6 min read
Smartphones today need power—they’re no longer just for calling and messaging. Games, films, and images have us checking our battery indicators throughout the day and wondering when we should find a charger.
Smartphone companies have been working hard to enhance battery technology and power efficiency, which lengthen screen and standby time. Big batteries demand big phones, yet it’s easy to get a smartphone with multi-day battery life.
Not many people are willing to sacrifice features and performance for longer battery life. After all, how useful is a smartphone that lasts days if it can’t do everything? We’ve tested the latest phones to help you find the ones with the best battery life for shooting, gaming, messaging, and social media.
Top Phones with the Best Battery Life
Are you looking for a phone that lasts longer? Check out the top smartphones with the best battery life to keep you going all day and beyond.
One plus 12
Ultra-fast charging speeds set the OnePlus 12 apart from flagships with all-day battery life. You can go till nighttime without charging the 5,400mAh battery, and the 80W charger charges the phone quickly. The phone can charge at 100W wired and 50W wireless with the correct converter and pad.
Battery life aside, the OnePlus 12 is a great high-end Android phone featuring Android 14’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. It comes with 12GB or 16GB RAM and 256GB or 512GB of fast UFS 4.0 storage. Its 6.82-inch 120Hz AMOLED is bright enough for outdoor viewing.
OnePlus promises four major Android updates and five years of security patches, so the phone will be supported for as long as you use it.
One Plus 12R
The specs of the OnePlus 12R make it look like a flagship phone from last year rather than a budget phone. It has a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and up to 16GB of RAM. UFS 3.1 storage is fast, but USB 2.0 transfer speeds are slow. From a few feet away, it appears like a high-end OnePlus phone, and with plenty of performance for the newest apps and 3D games, you may forget you’re not using a flagship.
This phone’s 6.78-inch AMOLED panel lets you view outside while shooting photos. While the cameras were cut from the OnePlus 12, the 50MP main camera can still take good photos in good light. However, battery capacity is uncompromising. No wireless charging, but a large 5500mAh battery with 80W wired charging with the bundled charger.
Three major Android updates and four years of security patches are good for a budget handset like the OnePlus 12R. This phone comes with Android 14, so you can use it for years. Whatever carrier works best in your location, the Big Three carrier networks support 5G, so you’ll get fast bandwidth.
Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro
One of Qualcomm’s first phones to use Snapdragon 8 Elite, the ROG Phone 9 Pro showcases its performance and power economy. Qualcomm’s first chip made utilizing a 3-nanometer technology is likely responsible for the phone’s great battery life.
Asus added a 5,800mAh battery. Though not the largest, that’s more than most phones. Asus did some rigorous figure crunching to build a phone that can last 4.5 hours with even the most demanding games. In daily use, a single charge can last 15–20 hours of video streaming and surfing.
In recent years, Asus’s ROG Phones have abandoned their “gamer” style for a more popular appeal. The ROG Phone 9 Pro is still a gaming phone, but it’s more discreet. The blocky design has smoother edges and a matte back, but it still has the pinhole camera, a compromise the firm made last year to have an edge-to-edge display. That bothered dedicated gamers, but casual gamers who want a powerful, long-lasting phone won’t care.
The ROG Phone 9 Pro continues Asus’s quest to combine superb cameras and gaming capabilities. It has the same unexpectedly capable three-camera setup—50MP main shooter, 13MP ultra-wide, and 32MP 3x telephoto lenses—with an upgraded Sony Lytia 700 sensor and hybrid gimbal stabilizer. The Snapdragon 8 Elite’s small hardware upgrades introduce new image processing methods that might improve photography.
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL
After the AI-focused Google I/O 2024 event, there was eager anticipation for new hardware from Google. The Pixel 9 Pro XL has earned praise, with former AP Editor-in-Chief Daniel Bader calling it the first mature Pixel phone he can recommend without hesitation.
This recognition is well-earned. While past Pixel phones were known for overheating and efficiency issues, the Tensor G4 system-on-a-chip in the Pixel 9 Pro XL addresses these problems and improves screen-on time.
The Pro XL doesn’t match the massive battery capacity or ultra-fast charging speeds of the OnePlus 12, but it isn’t designed to. Google’s user-friendly interface and feature-packed software suite are crafted to appeal to the mass market, allowing users to capture stills and videos effortlessly and offering intuitive editing features.
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Rejecting the notion that “no phone is perfect,” the Pro XL and Pixel 9 Pro are among the most flawlessly designed phones available. The device features sleek flattened edges, a luxurious metallic frame, a matte glass back, and a redesigned camera visor that gives it an industrial aesthetic.
Google will continue to provide the latest software updates, delivering cutting-edge features as they become available. While not always bug-free, the consistency of these software updates has improved as the company refines its large-scale feature drops.
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G
Samsung Galaxy A15 is a good choice if battery life is your top priority and everything else is secondary. Samsung’s latest cheap smartphone is built to be affordable and perform well. High-quality build and long battery life are prioritized above new cameras and top performance.
That doesn’t mean the performance is bad, though. A MediaTek Dimensity 6100+ chipset powers the Galaxy A15, making it suitable for daily work and games. With 4GB RAM and 128GB storage, the Galaxy A15 shines in numerous ways. A vivid 6.5-inch 90Hz Super AMOLED display makes multimedia viewing fun, with a built-in headphone port, a rarity today.
The 50MP primary camera is good, but the 5MP ultrawide and 2MP macro cameras aren’t.
Due to its economical processor and above-average 5,000mAh battery, the Samsung Galaxy A15 lasts over a day. Despite its slow 25W charging and absence of premium features like wireless charging, users with lighter workloads can expect up to two days on a charge.
