iPhone 7 Finishes Last In New Test of Battery Life (betanews.com)

"Pitted against the Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC 10 and LG G5, Apple's latest handset came in last place... and by some distance," reports BetaNews. Here's the results of a new test from the U.K. consumer advocacy group, Which?: We compared the iPhone 7's battery life, when making calls and browsing the web, to those of three top Android competitors: the Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC 10 and LG G5, and the results were staggering. While the iPhone 7's 712 minutes of call time (nearly 12 hours) may sound acceptable, the rival Samsung Galaxy S7 lasted twice as long -- and it doesn't even have the longest lasting battery. The HTC 10 lasted an incredible 1,859 minutes (that's almost 31 hours).

When it comes to internet browsing time, arguably the more important measurement, the results were a lot closer...but the iPhone 7 still came bottom. The 615 minutes of battery life offered by the iPhone 7 is 25 minutes less than its nearest rival, the LG G5, and 175 minutes less than the top performing HTC 10.
The researchers point out that the iPhone 7 has a smaller battery -- but that's leaving critics unimpressed. The Guardian newspaper is asking, "How good can a phone be if the battery doesn't last even a day?"

Comments

Re:Battery size doesn't matter

[Gravis Zero]

Battery size is the old MHz (GHz) game that CPU manufacturers (mostly) used to play. It's more about system optimization and total component draw vs that battery installed.

That's funny, they don't even mention the battery capacities of each phone until you click through to the detailed blog post, just how long each phone lasts with it's battery. So what's your complaint exactly?

Variance from Ars Technica's Wifi testing

[berj]

This is a *huge* variance from Ars Technica's wifi battery testing:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

They found that the iPhone 7 lasted much longer in both of their web browsing tests than the HTC 10 and lasted only a bit less than the S7 and G5.

Even on Which's 3G (why only 3G ?) web browsing testing, phones with 1.5 times the battery don't get anywhere near that much extra life.

It's pretty hard to judge without more samples and more info on the testing methods but, taking these tests at face value:

a) iOS 10 seems *horribly* optimized for 3G phone calling
b) Android (along with whatever extra stuff is on the three Android phones) seems terribly optimized at the other stuff. They have *much* larger batteries but don't manage anywhere near commensurate battery life with Wifi or 3G web browsing tests.

Re:Impossible

[LynnwoodRooster]

iPhone 7 dimensions: 138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm

Samung S7 dimensions: 142.4 x 69.6 x 7.9 mm

LG G5 dimensions: 149.4 x 73.9 x 7.7 mm

HTC 10 dimensions: 145.9 x 71.9 x 9 mm

The Samsung and the LG are very close in dimensions (oh, and they kept their 3.5mm audio jacks). The HTC10 is the big boy, being a bit thicker (1.9mm - about 2 fingernail thicknesses).

And of course, the iPhone is just 750 x 1334 pixels, the others are pushing 1440 x 2560 pixels, nearly 4 times the number of pixels as well, meaning their GPUs are working a lot harder for that rendering on the screen. Even with that against them - they still trash the iPhone in terms of battery life.

Re:Seriously? It doesn't matter?

[rtb61]

Battery size also needs to take into account phone serviceability at one year, two years and even five years. Here's the really bad news the smaller your battery, the much faster you will go through recharges and the faster you will shorten the life of the battery, half the size, twice as many recharges and half the life. Fixed batteries are a major rip off and the purposeful inclusion of a phone failure device to force repurchase of that phone. I am quite simply refusing to purchase any phone without a user replaceable battery, no better lesson in this than Samsung's billion dollar fuck up. Battery powered and I can replace the battery, than they can quite simply fuck off, I am not going to buy, I am not that stupid.