Blog “Which? Tech Daily” ran the HTC 10, LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7, and the Apple iPhone 7 through a series of battery tests.
The most notable difference:
Whilst the iPhone 7’s 712 minutes of call time (nearly 12 hours) may sound acceptable, the rival Samsung Galaxy S7 lasted twice as long – and it doesn’t even have the longest lasting battery. The HTC 10 lasted an incredible 1,859 minutes (that’s almost 31 hours).
And:
So just why does the iPhone 7 have such a poor battery life? It may sound obvious, but the majority of the fault lies in its comparatively tiny cell. Smartphone batteries are measured in milliampere hours (mAh). The iPhone 7 has a 1,960mAh battery, whilst the HTC 10 has a 3,000mAh battery: it should hardly be surprising that one battery nearly half the size of another offers roughly half as much charge.
So was this a fair test? Is call time a fair measure of battery life? In browsing/email testing, the battery life was much closer, though the iPhone still finished last.
To me, the bottom line is a battle between thinness/weight and battery life. I rarely have to recharge my iPhone battery during the day. So, for me, the thinness of my iPhone is worth the shorter battery life.
UPDATE: The test compares the iPhone 7 (138.3mm x 67.1mm) against the HTC 10 (145.9mm x 71.9mm), the Samsung Galaxy S7 (142.4mm x 69.6mm), and the LG G5 (149.4mm x 73.9mm). All three competing phones are a fair bit larger than the iPhone 7. Bigger phone equals bigger battery. Thus the addition of the word “flawed” to the post’s title.
Not to mention, a more fair test would be put the 7 Plus up against these monster Android phones.
Um, well, I’d say it’s pretty fair. As they say, it’s a difference of the capacity of the battery. No matter what you test, the iPhone is going to lose to a 3,000 mAh battery.
The iPhone is clearly more efficient in 3G usage – which probably includes browsing – but it’s clearly a much weaker battery.
How long until we find that Which? is funded by a consortium of Android phone makers…
Also according to this comment on the article, the other phones are larger…
HTC10-(145.9mm x 71.9mm x 9 mm=94.41189 cm3)
iPhone 7 Plus-(158.2mm x 77.9mm x 7.3 mm=89.963594 cm3)
LG G5-(149.4mm x 73.9mm x 7.7mm=85.013082 cm3)
Samsung Galaxy S7-(142.4mm x 69.6mm x 7.9mm=78.297216 cm)
iPhone 7-(138.3mm x 67.1mm x 7.1mm=65.887503 cm3)
They’re missing a test for running battery intensive apps. Who uses their phone exclusively for calls or web browsing these days?
Fair but irrelevant. My wife and I spent 34 talk minutes last month. I probably spent more time on FaceTime with my mom this past weekend than I will spend talking on my iPhone to everyone else combined this month.
Let’s be real here. If you need a phone that delivers 13 hours of battery life like the HTC 10, that means there are only 3 waking hours of the day when your phone is not in use. What the hell kind of life is that, to be using your phone non stop all day long, morning to night, at work, at home, and in between?
Either that, or you’ve enabled notifications on a power virus app like Facebook or Skype. Either way, the problem is not with the phone’s battery. It’s with how you are using it.
The web browsing test is a proxy for all the non-intensive apps like facebook, whatsapp, etc, that people spend the most time using, that use some CPU and keep the screen on. CPU Intensive apps, like games, are a whole different ball game and nobody in their right mind expects the phone to last more than a handful of hours running one.
But it would be very interesting to know which of those phones lasts longer in those situations and a fair extra comparison.
Does the Samsung volume figure include the fire suppression system? 😉
The article title is ambiguous. Wouldn’t you want the phone battery test to finish last? That’d mean that it ran the longest. Might not want it to be ranked last though.
it’s not clear to me if these are different sized phones. if so it’s kinda silly.
I would say it’s absolutely fair. I love my iPhone and won’t give it up but they are comparing Apples to Apples. These are top of the line phones.
It tells us that Apple has some work to do in certain areas, that’s all. And they should.
Alternatively, if you didn’t charge your phone for some reason (e.g. unexpectedly stranded and have to spend the night away from home). I miss the days when you could have a phone go a week between charges. Yeah, they were flip phones that could only call or text, but being able to take an overnight or weekend trip without having to worry about chargers is nice.
12 hours of talk time? Fantastic.
Yup. I totally agree. No excuses here.
Competition is always good.
I’ll most likely always use an Apple phone whatever it may be in the future, and Apple is always pushing the envelope, but all companies can make improvement including Apple.
Although its not really a fair comparison. 3G talk time tests always essentially boil down to raw mAh capacity. Not optimization or any other factor. But rather how long can the 3G radio stay activated, and that is always dependent on raw capacity. A better comparison, to gauge the kind of optimization work and wizardry Apple has managed to achieve with the little battery they do have, is better depicted in other tests, such as web browsing or video playback tests. And in this area, Apple has always managed to blow away competition. Even shown in Which? 3G browsing test, where the 7 is neck and neck with batteries double its size.
The iPhone 7 Plus would have been a better comparison as it is closer in size (dimensions and mAh capacity) to the Android phones tested.
This is just shoddy clickbait journalism. Nobody would be talking about Which? today if they did a more accurate test. They got what they wanted.
Wow phones that are 15%, or more, heavier with larger batteries and dimensions have better battery life? No way.
Battery life testing takes time. Don’t expect thorough battery life tests so soon after the product has been released, and don’t expect them at all of anyone other than exhaustively in-depth review sites like Anandtech.
Absolutely a fair comparison. But is using red for 12 hours of talk time reasonable? In what dimension is that “bad”?
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Buy the phone you want. If it has the battery life that works for you, great! If not, either return it, or use the data in your next purchase.
Every Apple device has exceeded my power management expectations.
I find Facebook to be the most intensive thing I do on my devices, whether it is in a browser or in their power-sucking, storage-hogging app.