Samsung Galaxy Z Flip battery test complete: can folding phones match up?

Before we tell you the results, we should say that this phone comes with an unusual battery system: there are actually two different battery cells, one in the top half of the phone, and another one in bottom half. Combined, they make up a single 3,300mAh unit.

There is first a tiny 930mAh battery in the top part of the phone, and then a much bigger 2370mAh battery in the bottom part of the phone. The two are connected via a ribbon cable through the hinge and act as one battery unit with a total capacity of 3,300mAh. That's nowhere nearly as large as the 5,000mAh on the Galaxy S20 Ultra, but that's the price you pay for folding phones that are super compact.

So with no further ado, how did the Galaxy Z Flip perform in our battery test?

We start with the browsing and scrolling test, the least demanding on the phone. Same script is running on all of the phones that pass through this test and all of them are set to the same brightness level to equal the playing field. The test is carried over a Wi-Fi network.

And here, the Galaxy Z Flip serves us the first disappointment: at 8 hours and 26 minutes, battery life is just average, even a bit below the average for 2020 flagships. It's definitely not impressive by any means. It's only comparable to the small iPhone 11 Pro which scores just slightly better at 8 hours and 40 minutes. All the Galaxy S20 phones and other iPhone 11 series devices smoke the Galaxy Z Flip on this test, and it's not even close.

Next, we turn to something most of us do on a daily basis: video streaming. This test focuses on watching YouTube videos and it uses the same playlist of videos.

And in this test again, the Galaxy Z Flip is way below the average: it only scores 6 hours and 40 minutes. This is one of the worst scores of any phone that we have tested so far in 2020, but it still beats the iPhone 11 Pro, which scored 6 hours and 27 minutes on the same test.

If you needed a proof that the Z Flip doesn't last all that much, now you have it: it ranks way below the competition for two of the tasks that are most common these days. Getting a phone like the Galaxy S20 Plus or the iPhone 11 Pro Max would be a much better choice if you value battery life (and your wallet). But those phones don't flip and fold, at least not without breaking.

Last, but not least, we test the Galaxy Z Flip battery life for 3D gaming. Quite honestly, this is not a phone we imagine gamers would buy with that small screen, but let's see how its battery performs when a game puts extra load on the graphics chip.

And the answer is that the Z Flip does surprisingly well here! It's not the very best but it's actually in the middle of the rankings. How can we explain this? Well, the Galaxy Z Flip is powered by the Snapdragon 855+ chip, last year's fastest processor on the Android platform and that chip brings improvement especially to the GPU and obviously to its power efficiency too. So gamers might not be disappointed with the battery life on this phone after all.

At the end of the day, the Galaxy Z Flip is an innovative gadget that flips and folds, and that is cool on many ways, but it's not a battery champion by any means. For the most common tasks we do on our phones, browsing the web and watching videos, it ranks among the worst performing flagships. It's not bad per se as all phones have improved their battery life in 2020 in a big way, but it's definitely far from a 2-day phone.

So there you have it, our battery test of the Galaxy Z Flip.

Do you have the phone? What's your experience with battery life? Feel free to share in the comments right below!