It’s been 12 years since we introduced our original battery life test. The first device ever to earn the GSMArena Endurance Rating was the Nokia N9. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, it was the same year that the iPhone 4S was introduced and Apple introduced Siri for the first time.
The mobile technology landscape was very different back then. Social networking on mobile devices was in its infancy, 4G wasn’t widespread, and online video wasn’t as popular as it is today.
Our battery test mirrored those times, focusing on calls, web browsing, local video watching, and idle standby to create the endurance rating you’re all familiar with. For 12 years, this metric has been a reliable benchmark in our reviews.
However, technology and usage patterns evolve. Today we’re excited to unveil ours Battery Life Test 2.0.
Our new battery test setup evaluates the phone’s battery life if we used it without taking a break. This revamped approach better captures current trends in smartphone usage, and our new tests are optimized to test the latest hardware.
You can learn more about the technical aspects of how we test here. Thanks to our partners at SmartViser for making the necessary automations possible for our editorial battery test protocols.
New and updated tests
- Call test: The Call test remains a staple in our battery tests. Now that it’s running on a 4G network, the result remains largely consistent with our past tests.
- Web browsing test: Updated with a new set of modern web pages with scrolling and touch input every 3 seconds, the web browsing test now simulates real-life usage much better. This revamped test also takes into account the use of social networking apps as it produces identical scores in our tests.
- Video streaming test: We’ve moved away from playing local video files and stream directly from YouTube. This updated test also takes into account the use of short video apps (e.g. TikTok).
- Game test: A new addition to our test suite, the Gaming test is where we loop a popular 3D game with a higher-than-average GPU load.
The active usage score is here
These new battery tests are combined in our new Active usage score, which is an estimate of battery life if you use the device with a mix of all four activities. The active usage score displayed by default uses our balanced usage mix, placing a slight emphasis on web and video.
A nice feature is that you can adjust the active usage score based on your usage patterns and preferences. This custom metric is saved persistently for your browser, and unless you use the Reset button on the widget below, you’ll see your preferred usage mix in all battery tests you run in the future.
Your personalized active usage score will also appear at the bottom of the spec pages of all phones we tested with the new test setup.
We are discontinuing the Endurance classification, and the new name more clearly conveys the change in our approach to battery testing.
We have already started testing devices again with this new methodology. For a full list of results so far, go this way.
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