Battery life in the latest phones really IS worse than in older models, new study finds

The Washington Post ran battery life tests on 13 phones, such as the iPhone XS
Report found that newer models had far worse battery life than older models did
Specifically, the iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than the older iPhone X

Published: 15:19 EDT, 2 November 2018 | Updated: 15:29 EDT, 2 November 2018

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Smartphones get more and more sophisticated every year, from flashy edge-to-edge screens and facial recognition to professional-grade cameras.

Despite these high-tech upgrades, it seems battery life hasn't gotten quite the boost many would have expected to arrive by now.

That's according to a new study by The Washington Post, which found that battery life in many handset makers' flagship phones suffered compared to older models.

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Smartphones get more and more sophisticated every year, but it seems battery life hasn't quite gotten the boost many would have expected to arrive in new devices by now

HOW LONG DO MOST PHONE BATTERIES LAST?

iPhone XR - 12 hours and 25 minutes
Samsung Note9 - 12 hours
iPhone 8 Plus - 10 hours and 10 minutes
Pixel 3 XL - 10 hours and 7 minutes
iPhone XS Max - 10 hours and 6 minutes
Pixel 2 - 9 hours and 57 minutes
iPhone 8 - 9 hours and 51 minutes
iPhone X - 9 hours and 30 minutes
Pixel 2 XL - 9 hours and 26 minutes
iPhone XS - 9 hours and 9 minutes
Samsung S9+ - 8 hours and 57 minutes
Pixel 3 - 8 hours and 28 minutes
Samsung S9 - 8 hours and 17 minutes

Source: The Washington Post

The Post conducted a series of battery life tests on 13 phones, including the new iPhone XS and Google's Pixel 3.

A light meter was used to make sure that every device was set to the same brightness.

Then, the phones were forced to automatically reload and scroll through several websites until their batteries died.

Surprisingly, the iPhone XS couldn't last as long as its predecessor, the iPhone X, dying a full 21 minutes earlier than the 10th anniversary device.

Meanwhile, the Pixel 3 died an hour and a half earlier than the Pixel 2.

The only device that seemed to counteract the assumption that older phones outlast new phones was the iPhone XR.

The iPhone XR lasted three hours longer than the iPhone X, bucking the general trend gleaned from the study.

It's likely that this is the case because Apple has outfitted the iPhone XR with a lower cost LCD display vs. the OLED screen used in the iPhone XS.

LCD panels require less light to operate than OLED displays, enabling them to burn through battery power at a slower rate.

The Post conducted a series of battery life tests on 13 phones, including the new iPhone XS and Google's Pixel 3. They found that the iPhone XS couldn't last as long as the iPhone X

That supports the reports findings that phones with more advanced screens, such as OLED displays, perform worse than those that don't feature that technology.

But it may depend on more things than just screen technology.

Samsung's Note9, released in August, lasted close to four hours longer than the S9, which was unveiled in February.

The Note9 features a much bigger battery than previous models.

This is in line with a broader trend in the smartphone industry of introducing bigger batteries in smartphones. According to iFixit, battery capacities have doubled in the past years, the Post noted.

However, many devicemakers don't want to rely on this strategy, as lithium ion batteries are hitting an inflection point where they simply can't keep up with users' heavy smartphone use, the Post said.

'Batteries improve at a very slow pace, about 5 percent per year,' Nadim Maluf, the CEO of Qnovo, told the Post.

'But phone power consumption is growing up faster than 5 percent.'

Users may have to choose between buying devices that ditch high-tech screens in favor of extended battery life, or be forced to plug in more often if they want the latest, greatest phone

Batteries will continue to drain as more and more devicemakers install high-resolution screens, which take more juice to power, as well as the rise of more complicated apps and rising phone usage.

And that battery drain is only expected to worsen with the rollout of 5G networks.

Users may have to choose between buying a device, such as the iPhone XR, which loses out on high-tech screens in favor of extended battery life, or be forced to plug in more often if they want the latest, greatest phone.

'Consumers have to start getting ready for compromise,' Maluf told the Post.

If not, they can always rely on other battery-saving measures, like turning the screen brightness down, using WiFi or even airplane mode instead of LTE connections and switching on power-saving features like Apple's Low Power Mode.

HOW DO LITHIUM ION BATTERIES WORK?

Batteries store and releases energy by moving electrons from one 'end' of the battery to the other.

We can use the energy from those moving electrons to do work for us, like power a drill.

These two battery 'ends' are known as electrodes. One is called the anode and the other is called the cathode.

Generally, the anode is made from carbon and the cathode from a chemical compound known as a metal oxide, like cobalt oxide.

The final battery ingredient is known as the electrolyte, and it sits in between the two electrodes.

In the case of lithium-ion batteries, the electrolyte is a salt solution that contains lithium ions—hence the name.

When you place the battery in a device, the positively charged lithium ions are attracted to and move towards the cathode.

Once it is bombarded with these ions, the cathode becomes more positively charged than the anode, and this attracts negatively charged electrons.

As the electrons start moving toward the cathode, we force them to go through our device and use the energy of the electrons 'flowing' toward the cathode to generate power.

You can think of this like a water wheel, except instead of water flowing, electrons are flowing.

Lithium-ion batteries are especially useful because they are rechargeable.

When the battery is connected to a charger, the lithium ions move in the opposite direction as before.

As they move from the cathode to the anode, the battery is restored for another use.

Lithium ion batteries can also produce a lot more electrical power per unit of weight than other batteries.

This means that lithium-ion batteries can store the same amount of power as other batteries, but accomplish this in a lighter and smaller package.