Our phones are faster and slimmer than ever before. That’s great in every way except one: best battery time phone. Smaller phones means less room for batteries, while faster processors, high-resolution displays, and 5G cell networks quickly drain the charge you do have.
While plugging in a power bank will help keep your phone running in an emergency, it’s one more thing to charge, carry, and think about. Instead, it’s worth looking specifically at phones with great battery life. The best of them can power through a full day of heavy use, and last two days or more of lighter use on a single charge.
The battery performance of a phone depends on the capacity of the battery (measured in mAh), but also on the phone’s processor, screen size, and how well optimized it is. In other words, a higher capacity doesn’t necessarily mean a longer battery life.
Of course, long battery life isn’t the only thing you care about. You don’t want a phone that is thoroughly mediocre but runs for days. Instead, you want something that performs well, looks great, and takes excellent pictures — and also has enough juice to at least last all day away from a charger.
With that in mind, these are our picks for the best smartphones with long battery life on the market today.
Best Android Phone With Long Battery Life: Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
Looking for the comfort of buying from a major global brand, but still want a phone with great battery life? Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, part of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S range.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is a high-end, premium device, and one of the best long battery life phones on the market. Its 5000mAh battery is paired with a range of intelligent management features to optimize power usage throughout the day.
You can expect around 16 hours of screen-on time doing basic activities like web browsing. That’s a lot, and makes this a “two-day phone” for most people: you’ll likely get a full two days out of a single charge unless you’re really pushing it hard.
When you do finally manage to drain the battery, you won’t need to wait long for it to charge up: expect as much as 50% charge in half an hour. That’s assuming you have a 25W+ wall charger, mind you: there’s no charger in the box. Wireless charging is also built in, although as usual it’s noticeably slower.
The S21 Ultra looks fantastic, with a big, bright, and rich 6.8″ screen. The 3200 x 1440 display has an adaptive refresh rate that ramps up to 120Hz to make fast action look as good as possible, and back down to 60Hz or lower to save battery the rest of the time.
Inside sits Snapdragon’s fastest 888 chipset, 12-16GB of RAM, and 128-512GB of storage. Unlike earlier versions, though, there’s no microSD slots if you manage to fill that up. 5G connectivity is built in, although just like LTE when it first came out, don’t necessarily expect it to work outside the region you bought your phone in.
A major selling point of the device is its camera (or more accurately, all four of the cameras.) The S21 Ultra has some of the longest, clearest zoom of any phone ever released, with 10x optical zoom and a ridiculous 100x digital “Space Zoom.” It shoots high-quality images and extremely impressive video, with recording in up to 8K.
There’s no headphone jack, but the payoff for that is IP68 water and dust resistance. With wireless earbuds and headphones commonplace these days, having a phone that can handle being in five feet of water for half an hour is a tradeoff that people are increasingly happy to make.
Overall, this is a well-rounded everyday smartphone with exceptional battery life and a great camera. It’s available in six different colors, and there’s a huge range of third-party cases and accessories available. The only real downsides are its price and its size, especially once you add a protective case.
Best iPhone With Long Battery Life: Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
The latest iPhones are here, and they pack a heck of a punch in terms of battery life. The iPhone 13 Pro Max is the most impressive, lasting up to 28 hours of continuous use. Yes, you read that correctly.
This is, by a huge measure, the best battery life ever offered in an iPhone. The 13 Pro Max’s 4352mAh battery is nearly 20% larger than the one in the 12 Pro Max, and it shows in real-world performance. When it does go flat, half an hour on a 20W+ wall charger will get it back up to 50%. Magsafe and Qi wireless charging is also available.
Other highlights of this model include up to a terabyte of storage capacity (it’s also available in 128, 256, and 512GB versions,) a new cinematic mode that shifts focus automatically in videos, and an improved camera system that takes even better photos than the already highly-impressive iPhone 12 Pro range.
The Pro Max is powered by Apple’s new A15 chip, which offers lightning-fast performance even by flagship smartphone standards. The 120Hz “ProMotion” screen refresh rate is a welcome upgrade from the previous model, visibly improving everything from scrolling and swiping to fast-action gaming.
Durability has had an upgrade as well, with a new type of screen glass dubbed “Ceramic Shield” that offers 4x more drop resistance than earlier models. There’s also IP68 dust and water resistance, with the phone is certified to handle submersion in up to 19 feet of water for half an hour.
As you’d expect from Apple’s latest flagship, the downside is cost: this phone is anything but cheap. Despite the high price, it also doesn’t come with any accessories other than a USB-C to Lightning cable for charging. Still, if you’re looking for the iPhone with the longest battery life, the 13 Pro Max is the one to go for.
That said, while the Pro Max has the best battery life of the current models, other versions of the iPhone 13 still last an impressively long time between charges if your budget doesn’t stretch quite that far.
Best Mid-Range Phone With Long Battery Life: OnePlus 8
We often tend to think of smartphones in two categories: flagship and budget. In reality, mid-range phones offer the best value for most people, bringing a useful mix of specs and features without costing four figures to buy.
Right now, the OnePlus 8 5G is one of the highest-spec phones you’ll find in this price range. It’s last year’s model (replaced by the OnePlus 9), so the price has been slashed. The OP8 now costs barely half what it did earlier in the year, but while it’s still available, you get one heck of a phone for the money.
The 4300mAh battery in the OnePlus 8 can power you through a day or two of regular use with ease, and you’ll get up to 12 hours of screen-on time for activities like web browsing. Given the large, bright 6.6″ 90Hz display, this is impressive performance, particularly for the price.
When the phone does eventually go flat, it won’t be for long. OnePlus has long had some of the fastest charging in the business, and while a few rivals are now starting to catch up, the company’s 30W Warp charger is still extremely quick. Expect to go from 0-50% in just 22 minutes. There’s no wireless charging.
As usual with OnePlus’s premium phones, the internals are impressive and the phone performs extremely well. You’ll get a fast Snapdragon 865 processor, 8 or 12GB of RAM, and 128 or 256GB of storage. We’d have liked to see a microSD slot, but even so, these specs are more than enough for most phone users.
Also as usual for OnePlus, though, while the model’s 48MP camera seems impressive, the resulting image quality definitely lacks behind other modern phones, especially in low light. Likewise, the phone’s built-in speakers don’t sound great, and there’s no official water resistance.
If you can live with the camera and speaker limitations, though, and the lack of official water resistance rating isn’t a deal breaker, this is a fantastic phone with great battery life for not a lot of money.
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