Smartphone Battery Life – You’ve probably seen or read many articles online about battery life. It’s a popular topic because no one likes to hang a phone on the wall multiple times a day. However, most of the battery saver articles will give you an idea of what you should try to improve your battery life. This time we will instead identify all the different things that cause the battery to die.
The list is actually surprisingly long, and that’s probably a good indicator of why so many people struggle with battery life. It’s hard to keep track of every little thing your phone does. However, we hope that giving you this information will help you troubleshoot battery problems and adjust your usage to maximize your battery life. Here’s our definitive guide to everything that affects smartphone battery life.
Smartphone Battery Life
Literally everything on your phone affects your battery life to some degree, including your processor, display, operating system, apps and games, and even your camera.
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We’ll start with the most obvious effect on battery life – the size of the battery itself. Not all smartphones have the same battery size, and it is this size that determines how long your phone will last before it reaches zero. Smartphone batteries are usually measured in milliampere-hours (mAh). Mostly simple math. The more mAh a phone has, the longer it should theoretically be able to last. It doesn’t always work that way, but it’s a good place to start.
At the highest level, phones like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and Moto G Power have massive 5,000mAh cells, while some other phones have smaller cells, like the 3,590mAh battery of the regular Galaxy S22. Generally speaking, phones with larger batteries tend to have better battery life than phones with smaller batteries.
This is a simple math question. The larger the cell, the more power the phone carries. Of course, there are many other factors to consider. However, if the specs of the phones are the same, the one with the bigger battery will last longer.
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A screen can affect battery life in four different ways. The first is size, because larger screens have more surface area and require more power to illuminate. Phones with larger screens also typically have larger batteries, so there is some compromise.
The second way a phone screen affects battery life is resolution. Admittedly, the differences are not huge, but they can be measured objectively. Displays with 1440p resolution have 77% more pixels than a 1080p display and require additional processing power (and therefore more battery) to render those extra pixels. OEMs sometimes include 1080p mode on a 1440p display to help reduce processing power and save battery life.
Brightness is another important strength. It is also a matter of simple calculation. The brighter something is, the more power it requires. It’s not noticeable when you increase the brightness from 50% to 40%. However, you will almost certainly see a difference between 80% and 20%.
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Finally, the refresh rate of the screen is very important. Refresh rate represents the number of times a screen is refreshed per second and is measured in Hertz (Hz). Newer phones have 90 Hz and 120 Hz displays that refresh 50% to 100% more often than regular 60 Hz displays. This takes a lot of extra processing power and puts extra strain on your phone’s battery. Modern phones have adaptive refresh rates to help drain the battery, but still higher than if you set it to 60 Hz.
Because screens are the primary way we interact with a phone, they consume more battery than any other component of a device. That’s why most battery saving tricks revolve around display settings. However, lowering your brightness by a few percentage points is almost useless, and resolution only matters if you have a lot of screen time. Finally, using dark themes on AMOLED screens does not work as well as most people think.
Connections have a huge impact on battery life. The most common connections are your cell phone signal, data, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and location services. Connections drain the battery in different ways, and the first one is pretty obvious.
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If you enable these connections and don’t use them, they waste unnecessary power throughout the day. Hardware and software optimizations have minimized this loss, and it’s hardly a disadvantage these days. It still drains the battery, but not as much as before.
In addition, a weak signal can significantly increase battery consumption. This is also a very difficult problem to solve. Your device periodically checks the signal strength. When reception is poor, the phone will check more often and this constant checking will drain the battery. Usually this only happens with certain types of buildings and areas with poor reception, but if you live (or work) in one of these places, it can be a constant and almost unsolvable problem.
Finally, using these links will drain your battery. If you go online and spend five minutes downloading a file, your phone has been actively using the network hardware for five minutes. The same is true for voice calls, because your phone activates its radio during the call.
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Many people recommend using airplane mode to turn off all connections when you’re not using your phone. To be honest, it doesn’t save much battery and becomes intrusive and annoying. We recommend staying connected to Wi-Fi at home (or work). Additionally, the Google Play Store, Google Photos, Amazon Photos, and others all have settings to delay backups or updates until you connect them to a charger. You should definitely check and see what can be delayed until your phone charges safely.
Other than that, be aware of how your connections work and use common sense. Don’t start downloading a new 5GB game from the Play Store when your phone’s battery is at 12% and you’ll be fine.
The chipset is probably more important than anything else here (other than the screen) because it basically powers the entire phone. There are many ways a chipset can affect a battery. This is especially true for root users as they have access to CPU tuning tools. However, even some unrooted phones have performance mods that will drain your battery like water in the desert.
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For ordinary users, the first thing that matters for the chipset is its manufacture. Every year chips are getting smaller, faster and more energy efficient. The Snapdragon 855 was faster and more power efficient than the Snapdragon 845, and Qualcomm’s latest chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, is expected to continue the tradition. The same goes for Huawei’s Kirin SoCs, Samsung’s Exynos chips, and MediaTek’s silicon. It’s a pretty complex issue, but the super basic explanation is that newer chipsets can do the same job as older chipsets except they’re faster, use less power, and less heat. All this affects battery life.
The chipset model is also important. The Pixel 3a XL was one of the big battery life surprises of 2019. Part of this was due to the Snapdragon 670, a less powerful chip tuned for battery life rather than performance, as opposed to the Snapdragon 855. At the other end of the scale, the Snapdragon 855 Plus is an overclocked version of the regular 855 and uses more power.
Chipset updates are often overlooked when it comes to new smartphones as most people only look at raw performance. However, efficiency, size and heat improvements are arguably more important than raw performance improvements today.
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The camera is one of the most important pieces of hardware in a phone. However, it also has the ability to slightly drain the battery. The first and most obvious reason is that it’s separate hardware. It needs power to work, especially if Samsung has moving parts like its multi-aperture cameras or the motorized front camera on some OnePlus phones.
However, the vast majority of camera battery consumption is due to screen and CPU usage. Your screen is required as a viewfinder, and some OEMs even increase screen brightness in camera mode. Also, every modern smartphone has at least one finishing process that requires additional processing power. This is further augmented by LG’s unique camera features such as Triple Shot on the LG V40 or Night Sight on Pixel devices.
Video consumes more battery. The processor needs to take between 30 and 60 photos per second, depending on the frame rate of the video, and eventually put it all together. Of course, resolution is also important here. For obvious reasons, processing 4K video requires more power than 720p video.
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Shutters drain their battery much faster than people who don’t use their cameras very often. Additionally, apps that use cameras heavily, such as Snapchat, may experience more battery drain with prolonged use due to excessive camera use.
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