Nowadays, we have an App for everything we need. From ordering food to buying a second hand car, from learning a new language to being reminded to drink water. All this and not to forget our favourites — WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and lots more. Unknowingly, there are plenty of such apps that keep running in the background which eventually take a hit at the battery. Apart from apps, the other thing which harms the battery life are the bright and crisp high-res displays offered to us for a vivid experience.
It isn’t uncommon to see people around you charging their phones twice a day and carrying a power bank on the move. The only way manufacturers are able to compensate for this is by putting bigger batteries in their smartphones. For eg: Samsung fit a 17 percent bigger battery in the Galaxy S7, without a significant increase in the footprint when compared to the S6. Due to which the S7 sustains for 80 hours whereas the S6 lives up to 73 hours in GSMArena’s endurance test.
Talking about iOS, let’s have a look at the iPhone 6S & the iPhone 6S Plus. Both the phones offer the same silicon specs but the only considerable difference amongst these two is their display & the battery. The 6S has a 4.7-inch 1136 x 640 pixel display with a 1715mAh battery, whereas the 6S Plus has a 5.5 inch 1920 x 1080 pixel display (almost an inch more than the 6S) and holds in a 2750mAh battery.
Through this research, we try to find what’s the average battery capacity to expect for a particular display size. This should be a good measure for you to understand how much battery, on an average, is typically fit into a phone of your choice of screen size.
In the following report, we considered all the phones released from Jan 2015 till date, available in the market. We study the most popular screen sizes. After selecting a particular dimension, we then churn out the average battery capacity you can expect for it. And then with the help of Pricebaba’s Value-For-Money score, we fetched the best phone with good battery for that said size.
P.S: Pricebaba’s VFM Score takes in consideration all the aspects of a mobile phone including battery size and then compares it with phones in the similar price range. This calculation gives the phone it’s Value-For-Money score.
P.S 2: Battery size isn’t the only measure of a good battery life, but a fair indicator nonetheless, especially when you’re comparing similarly-specced phones running the same OS.
Let’s begin.
We first looked at phones with 4-inch to 4.7-inch displays, which are now slowly going out of trend. In the following picture, you can see the average battery size for phones with the popular 4.0 inch, 4.5 inch and 4.7 inch display sizes.
After analysing phones with 4.0 inch display, the average battery size is found to be approximately 1500mAh. If we were to recommend a phone with such display, we would choose the Vox Kick K4 which has a very high VFM Score and has a battery of 1400mAh.
When it comes to a phone with 4.5-inch display, the average battery size resulted to 1850mAh. We selected the Moto E (2nd Gen) for this price range as it has a 2390mAh battery along with a Quad-core processor.
The third display size under the popular 5-inch segment was 4.7 inches.We got an average battery size of 1980mAh for it. According to Pricebaba, the best phone for this display size is the Micromax Canvas Fire 4G Plus which has a battery capacity of 2000mAh.
We then looked at the common dimensions that are currently been shipped out from manufacturers. The popular ones being 5 and 5.5 inch and the 5.2-inch screen size slowing striking a balance between the other two.
- The 5-inch dimension resulted in an average battery size of 2380mAh. The phone which scored the best VFM is the Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus which has a 2750mAh battery.
- The 5.2 inch display is preferred by many who want a good performance but do not wish to buy a large phone. The average battery size for this display is 2800mAh. The Samsung Galaxy A5 & the Micromax Canvas 5 are two good options to consider.
- The 5.5-inch display has gained immense popularity in the manufacturer circle. There’s been an significant growth in the number of phones with 5.5 inch displays. This screen size offers enough real estate to combine good hardware and decent battery in that phone. The average battery size came up to 3020mAh. Phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, OnePlus 3, and iPhone 6s Plus are good examples for this size.
Coming to the phablet sizes, we looked at the popular choices by manufacturers which are 5.7-inch & 6.0-inch.
- Samsung was the manufacturer who bought the phablet size in the limelight and since then the category has taken off without looking back. After analysing the phones with this display size, the average battery size came up to 3120mAh. The Nexus 6P has a battery capacity of 3450mAh and the phone offers good performance for the price.
- The 6-inch phone is near tablet territory and not a lot of manufacturers have ventured in this direction. The ones who have come up with such phones have not utilised the space to pack in more batteries. We saw a marginal increase, totalling up to 3190mAh as the average battery size for this display size. Surprisingly, there’s not a lot of good hardware available, however, the Nexus 6 is a decent attempt for a phone of this proportion.
With this report, we tried to establish a correlation between battery and screen size. Knowing that the battery size is limited to the dimensions of the phone, we have given you a fair idea of how much battery capacity to expect for a particular screen size. Throughout this research, we came across 6-inch screen phones which did not utilise its size for a battery advantage. However, we have found exceptions where a manufacturer has offered more battery than the average for a particular display size. For eg: The Zenfone Max is a reasonably sized 5.5-inch phone with a massive 5000mAh battery. Another example would be phones of the Marathon series by Gionee.
Great post!
But I feel that the Operating System plays an important factor along with Screen Size when it comes to the battery efficiency.
An android phone with similar specs as that of iPhone and same battery capacity would die off quicker.
Thoughts?
Fantastic Article! The analysis was very interesting and I enjoyed reading it..But there is one thing I am still confused about..I have heard that faster processor speed use more power and drain the battery faster…So what about the phone that has small screen size but a very powerful processor?? Can you please explain how processor can impact the battery life, keeping in mind about the screen size? Thank You.
Hey Viraj,
That’s an interesting thought. For a certain task, a better processor will take slightly more power but finish the task much faster allowing the phone to go back to sleep. It completely depends on software and the duration of the tasks that the processor is asked to do. Phones like the Xperia Z3 Compact are good examples of powerful processor in a small phone.
Hi Sunny,
You are absolutely right. That is why we’ve mentioned the following in the beginning of the analysis:
“Battery size isn’t the only measure of a good battery life, but a fair indicator nonetheless, especially when you’re comparing similarly-specced phones running the same OS.”
It also boils down to how a person uses a device. Is the brightness full or dim? Are there more GPS or graphics intensive apps being used? Some use it sparingly, some heavily — thereby resulting in different opinions of battery life about the same phone.
But having said that, there’s a definite correlation between a bigger battery and a longer longevity. If you check metrics like the Endurance Ratings test on sites like GSMArena, we can conclude that a phone with a bigger battery will generally offer a better battery life than the one with a smaller one, given they both are fairly similar in terms of specs.