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Battery battle: Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus vs. iPhone X, Pixel 2 XL, and more

Brie Barbee
David Cogen
By and

David Cogen of TheUnlockr is back with another phone experiment — this time testing how the battery on the new Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus compares to those in other top smartphones.

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Housed inside the Galaxy S9 Plus is a 3,500mAh battery (3,000mAh in the S9), which supports up to 94 hours of MP3 playback with AOD off (54 with AOD on), or up to 15 hours of internet use, according to Samsung’s product page. And while usage patterns and other environmental factors can affect a phone’s battery life, the S9 is setting some serious precedent.

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Battery test results

  • 1st: Galaxy S8 Plus
  • 2nd: Galaxy S9 Plus
  • 3rd: OnePlus 5T
  • 4th: Mate 10 Pro
  • 5th: Pixel XL
  • 6th: iPhone X

So, Cogen rounded up some of the best phones he could find — the S9 Plus, S8 Plus (for comparison to the S9), OnePlus 5T, Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro, Google’s Pixel XL, and Apple’s iPhone X — all current flagship phones with the best smartphone batteries on the market — and put them to the test. But which phone came out on top?

Making sure all six of the phones were hooked up to the same gigabit Wi-Fi network and had the same social networks installed (with notifications enabled), Cogen played a 10-hour Nyan Cat video at half speed (for what could end up being upwards of 20 hours) to see which phone stayed alive the longest.

And while none of the phones made it the full 20 hours, this experiement helped give us an idea of how the phone batteries stacked up among themselves.

In sixth place, was the iPhone X. It lasted only about 10 hours. In fifth place was the Pixel XL (11:40), which trailed behind the Mate 10 Pro (12:55) and the OnePlus 5T (13:12). What’s interesting is the two phones that stayed alive the longest.

The S9 Plus makes sense, because it has the latest processor and better battery management than some of the other flagships on the list, but to be beat out by the S8 Plus, it’s predecessor that was released at about this time last year, by over an hour and a half is definitely unusual.

The S9 Plus still has decent battery life and is comparable to all the other current-generation phones out there. At the end of the day, the way you use your phone has more to do with how long the phone will stay alive than anything else, but the results were still interesting.

David Cogen — a regular contributor here at Digital Trends — runs TheUnlockr.com, a popular tech blog that focuses on tech news, tips and tricks, and the latest tech. You can also find him over at Twitter discussing the latest tech trends.

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Brie is a writer from Portland, Oregon. She received a bachelor's degree from Portland State University in 2016, where she…
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