Here's how 2014's flagships fare against each other with equalized battery capacity

The quest for better battery life will hardly ever cease to push manufacturers to try hard to boost their game in this so vital and most-appreciated department. Sure, we value big and sizable batteries as much as the next man, but isn't software optimization a tad more important that pure battery capacity? We decided to check out if this is truly the case by normalizing the battery capacity of some of 2014's most popular devices.

How did we do it? First things first, we took our battery life tests (in minutes) of 11 noteworthy devices from 2014 and divided them by the capacity of their respective batteries (in milliampere-hours). For each device, the resulting value (min/mAh) is then multiplied by the average battery capacity of all 11 phones - and voila! - we have the equalized battery life for all devices. Here's the formula, simplified even further:

[battery life (min) ÷ battery capacity (mAh)] × average battery capacity = normalized battery life 

What does the results listed below actually show us? It will show us how long would each tested device last if all had the same battery capacity - in this case, roughly 2933 mAh. Figuratively speaking, it's like putting different race drivers in one and the same cars for a 1-mile drag race - the only thing that matters will be the very driving skills of the racers and not the properties of their vehicles. Thus, we can easily see which manufacturers have succeeded in optimizing their devices and which have not. All in the name of science!

Phone	Battery capacity (in mAh)	Actual result in our battery life test	Estimated battery life with a 2933mAh battery
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact	2600	10 hours and 2 minutes	11 hours and 19 minutes
Sony Xperia Z3	3100	9 hours and 29 minutes	8 hours and 58 minutes
Apple iPhone 6	1810	5 hours and 22 minutes	8 hours and 41 minutes
HTC One (M8)	2600	7 hours and 12 minutes	8 hours and 7 minutes
Motorola DROID Turbo	3900	10 hours and 42 minutes	8 hours and 2 minutes
Samsung Galaxy S5	2800	7 hours and 38 minutes	7 hours and 59 minutes
Samsung Galaxy Note 4	3220	8 hours and 43 minutes	7 hours and 56 minutes
OnePlus One	3100	8 hours and 5 minutes	7 hours and 38 minutes
Google Nexus 6	3220	7 hours and 53 minutes	7 hours and 11 minutes
Apple iPhone 6 Plus	2915	6 hours and 32 minutes	6 hours and 34 minutes
LG G3	3000	6 hours and 14 minutes	6 hours and 5 minutes
Average	2933