HTC U Ultra battery life test result serves us a surprise

So how does the HTC U Ultra do in terms of battery life?

After all, the HTC U Ultra is a 5.7-inch phone with a Quad HD (1440 x 2560 pixel) resolution and only a 3,000 mAh battery on board. Such a battery definitely seems small for such a demanding display, but we were hopeful that HTC has squeezed the most out of it.

The HTC U Ultra does surprisingly well on our battery test

Well, we have some good news: the HTC U Ultra is far from a disaster in terms of battery life, it in facts handles itself well. With its screen set to 200 nits, a luminance level comfortable for indoor use, we got a battery life score of just below 7 hours. Just slightly worse when compared to the Galaxy S7 Edge and the Google Pixel XL, and better than the OnePlus 3T.

At the same time, while the HTC U Ultra is just slightly below the mark when compared to other flagships, we have recently noticed that all of these phones fail much shorter of the amazing battery life that much more affordable phones provide. We have just recently tested the sleek and very affordable Lenovo P2 and got slightly south of 12 hours on the same test! There is clearly something more that flagship makers could do since even those cheaper phones get much better life. Maybe a Quad HD display is not the best idea for a phone after all?

Another key aspect of the battery experience of a phone is the time it takes to fully recharge its battery from 0 to 100%. The HTC U Ultra does well on this test: it fully recharges its battery in just 1 hour and 40 minutes, almost exactly as long as it takes to recharge the Galaxy S7 Edge, and much faster than the slow-to-charge iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

We are also hard at work on our full HTC U Ultra review that should be coming up soon. There we will look at the performance, camera quality and more about the U Ultra.