Galaxy S22 battery life & tests: upgrade or disappointment?
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Battery life has become a favorite spec for manufacturers to focus on in the past few years, and so did Samsung with the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+. Unfortunately, however, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is the model that weirdly did not receive any upgrades on that front, and it has even received lots of related complaints from buyers since its launch.
Our battery life and charging tests have already revealed to us the full picture of how Samsung's latest flagship phones fair when it comes to their batteries. Keep reading if you want to find out what our tests showed us.
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Galaxy S22 battery life
On paper, there are barely any battery life improvements with the Galaxy S22 series when compared to the Galaxy S21 lineup. However, the new chip inside comes with greatly improved power efficiency compared, which delivers interesting results.
The Galaxy S22 battery comes with a smaller 3,700 mAh. As you might have guessed, this is a straight up downgrade in capacity from the 4,000 mAh inside the Galaxy S21—although that "downgrade" comes with an asterisk, when the aforementioned improved power efficiency comes in hand.
According to our tests, where there are downgrades, they are not significant. In our YouTube streaming test, for example, the S22 only lasted around 10 minutes less than the S21.
In the browsing test with 120Hz refresh rate, on the other hand, the S22 lasted over 4 hours more than the S21. There is also a 15 minute improvement in our gaming test.
Galaxy S22 Plus battery life
The middle child out of the bunch, the Galaxy S22 Plus in the series, comes with a 4,500 mAh battery. Similarly to the Galaxy S22, this is another 300 mAh decrease from the device's last-year predecessor, and we see the same differences between current model and the one from last year.
In fact, with the S22 Plus the improvements are even more exaggerated compared to its smaller sibling.
Galaxy S22 Ultra battery life
Last but definitely not least is the Galaxy S22 Ultra. While its battery is the only one that's not a downgrade from last year, it isn't really an upgrade, either. The premium flagship offers 5,000 mAh of capacity, which is exactly as much as the Galaxy S21 Ultra offered.
During our light browsing test—which is most indicative of casual use—the Ultra lasted just over 13 hours. Rather a mediocre score for a 5,000 mAh flagship, and definitely less than last year's S21 Ultra. As it is, it sits right on par with the Google Pixel 6 Pro.
During our YouTube video streaming test the Galaxy S22 Ultra lasted 7.5 hours while playing YouTube videos, which leaves a significant margin between the S22 Ultra's performance, and competitors with the same battery capacity. We ran the test twice, and the results were consistent both times.
The S22 Ultra received the best score, however, during our 3D gaming test—where it lasted an impressive 10+ hours of gaming. This is exactly the double of the results we got from both the S21 Ultra and the Galaxy Note 20!
Samsung Galaxy S22 series: charging speeds
The Galaxy S22 series has mostly kept the same charging speeds as the Galaxy S21 range. Samsung did make an exception when it comes to fast charging on the S22 Ultra and S22 Plus, though. These two now bring 45W wired charging, and 15W wireless charging speeds to the table.
For context, the Galaxy S21 Ultra has a maximum charging speed of 25W and the S21 Plus can go up to 18W at most.
Below you will find the charging speeds we got for the Galaxy S22 Ultra with a 45W and 25W chargers:
S22 Ultra charging speed
As you can see, in 30 minutes on the dot, we had the Ultra juiced up to 55% using 25 Watts, and 66% at 45W. The phone was fully charged in exactly 62 mins at 45W as well. We're conducting similar tests for the other models, too.
The wired charging speed for the base S22 model, as we said, remains completely unchanged at 25 Watts. Qi wireless charging is also set at 15W, identical across the entire S22 series.
All three models are receiving Samsung PowerShare integration, which allows them to share some of their power with other devices, as well as charge small accessories wirelessly by placing them on top of the phone.
You win some, you loose some
The battery life and charging situation with the Galaxy S22 series is a mixed bag, as you can tell from the results. Yes, technically, the batteries themselves are smaller and that does show in some benchmarks, but the improvements stemming from the new chips tend to outweigh the cons.
With the Galaxy S22 and S22 Plus you will definitely see a noticeable increase in battery life when browsing and playing games, so it is worth the upgrade in our opinion if these things are a major part of your everyday usage.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra, on the other hand, might not have too much of an improvement compared to the S21 Ultra in terms of battery life, but it does when it comes to juicing that battery up. However, it's not that significant, unless the little saved time is of importance to you.
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