You’ve probably seen or read a lot of articles about extending battery life on the internet. Since no one enjoys having to constantly connect a phone to the wall, it’s a popular issue. The majority of power-saving articles, however, offer suggestions on how to extend the life of your battery. Instead, this time we’ll list every single thing that contributes to smartphone battery consumption.
In fact, the list is rather lengthy, which is likely a good sign of why so many individuals have battery life issues. It’s challenging to monitor every tiny action your phone takes. Nonetheless, we hope that this information will assist you in diagnosing battery problems and modifying your usage to extend battery life. This is our comprehensive guide to all the factors influencing smartphone battery life.
The size of the battery
The size of the battery itself is the most evident factor affecting battery life, so we’ll start there. Your phone’s battery size affects how long it will last before dying, yet not all smartphones have the same size. The standard unit of measurement for smartphone batteries is milliamp-hours (mAh). Most of this arithmetic is elementary. A phone’s theoretical lifespan should increase with its mAh capacity. Although it isn’t always the case, it’s a decent starting point.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and other high-end phones feature enormous 5,000mAh batteries, whereas other phones, including the standard Galaxy S23 with its 3,900mAh battery, have smaller cells. Phones with larger batteries often have longer battery lives than those with smaller batteries.
There are, of course, a lot of additional considerations. Your battery will drain more quickly from larger, high-refresh-rate screens and more potent processors. Below is more information about such factors. The phone with the larger battery will, however, just last longer if the specifications are the same.
Display
A display can impact battery life in four different ways. The first is size; larger displays need more power to light up since they have a larger surface area. There is a trade-off because phones with bigger screens typically have bigger batteries.
Resolution is the second way that a phone’s display impacts battery life. Although there aren’t many differences, they can be measured objectively. A 1440p monitor has 77% more pixels than a 1080p display, and rendering those extra pixels takes more computing power, which in turn uses more energy. To aid reduce processing power and battery life, OEMs occasionally include a 1080p mode to a 1440p display.
More battery is used by displays than by any other part of the phone.
Another important power demand is brightness. This also comes down to basic math. Something needs more electricity the brighter it is. Changing the brightness from 50% to 40% makes it less obvious. However, you’ll most likely notice a difference when you go from 80% to 20%.
Lastly, the refresh rate of the display is quite important. The refresh rate, which is expressed in hertz (Hz), indicates how frequently a screen refreshes each second. The 90Hz and 120Hz screens on more recent phones refresh 50%–100% more frequently than those on standard 60Hz screens. That uses a significant amount of additional processing power and strains the battery of your phone. Adaptive refresh rates, which can decrease to as low as 1Hz when viewing static material, are a feature of several current phones that help prevent battery depletion.
Since screens are the primary means of interacting with phones, they consume more battery than any other single part of a device. For this reason, the majority of battery-saving tips center on display adjustments. But reducing your brightness by a few percentage points hardly makes a difference, and resolution only becomes important if you spend a lot of time in front of the screen. Lastly, dark themes don’t work as well on AMOLED screens as most people believe.
Relationships
Battery life is greatly impacted by connections. The most popular connections include location services, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, data, and your cell phone signal. There are several ways that connections deplete the battery, and the first is quite clear.
These connections will consume extra power throughout the day if you enable them and don’t utilize them. This drain has been reduced by hardware and software advancements, and it is hardly a problem anymore. Although not nearly as much as it formerly did, it still drains the battery.
Furthermore, a poor signal can significantly worsen battery drain. It’s also a really challenging issue to resolve. The signal strength is checked by your device on a regular basis. The phone checks more often when reception is poor, and this continuous checking depletes the battery. This often only occurs in specific building types and unsatisfactory reception areas, but if you live (or work) in one of such locations, it can be a persistent and almost intractable issue.
You lose battery life each time your phone connects to something.
Lastly, your battery is depleted by actually using these connections. Your phone will be actively using its networking gear for five minutes if you browse online and download a file. This also applies to voice calls, where your phone uses its radio for the duration of the call.
Many people advise turning off all connections when not using your phone by putting it in airplane mode. In addition to being intrusive and obnoxious, it doesn’t actually save that much battery. While at home (or at work), we advise maintaining a Wi-Fi connection. Furthermore, there are settings in the Google Play Store, Google Photos, Amazon Photos, and other apps that will delay updates or backups until you’re plugged in. It’s a good idea to examine what can wait till your phone is safely charging.
Other than that, just exercise common sense and pay attention to how your connections are functioning. If your phone’s battery is only at 12%, don’t start downloading a brand-new 5GB game from the Play Store.
Chipset
Since it powers the entire phone, the chipset is perhaps more important than anything else in this case (except from the display). A chipset can affect the battery in a variety of ways. Because root users have access to tools for CPU tinkering, this is particularly true for them. Nevertheless, there are performance modes on some non-root phones that will drain your battery like water in a desert.
For everyday users, the chipset’s generation is the most important factor. Chips are becoming quicker, smaller, and more energy-efficient every year. The most recent Qualcomm chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, carries on the legacy of the Snapdragon 855, which was quicker and used less energy than the Snapdragon 845. The same is true of MediaTek’s silicon, Samsung’s Exynos chips, and Huawei’s Kirin SoCs. Although this is a complicated subject, the simplest explanation is that modern chipsets are capable of performing the same tasks as older ones, but they do so more quickly, with less heat, and with less energy. Battery life is impacted by each of those factors.
Many individuals don’t realize how significant an improved chipset is.
Additionally, the chipset model is important. One of the major surprises of 2019 in terms of battery life was the Pixel 3a XL. The Snapdragon 670, a less potent chip designed for battery life rather than performance like the Snapdragon 855, was partially to blame for that. Conversely, chipsets that are overclocked, such as the Snapdragon 855 Plus, consume more power than their conventional equivalents.
Since many people only consider raw performance while discussing new smartphones, chipset changes are often disregarded. But these days, it’s arguable that the improvements in efficiency, size, and heat are more significant than the actual performance gains.
The camera
One of a phone’s most crucial physical components is the camera. It can, however, potentially significantly deplete the battery. The fact that it is an independent piece of hardware is the first and most evident explanation. It requires power to operate, particularly if it incorporates moving components, such as the motorized front camera of some OnePlus phones or Samsung’s multi-aperture cameras.
However, display and CPU usage account for the great majority of camera battery drain. Your display serves as a viewfinder, and some original equipment manufacturers even increase the display’s brightness when it is in camera mode. Furthermore, post-processing, which is a feature of all contemporary smartphones, demands additional computing power. Unique camera capabilities like Night Sight on Pixel devices or LG’s triple shot on the LG V40 further enhance this.
Battery life will be below average if you use your camera frequently.
Video uses more battery power. Depending on the video’s frame rate, the CPU must take anywhere from 30 to 60 pictures per second and eventually stitch them all together. Resolution is important here, of course. 4K video uses more processing power than 720p video for obvious reasons.
Compared to those who don’t use their cameras frequently, shutterbugs use up their batteries far more quickly. Furthermore, apps like Snapchat that heavily rely on the camera may cause more battery drain over time due to their excessive camera usage.
Other hardware
In essence, while a phone is in use, every piece of hardware depletes the battery to some degree. The examples are numerous. A processor called the Pixel Visual Core aids in post-processing on Pixel phone cameras. The Soli chip in the Pixel 4 series phones was constantly active and kept an eye out for movement. Numerous other original equipment manufacturers offer phones that contain additional small hardware components that need power to operate.
Every phone is also impacted by other factors. A vibration motor shouldn’t consume the battery so much, would it? That vibration motor operates hundreds of times a day, though, if you’re among those who receive hundreds of notifications.
Consider how many times a day your phone makes noise or vibrates. Every week? Every year? With time, it accumulates.
Speakers are no different. Every time you make a phone call, watch a video, listen to music, or leave your notification tones on. By keeping everything on silent, you may conserve battery life, but what fun is that? As with everything, the more you use it, the more power it consumes, albeit occasionally the impact on the battery is little.
In general, the frequency of use of those items is directly connected to the quantity of actual drain. If not in use, the Soli chip in the Pixel 4 XL cannot deplete the battery. Furthermore, there are instances where the power drain is so small that it is inconsequential. For example, according to Samsung, 0.5mAh, or around 1/9,000th of the Note 10 Plus battery, is needed to fully charge the S Pen.
Age and Temperature
Age and temperature have a significant impact on smartphone battery life. New batteries that are kept at room temperature perform at their best. However, time passes forever and phones heat up when in use, so these two factors inevitably reduce battery life. Actually, the main cause of your phone’s declining battery life as it ages is age.
Each time you charge your phone, the maximum battery capacity is reduced by one or two seconds. Batteries store and process energy through chemical processes, and no chemical reaction is ever-ending. However, the process has undergone significant optimization, which is why batteries initially have such a long lifespan. Furthermore, even when batteries are not being used, their capacity decreases. A great article about the topic may be found here in Popular Mechanics.
Your phone’s long-term battery life will suffer if you leave it in a hot car or use it while charging.
It’s a little trickier with temperature. Warmer batteries operate better, while colder batteries have smaller capacities (keep in mind that we’re working with chemicals). On the other hand, prolonged exposure to high temperatures can eventually lead to irreversible battery deterioration. According to Battery University, the ideal operating temperature for contemporary lithium batteries is around 68F. However, this issue is more or less inevitable because most people are unable to maintain their body temperature throughout their lives. The good news is that OEMs have made charging and rapid charging so efficient that there aren’t many chances for users to make serious mistakes.
Some charging tips can assist stop excessive battery deterioration from age and heat. Even with best standards, though, it’s generally accepted that after 1,000 charges, your battery will have lost about 20% of its capacity. By not using your phone while it charges, charging it less frequently (choose phones with a long battery life instead of ones with quick charging), and avoiding playing demanding games that use a lot of battery power for extended periods of time, you can prevent significant degradation.
Of course, there are also phones with batteries that can be changed, but the list is getting less each year. When purchasing a smartphone, this shouldn’t be a big deal for most individuals.
Disclaimer
This article’s content is only meant to be used for broad educational and informational purposes. Based on widely available technical knowledge and industry-accepted principles at the time of writing, all content pertaining to smartphone battery life, hardware components, display characteristics, chipset efficiency, connectivity consumption, temperature effects, and device aging is presented.
Device model, manufacturer design, operating system version, battery capacity (mAh), usage patterns, network circumstances, ambient temperature, and installed programs all have a substantial impact on battery performance. Individual outcomes will vary from device to device, even though the elements included in this tutorial may help readers better understand battery consumption patterns.