honda. Apple's iPhone XR is the Civic of smartphones.
Our choices in the near future are probably: get a cheap phone – or plug in more often. A faster and more convenient loading strategy is the strategy of some manufacturers. Many phones now support wireless charging, although few cafes, offices and airport lounges offer it.
And then there is the plug itself. Apple, which delivers the same 5-watt charging brick for years, could draw lessons from Google, which sells its Pixel phones with an 18-watt charger and says you can get 7 hours of use in 15 minutes load. The only thing that is almost as serious as running out of juice is attached to a point of sale.
Read more technical advice and analysis from Geoffrey A. Fowler:
The explosive problem of recycling iPads, iPhones and other gadgets: they literally take fire.
We tested Apple's new Screen Time parental controls. First tears – then frustration.
Touch my data! 15 default privacy settings that you must edit now.
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