Key takeaways:
- Apple and OnePlus are the very best telephone manufacturers for the longest battery life in our assessments.
- Fashions from Apple, OnePlus and Motorola made our prime 5 telephones for lengthy battery life.
- 2025 telephones have longer battery life on common than 2024 fashions, however solely barely.
- Practically half of our prime battery-life picks use silicon-carbon batteries.
Does your smartphone make it by way of the day on a single cost? That is the tough benchmark for telephones offered in 2026, however in actuality some individuals burn by way of their battery far faster scrolling by way of social media and capturing pictures and video. As options like cameras get yearly developments, batteries have largely stayed static. However that’s beginning to change.
I have been reviewing and testing telephones for CNET for practically a decade and heard from many readers that lengthy battery life is a precedence. In a CNET/YouGov survey from September 2025, readers ranked “longer battery life” as the principle motive to purchase a brand new telephone (second solely to cost).
For higher or worse, we’re tied to our units greater than ever earlier than and you’ll’t do a lot along with your telephone if the battery is useless. So it is necessary to know which telephones have the longest battery life before you purchase your subsequent handset.
2026 is a turning level for batteries
The OnePlus 15 has a 7,300-mAh battery. That capability is gigantic.
Previously yr, we have seen extra telephone makers undertake a brand new sort of battery with a silicon anode, usually referred to as a silicon-carbon battery. This new energy supply can improve capability with out requiring a bigger bodily battery. House is already restricted in telephones, particularly as designs get thinner, so discovering a strategy to improve the capability with out making the battery bigger is an unbelievable development.
All of this results in the query: Do telephones offered at the moment have higher battery life than earlier fashions? And if that’s the case, which telephones and types final the longest on a single cost? We did some testing to search out out.
Watch this: The iPhone 17 Professional Max Has Unbelievable Battery Life
What telephone has the very best battery life?
The iPhone 17 Professional Max is the very best telephone we examined for battery life.
A number of components, like your service’s sign energy and your display screen’s brightness, can have an effect on your battery life. How you employ your telephone all through the day additionally has a big impact. The battery’s capability and the effectivity of the software program and processor additionally considerably affect battery life. To standardize our testing and decrease variables as a lot as attainable, we run every telephone by way of an anecdotal stress check and a video streaming check, beginning with the battery at 100%. The outcomes from every check present the remaining battery proportion. We averaged the 2 outcomes to find out an total rating and restricted our rankings to telephones formally offered within the US.
In 2025, CNET examined the battery lifetime of 35 telephones, and our total prime performer is the iPhone 17 Pro Max. At a beginning worth of $1,199, it was the most costly telephone in our prime 5. Its 5,088-mAh battery capability wasn’t the most important, but it surely reveals simply how environment friendly Apple’s A19 Professional chip and iOS 26 are.
Amongst our prime 5 rankings, a number of had been tied. The iPhone 17 and OnePlus 15, which begin at $829 and $900, respectively, each completed in second place. The iPhone 17 has the smallest-capacity battery of any of the highest telephones, proving that battery measurement does not matter. In the meantime, the OnePlus 15 has one of many largest on the listing.
Notably, OnePlus had three telephones in our prime rankings, all of which have a silicon-carbon battery for that bigger capability. The one different silicon-carbon battery telephone in our prime rankings was the Poco F7 Ultra, which you should buy within the US for as little as $649.
The OnePlus 15 is one in all three OnePlus telephones to make our prime 5 rankings.
The smaller iPhone 17 Professional, which begins at $1,099, landed in fourth place. Rounding out the highest 5 had been 4 telephones tied for fifth place: the $400 Motorola Moto G Stylus (2025), the $500 Motorola Edge (2025), the $600 OnePlus 13R and the $700 OnePlus 15R.
In whole, solely two telephones of the 9 ranked in our prime 5 price greater than $1,000. Probably the most reasonably priced telephone on the listing is the Moto G Stylus, which mixes a big battery with a much less power-hungry display screen and processor, leading to unbelievable battery life.
Which model makes telephones with the longest battery life?
Right here is Apple’s 2025 lineup (left to proper): iPhone 17 Professional Max, iPhone 17 Professional, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 and iPhone 16E (on its facet).
We averaged the scores from each assessments for every telephone mannequin, and for any firm the place we had examined three or extra fashions, we averaged these scores to assign every model a median. Our lab information confirmed that Apple and OnePlus had been the highest manufacturers for lengthy battery life.
Apple’s iPhones and OnePlus handsets dominated our prime 5 for telephones, so it is not that shocking that they rank excessive in total battery life for a model. Oppo was not included regardless of having two telephones that did nicely in our testing. (OnePlus is a subsidiary of Oppo.) The Oppo Find X9 Pro and Oppo Find N5 foldable scored nicely, however as a result of we hadn’t reviewed another Oppo fashions, we could not embody them within the total model rankings. Additionally, neither telephone is offered within the US however if you happen to’re overseas it is nonetheless value getting both telephone for the excellent battery life.
In third and fourth place had been Motorola and Samsung. We examined seven Motorola telephones and 9 Samsung handsets, and the outcomes had been tight. Motorola barely surpassed Samsung. I am excited to control these two manufacturers in 2026 and see how their collective battery life compares.
Rounding out our prime 5 manufacturers is Google. We examined 5 Google telephones in 2025, and so they get respectable battery life, particularly the Pixel 10, however there is a massive step up from that to the battery life we obtained from OnePlus telephones. What’s curious is that Google is the one different phone-maker moreover Apple to regulate software program and processor design by way of its mixture of Android and Tensor chips, respectively.
Battery testing outcomes
CNET runs two battery-life benchmarks (video streaming and stress assessments) that allow us evaluate telephones. In our 3-hour video battery check, the place we streamed a video over Wi-Fi with the display screen at full brightness and the battery beginning at 100%, the iPhone 17 Professional Max was the highest performer. Most different telephones that carried out incredible on this check had been in our total prime 5 for battery life. A pleasant shock is Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Plus, which begins at $999. It did nicely, tying with the Motorola Edge (2025) for fifth place. Sadly, the S25 Plus did not do as nicely in our second check.
In CNET’s 45-minute endurance check, throughout which we play video games, stream movies, scroll social media and take a video name with the battery beginning at 100%, the iPhone 17 Pro Max was once more on the very prime and joined behind by three different Apple fashions, together with the iPhone 16E, which begins at $599.
We had lots of ties for the highest 5 outcomes, together with a couple of telephones we’ve not seen rank but. Google’s Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro Fold did nice on this check, as did the Motorola Razr (2025) — that is two foldables within the prime 5 outcomes.
CNET’s shopping for recommendation
That is an iPhone 6 with its outdated battery eliminated. Hopefully your telephone is not that outdated, however swapping out your battery is a straightforward strategy to breath new life into your telephone.
As a result of we have been utilizing these assessments for years, we will additionally evaluate a brand new telephone towards older fashions. We had been capable of see how 2025 telephones carried out in contrast with 2024 handsets. We averaged all 35 telephones that we examined in 2025 and did the identical for 2024. And whereas 2025 fashions did have extra battery life, it was by lower than 1%, averaging 0.78%. Most individuals do not buy a brand new telephone yearly, however if you happen to’re attempting to decide on between final yr’s model of a telephone you want and this yr’s mannequin, you doubtless will not see a drastic distinction in battery life — simply go for the cheaper, slightly older phone.
When you like your present telephone (iPhone or Android) and the one concern is that the battery life is not what it was once, contemplate changing the battery as a substitute of shopping for a brand new telephone. You may save some huge cash and lengthen your telephone’s life by one other couple of years.
