Phones with best battery life 2019 – buyer’s guide
Fast charging has been getting faster and more widely available even on more affordable smartphones. Still, while being able to top up a phone in less than an hour, or even half an hour, can lead to changing your charging habits entirely, actual battery autonomy remains a key priority – no VOOC can help you out when there’s no power outlet around.
So on this page you will find the phones that prioritize battery life and scored at the top of our battery testing chart.
Editors’ choice
- 112h Endurance rating (36:22h calls, 15:42h web, 16:07h video)
- Super cool rotating camera means selfies are as good as main-camera photos, plus you can have ultra wide selfies
- Excellent camera quality overall in both stills and video, stabilization is good too
- Top-tier chipset, flagship-grade performance
- Dedicated microSD slot
- Slow charging (2:32h to full, 35% in 30mins), no wireless charging
- No telephoto camera
- Possible reliability concerns over the moving bits
Our top pick for a battery life champ is the Zenfone 6 for managing to deliver excellent endurance while packing a high-end chipset.
The Zenfone has a 5,000mAh battery, which was one of the highest capacities back when we reviewed it. It aced our battery tests, delivering balanced results across the board and, perhaps more importantly, did that with a flagship Snapdragon 855 chip – the top-tier SoCs don’t normally go to the top our battery life charts. We can only imagine what could have been if Asus had fitted a more efficient OLED display instead of the somewhat dim LCD.
The flipside to the big battery is that in a land where the fastest solutions take half an hour to charge from 0 to 100%, the Zenfone 6 needs 5 times that. Ah, but priorities – Asus preferred to go for long battery longevity over fast charging.
Mind you, alongside the high-end silicon, the Zenfone has a very capable camera setup (albeit lacking a telephoto) for both stills and video. And the fact that it’s a flipping module that turns 180 degrees to face the front is not only cool, but also means you’d get some of the best selfies in the business and you can even have ultra wide-angle ones.
- FullHD 6.4″ Super AMOLED display
- 6,000mAh battery makes a promise we know it’ll keep
- Gaming-friendly Exynos 9611 chip
- Capable camera setup
- Dedicated microSD slot
- Plastic build, back is a fingerprint magnet
- The 15W charger will take a while to top up the M30s – you’ll be better off sticking to overnight charging
- 114h Endurance rating (33:28h calls, 15:06h web, 15:25h video)
- Mediatek chipset is snappy and efficient
- 64MP main camera does admirably, selfies are really nice too
- Great video quality overall
- Slow charging (39% in 30mins), no wireless charging
- The macro and ultrawide cameras are uninspiring
- Video recording in 1080p leaves more to be desired
- 144h Endurance rating (47:12h calls, 21:11h web, 20:02h video), ideal for heavy talkers
- Excellent performance, great for gaming
- Very good photos out of the main camera for the class
- Dedicated microSD slot
- Low-res display (big, though, if that’s your thing)
- Limited regional availability
- Uninspiring macro and ultra wide cameras
Moving down the ranks, we’re getting to the Realme 5. While not universally available, this budget Realme is one of the best options for long battery life where you can buy it. It’s particularly amazing for voice calls, but 20 hours in each of our screen-on tests is even more impressive. Mind you, the Snapdragon 665 that’s at the helm isn’t too shabby either and is actually quite the performer even for gaming.
What does help is the display’s lower resolution – 720p at 6.5 inches makes for a lowly density by today’s standards. But to fit all this battery life, performance and, come to think of it, image quality, into the Realme 5’s price, a trade-off had to be made somewhere, and it’s not an unreasonable one.
- 147h Endurance rating (42:52h calls, 21:45h web, 23:58h video), ideal for heavy talkers
- Very good camera experience in daylight and 4K video capturing
- Has splash resistance
- Modest chipset, not well suited to gaming
- Single camera on the back, what year is it?
- If you’re not hell-bent on battery life, more value can be found elsewhere
Fastest charging
- Fastest charging we’ve seen – the 65W adapter takes it from 0 to full in 28 minutes
- 99h Endurance rating (30:23h calls, 12:15h web, 21:02h video)
- 90Hz display is super smooth, and also plenty bright
- Very good camera experience in all conditions, particularly good portraits
- Excellent stabilization all the way to 4K60
- As with all proprietary solutions, the super fast charging requires all the links in the chain – phone, cable and adapter
- Noisy stills and video when looking up close
- Benchmark performance on the low end of the spectrum for the hardware
- Limited regional availability
Best phones by category
