Tom’s Guide on Monday, published the detailed results of a study it conducted on the amount of time taken by a number of popular premium smartphones in the market today, across platforms. The results for the most part, showed Asus’s ZenFone 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy S6 winning most categories, although some other devices like the LG G4 and the Droid Turbo from Motorola didn’t fare too badly either. Apple’s iPhone 6 meanwhile, brought up the rear in almost all categories. The OnePlus 2 also failed to hold its own in most of the tests performed, according to the report.
Coming to the test methodology, the source says it decided to run down all devices until they powered off by themselves. After which, they were charged back up to 5 percent battery life each, before the testing began. This was done to ensure all devices were at an equal footing to start off with, as different devices power down with different amounts of juice remaining in the battery. Turns out within five minutes of being plugged-in, the Asus ZenFone 2 had regained 17 percent of its charge, which is a full 11 percentage points higher than the last placed iPhone 6, which was only able to recover 1 percentage point of charge in the first five minutes, and had barely registered 6 percent charge overall. After 15 minutes, the results were along similar lines, with the ZenFone 2 leading the way with 32 percent, but the Galaxy S6 by now had started to creep up to its Taiwanese rival, and was at number two with 27 percent charge. The OnePlus 2 and the iPhone 6 tied for the last place with just 20 percent charge completed at this stage.
At the half hour mark, The ZenFone 2 and the Galaxy S6 were all tied-up with exactly 53 percent charge apiece. The Nexus 6 was at number three with 44 percent, while LG’s G4 was at number four with 42 percent. Motorola’s Droid Turbo came in at number five with its large 3,900 mAh battery, whereas the iPhone 6 and the OnePlus 2 continued to lag behind at numbers six and seven respectively. Tom’s Guide’s test also showed that the ZenFone 2 was the second fastest to 80 percent charge behind the Galaxy S6. While the S6 took 48 minutes to reach the milestone, the ZenFone 2 needed 56 minutes to reach the mark. Asus’ device however couldn’t hold its own at the 100 percent mark, and had slid down to number five in the list, taking an hour and 49 minutes to reach the milestone. It was followed only by OnePlus 2, which took 2 hours and 10 minutes, and the iPhone 6, which took even longer – 2 hours and 35 minutes – to reach the landmark. The Galaxy S6 from Samsung was the clear winner here, having taken only an hour and 22 minutes to reach full battery life, albeit, with the smallest battery amongst the seven devices, at only 2,550 mAh.
Talking about the variations in battery sizes, it was the exact reason why Tom’s also calculated the best ‘milliamps per minute’ ratio among all the devices, as 80 percent charge for a 2,550 mAh battery represents something very different from 80 percent charge for a 3,900 mAh unit. While the Droid Turbo won the overall classification with 36 milliamps per minute at the 100 percent mark, the ZenFone 2 came up trumps in the 15 and 30 minute marks with 57 and 53 milliamps per minute respectively. The Galaxy S6 finished at number three at the 100 percent mark with 31.1 milliamps per minute, just a fraction behind LG’s G4, which clocked 31.25 milliamps per minute at full charge.
