Unsurprisingly, larger smartphones from manufacturers like Apple and Samsung often have the longest battery life because they come with larger batteries — and recent tests show that iPhone 16 Pro Max outperforms all competitors with impressive endurance.
Technology enthusiast site Tom's Guide recently updated its rankings of battery life for popular smartphones, covering the latest models from various manufacturers. The test results showed that the iPhone 16 Pro Max, with a battery capacity of 4685mAh, lasted 18 hours and 6 minutes.
In comparison, China's OnePlus 12 has a larger 5400mAh battery but only lasted 17 hours and 37 minutes, making it the closest competitor to the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus and Ultra models performed less impressively, with battery lives of 16 hours and 46 minutes and 16 hours and 45 minutes respectively. However, both of these models still outperformed the iPhone 16 Plus, which lasted 16 hours and 29 minutes with a battery capacity of 4674mAh. The Galaxy S24 Plus has a 4900mAh battery.
Significant Improvement in Battery Life
While the standard iPhone 16 lasted 12 hours and 43 minutes, noticeably shorter than its larger counterparts in the series, it still managed to improve by more than 1 hour compared to the iPhone 15, which lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes. Similarly, the iPhone 16 Plus added over 2 hours of battery life compared to the iPhone 15 Plus, reaching 16 hours and 29 minutes.
This marks a significant improvement within just one year, especially for the standard iPhone models. There is an even more notable improvement for the iPhone 16 Pro models.
Specifically, the iPhone 16 Pro Max beat the iPhone 15 Pro Max in battery life by over 4 hours, while the smaller iPhone 16 Pro exceeded the iPhone 15 Pro's battery life by 3.5 hours.
In comparison, Google's Pixel phone lineup lagged behind. The Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro both had battery lives of around 13.5 hours, while the Pixel 9 Pro XL managed 14 hours and 37 minutes.
It is important to note that although these battery life figures were measured using real-world scenarios such as web surfing over 5G, users may not necessarily observe such significant differences in practice. This is because, for consistency, all the smartphones in the test were set to a brightness level of 150 nits, while the iPhone 16 series can reach up to 2000 nits.
As always, battery life is directly dependent on usage. However, the iPhone 16 Pro Max undoubtedly boasts the longest potential battery life, and all users will benefit from it.
