Long battery life is consistently among the most important purchasing decision factors among smartphone buyers. It’s certainly within my top 5 list, along with screen size and memory. But as consumers have experienced and our real-world data illustrates, smartphone brands and models deliver varying amounts of battery life.
Before proceeding to the findings, let’s acknowledge some important and obvious points. First, device manufacturers offer an assortment of smartphones with differing features and at varying price points to suit the span of consumer preferences. Hence, in some sense, it is difficult to formulate comparisons at the brand level. However, when buyers choose between phones, brand is an instrumental component and factor in their purchasing decision. A second matter worth noting – which is, users understand that their phone usage pattern has a direct influence and impact upon the rate of battery loss – that is, watch more videos; loose battery life. However, as shown in the table below, the average use between brands is not glaringly disparate – with average use ranging from roughly 3 to 2.6 hours per day and 478 to 419 MB per day per user.
But now here’s the rub – regardless of the apps users run or the number of pictures or videos viewed, consumers want more battery life. Given this backdrop (for better or worse – you pick), below is battery life data from our AppOptix mobile consumer platform showing varying battery drain times (from 100% to 0%) among notable brands. At the upper end (better battery life) ZTE, Motorola, and HTC have roughly 4 hours of better battery life compared to Samsung, which still maintains an average of over 18 hours of battery life.
As discussed earlier, the above data provides a high level view of battery life by brand; however, due to the diversity of models on the market across brands, a comparison of battery life by segments will provide deeper insight on this topic. In fact, SA is working on publishing a more comprehensive battery life assessment (under AppOptix) that explores these other issues, including battery life analysis by type of user (power, etc.) and price tier of device.
The above data is sourced by Strategy Analytics’ AppOptix platform. Additional information on the AppOptix is found here.