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.
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.
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.
