iPhone X/8 Plus Crush Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ in Battery Life Tests

Despite being equipped with much larger Li-ion battery packs, new tests have revealed that the battery life performance of Samsung’s latest Galaxy S9 and S9+ devices pale in comparison to Apple’s iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus.

Independent battery performance tests conducted by PhoneArena revealed that even despite their voluminous superiority, Samsung’s S9 and S9+ are simply no match against Apple’s iPhone X and 8 Plus — as far as battery life is pertinent.

• Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and S9+ are equipped with non-removable Li-ion batteries clocking in at 3,000 mAh and 3,500 mAh, respectively.
• Apple’s tenth-anniversary iPhone X is equipped with a considerably smaller 2,716 mAh battery — and the iPhone 8 Plus, at 2,691 mAh, is even smaller than that.

While the Galaxy S9 and S9+ were able to achieve battery longevity of 7 hours and 23 minutes and 8 hours and 5 minutes, Apple’s iPhone X (even with its considerably smaller battery) trumped them both clocking in at 8 hours and 41 minutes.

Apple’s iPhone 8 Plus logged an impressive 10 hours 35 minutes, according to PhoneArena’s findings, which also revealed that the highest performing smartphone flagship was Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro which logged 12 hours and 5 minutes.

Similar battery life tests, which yielded slightly less significant results, were also conducted by Anandtech as part of their exclusive Galaxy S9 and S9+ review.

According to those test results, when browsing the web over Wi-Fi, Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and S9+ clocked in at 9.66 hours and 10.48 hours, respectively.

In comparison, Apple’s iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus garnered slightly higher battery performance ratings of 9.76 hours and 11.83 hours, respectively.

As Anandtech noted in their lengthy Galaxy S9/S9+ review, it appears that Samsung’s Exynos 9810 Octa-core SoC might be to blame for their otherwise lackluster battery performance in comparison to Apple’s custom A11 chips built into the iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus.

Also likely a culprit in contributing to their poorer battery performance is the fact that Samsung’s S9/S9+ flagships are equipped with larger AMOLED displays clocked at higher resolutions.

Even the iPhone X, which shares a similar 5.8-inch AMOLED display with Samsung’s Galaxy S9, is clocked at a lower resolution of 1,125 x 2,436 in comparison to the Galaxy S9’s 1,440 x 2,960.

Of course, these factors are merely the tip of the iceberg as far as determining why Samsung’s Galaxy S9/S9+ were so embarrassingly crushed by Apple’s iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.

However it’s important to keep in mind that while these performance tests are meant to provide a general guidance of what users can expect of their daily battery performance, each user’s actual battery life ratings are more likely to vary based on their individual usage patterns.