Measuring the autonomy of a phone is a much more complicated task than it seems. In many cases, the most objective tests do not correspond to real real use. And this real use often consumes more energy than we think.

Because yes, carrying your mobile phone in a holder in the car, in the sun, with Google Maps active and Spotify playing music on 5G networks, sending audio to the car via Bluetooth could be more expensive than any benchmarking exercise.

This is what I thought about when I tested phones in recent months. If we only talk about hours of screen time, the autonomy figures are almost the same. This is something that has not changed in the last decade, and there are those responsible for it.

The unwritten rule of screen time. What is good screen time? For some, it will be seven hours. For those who do not leave the house, it will be ten. Screen time is completely variable depending on how we use the phone. Using pure multimedia consumption, on Wi-Fi networks and with low brightness, almost every phone can get hours of screen time.

On 5G, using the camera a lot and at maximum brightness, I haven’t tested a single phone (and I’ve tested pretty much everything else on the market) that went over 5:30 hours in this scenario.

Despite this variability, it seems that there are unchanging, unwritten rules in the forums.

• 3 to 4 hours of screen time. a drama
• Screen time from 5 to 6 hours. Sufficient autonomy.
• Screen time from 7 to 8 hours. Very good autonomy.
• 9 to 10 hours of screen time. Reserved for true drum monsters

Rules written over ten years. The Snapdragon 800 in the LG G2 was a 28-nanometer processor. A figure that makes us raise our hands when compared to current chips. The phone, which has a 3,000mAh battery, has been called one of the best examples of autonomy. In my case, it was between 6 and 8 hours of screen time.

8 years later, high-end mobile phones have three-nanometer processors (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3), much more efficient front panels, albeit larger, and batteries that are almost twice as big (5,000 mAh). Autonomy figures? Same, or even lower.

Some interesting facts. When we examine the history of GSMarena, we see very strange data. It should be noted that battery measurement tests have changed over the years, so some of the differences may be due to this. However, if we take the X mobile as a reference and

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+: 25.16 hours of call time, 12.22 hours of screen-on time in multimedia playback.
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9: 34.54 hours of call time, 18 hours of screen time in multimedia playback.
• LG G2: 25.01 hours of call time, 11.51 hours of screen-on time in multimedia playback.
• LG G6: 22.30 hours of call time, 10.27 hours of screen-on time in multimedia playback.
• Google Pixel 2 XL: 26:58 hours of call time, 11:45 hours of screen-on time in multimedia playback.
• Google Pixel 8 Pro: 25:24 hours of call time, 12:18 hours of screen-on time in multimedia playback.

If we consider that on older mobile phones, screen time was measured by playing h. 264 video at a constant 200 nits loop, and on current mobile phones, the test was a completely white video loop at 200 nits, the comparison makes some sense. Of course, it is also necessary to take into account that the first tests were done with local video playback (there was no Netflix, YouTube was not that popular). Now the conditions are changing and the measurement is done by streaming more consuming content.

This also applies to voice calls; the main difference here is that in the old mobile phones this was measured under 3G networks and now under 4G networks, which primarily resulted in much greater energy efficiency. The data is terrible, however: It is quite easy to find mobile phones from a few years ago that have better autonomy than current mobile phones.

Wanted criminals. Mobile phones and the use we give them have changed a lot. 10 years ago, a mobile phone larger than five inches was considered a “phablet”; that was a time when sanity was at its best. Now we’re flirting with 6.9 inches and, above all, brightness levels have skyrocketed. The loading of ads on sites, their weight, the size of the apps we use, the graphical load of games…

Even the consumption of elements such as speakers, cameras (4K, 8K video recording, computational load when capturing and processing photos) … everything seems to be more demanding on the energy level. We also now have energy-consuming vapor chambers, designs that prioritize thinness (one of the biggest handicaps of continuing to increase capacity) and software that is increasingly loaded with functions.

In summary, although the capacity of mobile batteries has increased, the complexity and energy demands of modern devices have increased at the same time, and autonomy has remained at a similar level to previous years.

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