When purchasing a new smartphone, one of the specifications you’re probably most concerned about is battery life. You want to know that your shiny new device isn’t going to die halfway through the work day, but unfortunately, battery life doesn’t seem to be improving at the same rate as the rest of the hardware.
So you’ll be hard-pressed to find a phone with incredible battery life, but what about a phone that charges so fast that you forget about the fact you have to plug it in at the end of the day?
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On Monday, Tom’s Guide tested six popular flagship smartphones to see which charged the fastest. Included in the test were the iPhone 6, Galaxy S6, LG G4, OnePlus 2, Nexus 6, Droid Turbo and ZenFone 2. Unlike the iPhone 6, most of the Android devices on this list use some form of quick charge technology, so the results might not catch you completely off guard.
In order to test the charging speeds, each phone had its battery run down to empty, was charged back up to 5% to put them all on a level playing field, and then they were all plugged in at once.
After just five minutes, the ZenFone 2 was already up to 17%, a full five percentage points above the Nexus 6 and the OnePlus 2 and a whopping eleven percentage points over the iPhone 6. It took five minutes for the iPhone 6 to gain a single percent of charge. In other words: never let your iPhone 6 die.
Fifteen minutes into the test the ZenFone 2 was still in the lead, reaching 32% battery to the Galaxy S6’s 27%. The other devices were one or two percentage points behind, with the iPhone 6 still at the bottom of the pack, but rapidly catching up with the OnePlus 2.
Thirty minutes in, the Galaxy S6 finally caught up with the ZenFone 2, before smoking it for the rest of the experiment. Here’s the order and the time in which the phones reached 100% battery:
- Galaxy S6 (1:22)
- LG G4 (1:36)
- Droid Turbo (1:47)
- Nexus 6 (1:49)
- ZenFone 2 (1:49)
- OnePlus 2 (2:10)
- iPhone 6 (2:35)
Five Android phones took less than two hours to reach a full charge, whereas the iPhone took just over two and a half hours. If you’re looking for a phone that you can bring back to live as quickly as possible whenever you’re near a plug, steer clear of Apple. Quick charging technology is no joke.
