All bow to the new endurance king: Sony Xperia Z3 scores a record battery life for its category

We are not going to mince words here - Sony is the current king of battery life when it comes to brand-name smartphones. We did our grueling battery benchmark on the Xperia Z3 over the weekend, and it broke all records in its respective category, just as we suspected it would do, given Sony's consistent performance in that department this year.
As mentioned, this is more than any other flagship we've measured so far - phone or phablet - and even more than the Ascend Mate7, which comes equipped with a whopping 4100 mAh juicer, while the Z3 has an "only" 3100 mAh piece in a 7.3mm thin waterproof body.
If you think that what Sony did is by accident, then a simple look at our top ten endurance champs will tell you that this is not the case. Sony phones are currently occupying six of the top ten slots in our battery benchmark ranking, and these range from low-ends, like the Xperia C, through midrangers like the slim T3, all the way to the Xperia Z3 flagship. The "culprit" must be Sony's displays, which might not be the best out there when it comes to color representation and viewing angles, but are apparently using an extremely frugal technology, and screens are the pesky components with the highest battery consumption in our smartphones, so kudos to Sony here.
Story timeline
This story is part of:
PhoneArena battery life test (21 updates)-
13 November Our Google Nexus 6 battery life test is complete, phablet lags behind the Note 4
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31 October Step aside, Sony Xperia Z3, the Motorola DROID Turbo is the new king of flagship battery life
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27 October Apple iPad Air 2 battery life test: shorter battery life despite Apple’s claims
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10 October Surprise, surprise! The Note 4 defies expectations by acing our battery life test, becomes the longest-lasting QHD phone
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2 October Our Meizu MX4 battery life test is complete: ties with the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8