- 2 days ago
Full battery life drain test, thermals test and performance test of the new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra vs iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Google Pixel 10 Pro XL vs OnePlus 15 vs Oppo Find X9 Pro vs Xiaomi 17 Ultra vs Samsung S25 Ultra! Go to https://surfshark.com/boss or use code BOSS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Welcome to the 2026 edition of How Little Sleep Am I Going to Get Tonight.
00:04So I'm about to spend my entire day looking at battery percentages, and we are off, but
00:08this time we're doing it differently.
00:09We're going to compare the best phones from all the top companies.
00:12So that's the Samsung S26 Ultra, iPhone 17 Pro Max, Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, OnePlus 15,
00:18Oppo Find X9 Pro, Xiaomi 17 Ultra, and last year's Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, just to make
00:25sure that newer actually is better.
00:26And while we're looking at batteries, we'll also run a performance test to see which
00:30phone is fastest, while a new $3,500 thermal camera baked into our rig will show us how
00:36hot each phone is getting as we're going.
00:38So that's our morning workout done, why not treat ourselves to a little Instagram slop?
00:42And I gotta say, a big part of the reason that I wanted to make this test in the first
00:46place
00:46is I'm worried.
00:48Samsung hasn't upgraded the battery capacity on the Ultra in the last six years.
00:52We've had like three different Batman, we've had three and a half Prime Ministers, but we
00:56haven't had a one milliamp hour increase to Samsung's battery.
01:00Which means we're at a stage now where two very clear groups have formed.
01:04The betas, let's call them, which is Samsung with a 5,000 milliamp hour battery, the iPhone
01:09with 4,823, and then the Google Pixel with 5,200, and then the Alphas, which absolutely trounce
01:16these betas on paper.
01:18So that's Xiaomi with a 6,800 milliamp hour capacity, OnePlus with 7,300 and Oppo with 7,500.
01:26The point being that there's one of two things happening here.
01:29Either Samsung's new 2026 flagship is about to get absolutely creamed by a lot of its rivals,
01:34or Samsung's figured out how to make much less battery go for just as long as its other brands.
01:40And honestly, either of those conclusions would be noteworthy.
01:43And so far, let's just move across quickly to the Pokemon card app to find out, importantly,
01:48which phone can bag us the rarest pull.
01:51It doesn't look like this S26 Ultra is flopping.
01:54It's actually ahead of the Google Pixel, which has a slightly bigger battery, and shockingly,
01:59actually ahead of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which was meant to be one of the giga-chad alphas of this
02:05group.
02:05But this is early.
02:06Some of this could just be the way that different phones report their battery percentages.
02:10And then leading the pack is Oppo with 94%.
02:13That's a bit nutty, considering it's been two hours already.
02:16Of course, well, to add insult to injury, Oppo is also the luckiest phone of the bunch.
02:21That's by far the rarest card.
02:24So we've now been running this medium-intensity app for an hour and a half.
02:28Let's switch over to Thermal View.
02:30We'll do this again later when we're pushing the phone to their limit.
02:33But even with this very normal load, you can absolutely see the effect on temperatures.
02:37The whiter an area looks, the hotter it is.
02:40And so just look how much hotter the phones that we're testing are compared to the timer phone, the true
02:46MVP of every battery test.
02:48What's even more interesting, though, is the differences between the other phones.
02:52Like, can you see how the first two, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the iPhone 17 Pro Max,
02:56they are significantly cooler than the others, with their hottest zones barely touching 27 degrees C.
03:02Interestingly, these are actually the two phones that just this generation have switched the material of their frames from titanium
03:08to the more heat-conductive aluminium.
03:10And then the rest all have areas that go just above 32 degrees C, particularly the Google Pixel, which is
03:16covered in white.
03:17Now, you might be thinking, why do I care if my phone gets warm?
03:20Well, the warmer that your phone gets, the more that your performance is going to tank, the faster your battery
03:25is going to deplete,
03:26and the more that the battery is going to degrade in the long term.
03:30Bear in mind, these are temperatures with the room being set to a very cool, controlled 17 degrees Celsius.
03:36Now, after a fairly unproductive morning, to say the least, it's about time we clock in and lock in on
03:42Slack.
03:43Say something about the Samsung S26 Ultra.
03:47Well, this can only go well.
03:48I've just noticed a gap is appearing between this new Samsung and the previous-gen Samsung.
03:53Even though the battery capacity is the same, it does look like the next-gen chip,
03:58combined with the seemingly improved thermal performance, might actually be translating to a result that matters.
04:03Bear in mind, too, that the new phone is also running the latest Samsung software,
04:07so there can be some efficiency improvements bundled into that.
04:10But okay, we've seen now what the thermals look like when you're just going about your day,
04:13but what happens to them when you push the limits?
04:16So first, let's get a proper game going.
04:18This is Wuthering Waves, and it's about as taxing as mobile games get.
04:22Also random, but notice, even though I'm opening each app from left to right,
04:26the Google Pixel is by far the slowest at loading.
04:29It's definitely chugging behind, and struggling already.
04:32But we're all in now, so we'll leave these running for an hour on this, and see where we get
04:37to.
04:37Okay, that was a fast hour for you, but I'm reaching the stage where I can close my eyes
04:42and still see seven brightly lit rectangles embedded into my retinas.
04:46And now that our phones have been pushed, let's see how fast they're still able to perform,
04:50and exactly how hot they get in the process.
04:53So this is Geekbench to test the CPUs.
04:55I'm running this three times fully, and then we'll use the results of the third run.
05:00Oh, this is interesting.
05:02So look, the Google Pixel is the hottest phone at the start.
05:05But then, as the benchmarks go on, you can see it changing.
05:08Not because the Google gets cooler, but because the Oppo seems to have just had enough.
05:13That phone very quickly becomes by far the hottest phone, reaching 42 degrees Celsius.
05:19Still not hot enough to burn you, but absolutely hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold.
05:23Ooh, and also hot enough to affect its performance.
05:28So focusing on the single core score, because that's the best indicator of snappiness with daily tasks,
05:33there's, I'd say, two key takeaways.
05:35One, the Oppo is an outlier.
05:37If you look at every other current-gen phone, let's ignore the Pixel for a minute,
05:42their results are squarely in the mid to high 3000s.
05:45But this phone's only getting 3,184.
05:48The likely reason being, the key thing that's different about the Oppo,
05:52which is that this phone is powered by a MediaTek chip instead of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
05:57So it does feel like when push comes to shove, Snapdragon is still on top in the Android world.
06:02But the second observation is that while day-to-day I've never noticed performance feeling lacking on the Oppo,
06:07I absolutely have on the Google Pixel.
06:10And that well and truly reflects in this result.
06:13This is the lowest-performing phone on the whole table, and that includes last year's Samsung S25 Ultra.
06:21And honestly, it's not even like it's close to that phone.
06:24I think it would lose to an S24 at this point.
06:26And that is just a bit deflating, really.
06:30Because honestly, I love using the Google Pixel camera,
06:33and Google's software skin is, to this day, still my favourite way to experience Android.
06:38But you know something is wrong when your performance is like two to three generations behind.
06:42Your phone still runs hotter than most others, all paired with by far the worst-performing battery,
06:48even though you have technically a larger capacity than Samsung.
06:51The thing's only got 30% left.
06:53Oh, and if you've ever wondered what happens if you just open up Gemini and give it no context on
06:57what to talk about,
06:58oh, it turns out the AI will just spend the entire time saying bye to itself.
07:02On loop.
07:03Forever.
07:08Right, it's been seven and a half hours now.
07:11If my brain was cooked before, it is deep-fried at this point.
07:14So let's start to wrap this test up with some content.
07:17I've been meaning to watch the surprisingly good Super Mario movie again in preparation for the new one.
07:23Oh, wait.
07:24It's not available on Netflix in the UK.
07:26It's okay, though, because instead of dishing out, like, an extra $10 a month for a Sky subscription just to
07:31watch it,
07:31why don't we just dip into Surfshark VPN, our sponsor,
07:34virtually fly over to Mexico, where the movie is available,
07:37and if we then try Netflix, magically, there he is.
07:40A little moustached plumber himself.
07:43So we'll just let the entire movie play out to see what that does to battery.
07:46And if you head to surfshark.com slash boss, you can get Surfshark for $2 a month
07:49with an extra four months for free for as many accounts as you want.
07:53But now it's time to answer the most important question.
07:56We've talked about how Samsung, Apple, and Google,
07:58they all have these beta 5,000 mAh batteries right next to all these Chinese flagships,
08:03which have, like, 7,000.
08:04Now, that difference is because the Chinese phones are using silicon carbon tech,
08:08which is just more energy-dense than traditional lithium-ion.
08:11But the question, then, is why?
08:13Why, then, are Samsung, Apple, and Google choosing not to use it?
08:17And you'll have noticed, by the way, that there's something quite odd happening with the Xiaomi in this test.
08:21It's not lasting close to as long as its ultra-high-capacity battery suggested it should.
08:26But that's not actually a mistake.
08:28That's the key to answering what I think is going on.
08:31So, Google, Samsung, and Apple, especially those latter two,
08:34they sell their phones all across the world.
08:36And a lot of those phones are sold in regions that have tight controls on high-capacity batteries.
08:42Any single cell that's too big is either just straight-up not allowed,
08:45or at the very least becomes more expensive to ship and handle.
08:49So, it is definitely tougher to make a global phone that has an ultra-high-capacity battery
08:54than it is to make one for just China, for example.
08:57And that's actually why this Xiaomi is underperforming.
09:00On paper, this battery capacity is 6,800 million powers.
09:04But you can tell from how it's doing that Xiaomi has clearly had to add a restriction to that cell
09:08in order to ship it to lots of countries.
09:10So, you're not actually getting the best out of that battery.
09:13That said, it's not impossible to get the best of both,
09:16because what the OnePlus and the Oppo have done is two batteries.
09:20Two smaller silicon-carbon batteries, which gives you that ultra-high-capacity overall,
09:25while staying under the capacity limits for any one individual cell.
09:29But that costs more to implement, which to me feels like the likely real reason
09:34that some companies are avoiding.
09:36But clearly, this solution delivers.
09:38The only other potential option I can think is Samsung is particularly worried
09:42about jumping headfirst into new battery tech,
09:44because of, you know, the thing that's happened.
09:48And that is now, finally, every single phone dead.
09:53So, how do they do?
09:54Well, in seventh place, it's the Google Pixel.
09:57Enough said about this one, I think.
09:59It's too much of a compromise on key smartphone pillars for me to recommend.
10:03Sixth is last year's S25 Ultra.
10:05That we love to see, because we know that already that was a great phone for battery life.
10:09So, to see it now buried in sixth position just shows how incredible today's options are.
10:15Fifth, then, and lasting quite a lot longer than the S25 Ultra, was Xiaomi.
10:19And the company's quoting that this global variant will have about 6,000 mAh of usable battery.
10:24But I got hold of two of these, and on both phones,
10:26the estimated battery I'm seeing is anywhere between 5,400 and 5,800.
10:31Fourth place is the iPhone, which, I mean, only lasted about five minutes longer than the Xiaomi.
10:36But still, this is an amazing result,
10:39considering that it's working with the smallest battery capacity of the whole bunch.
10:42And that, right now, the one we're using is the smaller battery UK version of the phone.
10:47So, if you're in the US, and you'll be buying the eSIM-only variant,
10:50you could expect another 6% of juice on top of that.
10:54In third place, then, S26 Ultra, which, at 12 hours, is, like, sick.
11:01I wasn't expecting to see any improvement over last year,
11:03but I guess the combo of a more efficient chip with better cooling is doing the Lord's work.
11:09Now, obviously, OnePlus was a huge step above even that,
11:13just shy of 13 hours.
11:15And technically, it didn't even die then.
11:17That's just the moment that it entered its super power-saving mode,
11:20which is actually a great way to prolong your last 1%
11:23while keeping core phone functionality,
11:26which leaves the winner, by a bit of a landslide, really, as Oppo.
11:31Not the best phone for thermal performance,
11:33but as far as endurance goes,
11:35you cannot fault 14 hours and 16 minutes on a test this intensive
11:39with that same super power-saving protection built in as OnePlus.
11:43Okay, goodnight.
Comments