I tested 10 flagship phones. This one has the best battery

When it comes to selecting the best phones, three key areas are most important. The display and the best smartphone camera are integral parts of the experience on most phones — especially with the display on the best folding phones — but battery life is important to every smartphone user.

Between different types of battery technology and a lot of variety in capacity and charging speeds, there’s a lot to take into consideration when evaluating the best smartphone battery life, especially as usage patterns vary so wildly as well. 

Yet, the question remains unanswered: which phone has the best battery life and charging? Since the iPhone launch last year, I’ve been testing the best phones as they’ve come into my possession. I’ve tested over 50 phones — folding and non-folding — over the past year, and here’s what I’ve found.

Understanding battery technology

Before we dig into the testing, a quick primer on battery technology. For almost three decades, the smartphone industry has been using lithium-ion batteries to power phones and other electronic devices that require a battery. 

The next generation of smartphone batteries uses Silicon Carbon technology, which offers higher energy density, faster charging capabilities, and potentially a longer lifespan. This means you can fit a bigger battery in the same-sized phone or a bigger battery in a thinner device, making it ideal for the best thin phones.

The first smartphone with a Silicon Carbon battery was the Honor Magic V5 Pro, which was introduced two years ago. Since then, we’ve seen many other Asian phone makers launch phones that utilize this battery technology. Samsung, Apple, and Google have yet to follow suit, but OnePlus launched the OnePlus 13 in January, making it the first smartphone in the US to utilize this architecture.

Curating the best phones for testing

There are so many phones released each year, both inside and outside the US, that testing every single device wouldn’t be feasible, at least not for this mid-year test. However, the data I collected over the past year, combined with my own subjective experiences with each device, means it’s possible to calculate which phones to include in these tests. 

To simplify the testing and results, I’ve split the shortlist into two categories: candybar phones and the best folding phones:

• Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max
• Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
• Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
• Google Pixel 9 Pro XL
• OnePlus 13
• Motorola Razr 60 Ultra
• Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6
• Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6
• Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold
• Oppo Find N5

Here’s a quick overview of the key battery specs for the shortlist:

How I tested these phones

I have been reviewing phones for almost twenty years, and have been objectively testing phones since 2015. To reduce the number of variables, I ensured that these tests were run after a factory reset, with a specific test account installed on the phone. This helped limit any potential data corruption caused by a particular app or background data usage.

Each phone underwent the same testing. Each test was conducted with the display set to 200 nits of brightness to minimize variations caused by auto-brightness or different display brightness controllers. For the folding phones, the tests were conducted on the cover display.

To test the phones, I charged each to 100% and then ran various tests. The first involved browsing a looping set of websites and social feeds, while the second ran the same test, but with a looped video. The gaming test involved playing Genshin Impact for 60 minutes and extrapolating battery usage from there. 

The best battery life for web browsing and social media

Let’s first take a look at the results of the browsing and social media test for each of the five non-folding phones:

The biggest surprise through all of this testing is just how capable the Motorola Razr 60 Ultra battery proves to be. In this test, it outranks the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which lasted considerably longer than any other phone since the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Both of these devices outperform your expectations based on their capacity, whereas the opposite is true of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which should be better.

The best battery life for video playback

Of course, web browsing and social media playback is only one test, albeit the most varied one I tried. A more strenuous test is video playback, especially as it engages the graphics card more strenuously than the simpler first test.

The OnePlus 13 unsurprisingly outperforms the competition here, as the larger capacity and software optimizations work their magic. The iPhone 16 Pro Max meets expectations here as Apple’s software and hardware integration proves to be magical for endurance. It’ll be interesting to see how the new background tasks feature in iOS 26 affects this.

I’m very impressed by the Galaxy S25 Edge here, as it has the smallest battery in this list — unsurprising as it’s the thinnest non-folding phone — but it ranks 5th in one of the more strenuous tests. If you watch a lot of movies, this phone will likely handle what you throw at it.

The best battery life for gaming

The first two tests have become progressively more strenuous, but how does each phone endure when tested under heavy gaming conditions? Where applicable, I enabled game mode (or a similar feature) but left the settings at their default values. 

I was taken aback by the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s results here, but a retest revealed similar results, so this is a clear example of how a feature like Samsung’s Game Booster can extend your battery life under heavy gaming conditions. This is made even more surprising, given that it shares the 8-core Snapdragon 8 Elite processor with the OnePlus 13, albeit Samsung has developed an optimized version of the processor for its flagship devices.

The iPhone proves to be an endurance champion yet again, and the Find N5 and Razr 60 Ultra both continue to prove that folding phones can offer better battery life than non-folding phones. The rest of the results are as I expected: the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Z Fold 6, and Flip 6 all rank low in most of the tests. 

Before we head to the charging tests, here’s a quick look at the overall top 3 in the battery tests: iPhone 16 Pro Max (27 points), Motorola Razr 60 Ultra (25 points), and OnePlus 13 (24 points).

The phones that charge the fastest

Of course, when your battery is running low, you need fast charging, so which of these phones charges the fastest? 

First, a quick note about mAh/min. It’s a metric I have been using for years, and it’s designed to standardize charging speeds while eliminating the variability of battery capacity and charging speed. It also applies to the 15-minute reading, where we record the battery percentage reported by the phone and multiply it by the capacity to estimate the mAh charged during those 15 minutes.

Let’s take a look, first, at the time taken for a full charge:

For more than a decade, one thing has been clear: companies like Huawei, Oppo, Honor, and OnePlus have all figured out how to recharge phones quickly and safely. This has been the case since long before the introduction of the new generation of Silicon Carbon batteries, and the technology is significantly faster than its competitors.

The result is that it’s no surprise that OnePlus and Oppo dominate the list. However, the biggest surprise comes from the Motorola Razr 60 Ultra and its new 68W charging, which significantly increases charging speeds. 

I don’t know about you, but I often forget to charge my phone, or the battery runs low when I only have a short moment to recharge. For those times, I also noted the percentage each phone added to the battery after a 15-minute charge. 

This overall charging test is when Apple’s core weakness becomes apparent. The battery life of the iPhone 16 Pro Max is fantastic, but the charging speeds leave much to be desired. As you’ll see below, however, this is not always the case, and the slower overall iPhone charging speeds are usually due to the device charging more slowly (to protect the battery) once it reaches 80%. 

The phone with the best battery is…

There’s a lot more testing to do on these phones and many of the best upcoming folding phones like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7, but where do Samsung’s current folding phones stand? How about the new Galaxy S25 Edge? How does the thin body affect that battery compared to its beefier sibling? 

Let’s look at the final results to find out!

It’s no surprise that the Galaxy Z Flip 6 comes last, especially given it’s been there for most of these tests, but it does have me curious whether they’ll be able to improve it in the upcoming Z Flip 7. The Galaxy S25 Edge performs admirably given the capacity constraints, especially as it has the smallest battery of all.

In the top 5, Apple is the most interesting. Improving charging speeds would eliminate the gap to the top of the leaderboard, especially since it currently ranks first in the battery life tests. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a solid contender, but it shows that there’s still room for Samsung to improve.

The top 3 are very interesting. The Oppo Find N5 has the best book-style folding phone battery life that I’ve tested, and this rings true in the testing. The same applies to the Razr 60 Ultra, which proves that flip phones can be just as capable as non-flip ones. I’m very surprised by just how capable the Razr 60 Ultra battery life proves to be in this test. 

The best phone for overall battery life, however, is the OnePlus 13, which continues the OnePlus trend of offering outstanding battery life and super-fast charging. This is the biggest and best battery in a OnePlus phone to date, and shows that Silicon Carbon is the smartphone battery future we’ve been waiting for.