Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung S21 Ultra vs iPhone Battery Life Test!”.
Hey welcome to a battery test and a pretty big one. This is samsung’s top end phones, including this new galaxy s21 ultra versus apples. So, let’s find out in 2021, which of these companies actually gives you more and do you know the most interesting part of this test is that it’s actually answering two questions: it’s not just a samsung versus apple thing, but because we’ve got multiple generations of each. It’S also going to answer the question: are these companies actually improving? Because is it just me or do we get told every single year that smartphones just got more battery efficient and not by some small amount? We get given figures like 20 30 percent, but is that actually translating to 20 30 percent more battery life? Well, if you have a look at the current battery percentage figures, you can see that well, no, it’s probably a little early to say anything yet. But what is interesting is that the only phones that seem to have lost any battery at all are samsung’s. Apparently, both iphones are still on 100, which seems pretty sus to me now.
I’Ve got to admit something. This whole prospect of doing a battery test of effectively setting up five phones and sitting there waiting for them to die is not normally my idea of a fun day, but this test in particular the risk of sounding like i’ve, lost the plot. I was actually looking forward to because the stakes have never been higher.
This new galaxy s21 ultra is the first one in the world to use samsung’s supposedly fixed exynos chipset. I probably don’t need to tell you that samsung with their last chip, the exynos 990, that you see in the s20 ultra and the note 20 ultra did not do a great job. That chip went down like a lead balloon in terms of both performance and battery life, but this is redemption time this is make or break. This is potentially the last straw for samsung’s chip, division and they’re very aware of it for this new exynos 2100. They had this big flashy reveal event where they basically said. Hey, we heard you, we know we messed up, but this time we’re right this time, you’re going to be blown away, i will say nothing to do with how good the chip actually is. I, like their new naming convention, it seems like this year. Samsung is basically named their phones and actually their chips too after the year they release in which just makes so much more sense.
Okay, where are we at now, so the iphones are still leading, but that lead is slipping. So it’s hopeful this new s21 ultra, it’s not 20 ahead of last generation like i saw some people were speculating, but it is ahead and it might become further ahead now. One thing that i just have to give to samsung is that what they may not have given in battery efficiency in past years, they have given in battery size like this galaxy s20 ultra has a 5 000 milliamp hour cell, especially when that was announced. That was considered gargantuan then even now, if you compare it to the size of the batteries on those iphones, you can tell that it is a big number.
They then release the note 20 ultra, which, on the face of it, might look like a downgrade because it only has 4 500 milliamp hours, but they said no. They said this phone ships with an adaptive refresh rate, which means that, instead of being fixed at either 60 hertz or 120 hertz, this phone can go all the way from 120 hertz down to 11 if it needs to to scale based on the app. And so this phone should actually last even longer and that’s what makes their very latest one all the more exciting. It’S got that big battery from the s20 ultra. It’S got the adaptive refresh rate of the note 20 ultra, and it’s got this new exynos chip that neither of them have is it working well kind of yeah. The iphones are starting to come back to earth, as you can see by their battery percentages. The s20 ultra and the note 20 ultra are really starting to feel the burn, and this new phone is kind of peeling away from the pack. I remember at this point, while i was filming this video thinking – oh dear i’ve seen phones last eight hours on a battery drain test before if this beats that i’m not going to bed tonight.
But at the same time i would rather sleep a little later. One night than have phones that die in the middle of the day just putting battery efficiency to the side for a second can we just appreciate how the battery capacities on phones have just skyrocketed in the last few years, i was actually watching back one of my 2017-2018 battery comparisons: this is not a recommendation, they are not good videos, but it was crazy. I couldn’t believe it like phones just a few years ago, did not even hit 4 000 milliamp hours in capacity and now we’ve got five and there were a lot of phones back then getting singled out and praised just for being able to last five hours of Screen on time, if you look at this table right now, we are already past five hours. That said, what we’re doing right now, recording 4k video on every single phone is one of the most demanding things you can do to a battery because it effectively uses every major component of your phone, so that should bring it down a little bit. And at this point i feel like i’ve got to say the new exynos chip is working. Then you might be looking at this thinking. What the phone is only like.
10 percentage points higher than the note 20 ultra. That’S not a generational leap, i’m not blown away, but there’s two things to bear in mind: number one: your chipset is only a part of the battery drain of your phone. So, even if one year your chip gets like 50 more battery efficient, you might only save 10 of the overall phone’s battery, because all the other components like the display are still drawing the same amount of power. And the second thing is that i think when companies use the term battery efficiency it, it can actually be a little bit misleading. So here’s what normally happens a company launches a new phone and they say hey this new phone is going to have 30 better performance and at the same time they say it’s also going to have 30 better battery efficiency and we all go wow.
That’S so impressive! How do you even do that, but think about it? If a phone has 30 better battery efficiency? That doesn’t mean that you can have 30 better performance and 30 less power drain. It means you get either raw. You can either have the same amount of power but 30 less battery drain, or you can have the same amount of battery drain and 30 more power. So i guess what i’m saying is that the simple fact that this new exynos chip is delivering not just a tangible improvement in performance, but also a tangible improvement in battery life at the same time, is something to be cautiously optimistic about.
Okay, a slightly unrelated note. Just as this test starts to wrap itself up, i could do with a bit of feedback, because i want to keep making these battery test videos. I think they’re quite unique, and i don’t think there is a lot of content on youtube that really delves into batteries. Like this, but at the same time i only really want to make videos that i think are interesting.
Hence why i’ve decided to sit myself on a table this time. So the question is: is there anything else i can do to make this more engaging for you all right, so we’re nearly at the end. Now i’m just going to fast forward it. So we can get to the results. But if you are enjoying this video, then a sub to the channel would be euphoric and just for a point of clarity. I’Ve set all phones to an equivalent level of brightness zero percent speaker volume and they all have 100 battery health, which means that their batteries are as good as if you bought the phones.
New okay, so in fifth place, is the galaxy s20 ultra and on one hand this is amazing battery life. This is battery life good enough that you probably never have to worry about battery, but at the same time it also goes to show just how inefficient last year’s exynos 990 chipset was like it’s not the only factor, but this 5000mah battery phone just got beaten by Two phones with less than four thousand million powers. Okay, so in fourth place, we’ve got the galaxy note, 20 ultra for pretty much the same reason. The phone is being let down by the chip it’s running on, but there is a silver lining here: you’ll notice that just the simple fact that this phone has beaten, the s20 ultra, which had a 500 milliamp hour advantage, goes to show that the adaptive refresh rate Works – and that brings me on to third place – the iphone 12 pro max amazing battery life. I’Ve been using this phone every day for the last two months or so, and it’s never once died on me. It genuinely feels like what you would expect a max phone to feel like, but on the other hand, this result also in no uncertain terms means apple, did not improve battery life this year, because then we have the iphone 11 pro max with eight hours and six Minutes and this bit of data means that we can now answer our second question, which of samsung and apple, gives you better battery life in 2020 or 2021, neither at least as far as the exynos chips are concerned.
Samsung takes fourth and fifth place, but also first because yes, the galaxy s21 ultra scored 8 hours and 41 minutes. It was quite a bit ahead and you know what. If this had been one minute longer, it would have been a record.
It would have been the highest recorded score on one of these battery tests, but as it stands, it’s a draw. It’S a draw between this and the snapdragon version of the galaxy note 20 ultra from last year and there’s two conclusions we can draw from that one. While it’s not really fair to compare scores between tests, because i’m running slightly different apps and all of them, this is a good score.
This is a very good score, but at the same time, the very fact that this year’s exynos phone is doing about as well as last year’s snapdragon phone doesn’t exactly bode confidence for how it’s going to fare versus this year’s snapdragon phone. But i am working to get that phone as soon as possible to do a side-by-side test, so just bear with me on that one it’s coming and with that being said, i really hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you for watching. My name is aaron.
This is mr who’s, the boss and i’ll catch you in the next one. You .