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Report: Some new smartphones have worse battery life than old counterparts
June 24, 2025
Over atThe Washington Post, journalist Geoffrey A. Fowler conducted a series of battery life tests on popular smartphones, including both Android and iOS devices. Fowler found that some new devices actually fared worse than their older counterparts in his tests.
One would usually assume that the newer a smartphone is, the better its battery life will be. However, Fowler found that in a few cases, the older device fares better than the newer device when it comes to battery life.
For Android, Fowler found that both theGoogle Pixel 2 and Google Pixel 2 XLtested better than theGoogle Pixel 3. However, both second-generation Pixels didn’t do as well as the Google Pixel 3 XL.
For iOS, it appears theApple iPhone XSdidn’t fare as well as theiPhone X. In fact, the iPhone 8 Plus handily beat the iPhone XS and XS Max.
Remarkably, the iPhone XR topped the entire list when it comes to battery life, beating out the top Android device — theSamsung Galaxy Note 9— by a slight margin.
Check out Fowler’s full chart of results below:
Despite the anomalies of the Pixels and iPhones, most of the results do tend to match with the idea that newer phones get better life than older phones. The results also suggest bigger phones get better battery life, which makes sense because they usually have bigger batteries.
To conduct his test, Fowler used a light meter to set every device at the exact same brightness level. He then used a script to make the devices endlessly scroll through web pages. The results you see above are how long it took for each device to go from 100 percent battery to empty.
What do you think? Have you noticed worse battery life on a newer device as compared to a previous model in the line? Let us know your experiences in the comments!
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