Our iPhone 8 Plus battery life test reveals the best endurance from an iPhone yet

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With more people lining up to buy the iPhone 8 Plus than the smaller iPhone 8 for the first time (perhaps in anticipation of the iPhone X), the focus has suddenly shifted to Apple's larger phone that is more feature-rich, thanks to the dual-camera setup on the back, but also lasting much more on a charge, thanks to the bigger battery. Not only does the iPhone 8 Plus endure 25% further on a charge than the iPhone 8, but our battery benchmark test reveals that it is way ahead of the iPhone 7 Plus, too, and, in fact, the 8 Plus is the longest-lasting iPhone we've ever tested.

This is undoubtedly due in part to Apple's new Bionic chipset that is not only extremely powerful, but also built on the frugal 10nm processor node that sips electrons while performing mundane tasks, but revs up when needed for heavy games or AR calculations, for instance. Given that the screen resolution, RAM amount, and software are the same on the 8 Plus and 7 Plus, the gain in battery endurance can mainly be attributed to the processing power management, moreso having in mind that the 8 Plus also comes with slightly smaller battery capacity than its predecessor.


How does it compare to Android flagships? Well, the ones that are with QuadHD or QuadHD+ screen resolutions are no match for the 1080p iPhone 8 Plus, as you can see below, with the slight exception called HTC U11 (seriously, HTC manages to squeeze some record juice out of its 3000mAh pack), and, since there aren't many other "Full HD flagships," save for the Xiaomi Mi 6, the iPhone climbs to the top of the pile. Given how well iOS 11 manages standby draw, you can expect a day and a half to two day battery life with the iPhone 8 Plus, depending on your usage, which can't be said for the vast majority of expensive phones these days.

Battery life(hours)Higher is better
Apple iPhone 8 Plus10h 35 min(Excellent)
Apple iPhone 88h 37 min(Good)
Apple iPhone 77h 46 min(Average)
Samsung Galaxy S88h 22 min(Average)
LG G66h 9 min(Poor)
Apple iPhone 6s8h 15 min(Average)
Samsung Galaxy Note87h 50 min(Average)
Xiaomi Mi 69h 14 min(Good)
LG V309h 34 min(Good)
HTC U119h 3 min(Good)
Google Pixel7h 45 min(Average)
As to charging times, well, the iPhone 8 Plus has fast and wireless charging standards built in at long last. Fast chargers would top up your 8 Plus 50% in half an hour, but they, and the respective cable, don't ship in the box, so you'd have to splurge some extra dollars to buy the kit from Apple, or go half price, but with third-party fast charging solutions. Otherwise you will be stuck with this:

Full Charge(hours)Lower is better
Apple iPhone 8 Plus2h 58 min
Apple iPhone 82h 28 min
Apple iPhone 72h 21 min
Samsung Galaxy S81h 40 min
LG G61h 37 min
Apple iPhone 6s2h 30 min
Samsung Galaxy Note81h 42 min
Xiaomi Mi 61h 54 min
LG V301h 48 min
HTC U111h 38 min
Google Pixel1h 59 min

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