Android phones have terrible battery efficiency compared to iPhones. The only reason you don't notice is because manufacturers cram in massive batteries to compensate.
Same with Linux/Windows versus Macs. It is only recently that Linux/Windows laptops have begun to approach Macs in terms of battery life, and their battery efficiency is still far behind, especially with Apple Silicon being a thing.
When I used a Pixel 3a with LineageOS, I recall never having to think about battery life unless I didn't plug it in overnight, and even then, it would survive just fine for a second day, it would just be at like 20-30%?
I used to have a iPhone 6S Plus and when the camera died, I decided I wanted a more private phone. I opted for the Pixel 4a 5G and installed Calyx OS.
I absolutely love Calyx, and wouldn't move from it. However, the battery life even compared to my old iPhone 6S is pretty bad. I'm not even a heavy phone user, I don't use social media or have many apps sending me notifications (only Signal) and I feel like my phone can't even last two days of light usage. My iPhone I could use similary and I could usually get 3 days of usage.
How are you getting 3 days of usage out of an iPhone? I don't use my iPhone X much at all (mostly texting and occasional web browsing), but I'd be lucky if I could get 2 days out of it. Meanwhile, my last Android phone would consistently last 3+ days on a single charge.
(To be fair, I ran LineageOS without Google Play Services installed, which makes a huge difference, so it's not exactly apples to apples.)
This mirrors my experience, but it does not invalidate the parent's statement.
Specifically: While iPhones are noticeably more power efficient than Android phones the latter have been sufficient for my usecases especially given that there are typically options with larger batteries.
I agree that quantitative metrics would make for a much stronger comparison than a few people's subjective experience using both kinds of devices.
In absence of that, even an anecdotal comparison seems more relevant than a statement that only considers one of the two items being compared.
Update: Because I was curious whether my subjective experience was backed by real numbers, I looked up the top few Android and iPhones with the greatest battery life as per the first website I found [1] and calculated their efficiency based on their battery capacity. Various iPhone 13 models used 3.1 to 3.6 mAh per minute whereas the Android phones used 4.0 mAh/min (Moto G9 Power), 4.2 mAh/min (Samsung Galaxy A03s, Realme 9 Pro), 4.3 mAh/min (Nokia G21).
I don't really give a damn about battery /efficiency/. I care about battery life. The impact on my power bill of charging up a 5000mah battery vs a 2500mah battery is completely insignificant.
If Apples battery efficiency is so good they should release a phone with a 5000mah battery /as well as/ said efficiency and market their battery life that beats all their competitors by multiple days, I'm sure a lot of people would buy that in a heartbeat.
That’s what battery cases are for. There’s no need to weigh down a standard model with battery capacity that’s far beyond what the majority of users need. That’s more of a concern with niche phones that won’t get specifically designed battery cases, but for iPhones there are plethora of options.
There are the iPhone Smart Battery Cases. It's not the same as a full 5000mAh battery, that's true. But you can kinda get there. I'm also surprised they never released such a phone. Perhaps the production would be just too small for them to focus on.
What? The power bill is not insignificant, it is irrelevant when talking about battery capacity. The size of the battery has no bearing on the energy cost. If the device consumes 2500 mAh per day, that costs the same whether the batter is 10,000 mAh or 500 mAh.
The downsides of larger batteries are increased weight, volume, and cost. Being more efficient gets the same battery life for less of those three, allowing them to either be reduced or the budget to go to other components.
Xiaomi midrange phones are extremely successful outside of Europe and the US. They come standard with multi-day battery, headphone jack, IR blaster, microSD slots, multiple SIMs...
As for Xiaomi being comically large, I found the mid-range Samsung and Motorola models to have larger bezels and to generally be larger for similar specs when I bought my Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 a couple years ago. The reality is that the majority of phones from Motorola, Xiaomi, LG and Nokia are designed and manufactured by 3 Chinese ODMs (Wingtech, Huaquin and Longcheer), and even 20% of Samsung's phones come from these 3 ODMs. See: https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2021/12/10/comparing-l5-and...
I always thought that iPhones weren’t more efficient — they just dropped a major feature: running background apps.
I remember being able to run Ubuntu in the background on an unrooted Android phone while browsing the Internet. You can’t do that with iPhone.
That said, I rather have battery predictability over features, but I always thought that if Android dropped background apps, they would have the same battery usage as an iPhone.
Both OS have a similar stance on background running processes - they kill them after a short delay. Iphones are more aggressive and consistent about it, and android OEMs sometimes give exceptions for their own bloatware.
Do you know of a good web site explaining how this works? My Android phone used to kill my Jabber client all the time until I got to using Conversations which has a notification all the time which seems to be the way to avoid being killed while running in the background.
It would be nice to be able to reliably run background apps on Android.
Also as an aside Android doesn't appear to reliably kill background processes, it kills them if it thinks that something else needs the resources. Running the Facebook app is one way of triggering Android to kill a bunch of background apps.
It's not like you're going to run plasma OS on your iPhone, are you? You're running the Linux phone OS on the androids with the big batteries.
The point was that it's reasonable to expect the battery life of plasma OS and friends to be comparable to Android, similar to how Linux on a laptop is comparable to Windows.
I may have misread your comment, but android’s userspace is so completely different from the usual linux one that is should not be compared like that at all. The former underwent thousands of paid engineer hours to improve battery life among others, it is no reason to assume that giving a mostly usual desktop DE a narrower screen will result in anything similar.
Platform Model Life Size Efficiency
iOS Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max 21.7 4352 4.98
iOS Apple iPhone 13 16.8 3227 5.21
iOS Apple iPhone 13 Pro 16.6 3095 5.37
Android ASUS ROG Phone 5 16.6 6000 2.77
Android ASUS ROG Phone III 16.5 6000 2.75
Android ASUS ROG Phone II 16.2 6000 2.7
Android Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (S888) 15.9 5000 3.18
iOS Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max 15.6 3969 3.93
Never thought iPhone 13 has bigger battery than iPhone 13 Pro.
It's almost as if they deliberately added this seemingly bad option so people would choose the most expensive option iPhone 13 Pro Max. Because it would seem like the best deal out of three. I mean the Pro Max is just $100 more expensive than Pro, right?
But remove this decoy option, and most people would just buy the iPhone 13.
I see what you’re saying, and that’s an interesting argument. But a counterpoint:
> On the iPhone 13 series, there’s a few complex behaviours to consider: First off, the iPhone 13 Pro and its LTPO panel noticeable decreases the minimum baseline power consumption of the phone by around a massive 100mW… While 100mW doesn’t sound much, when using the phones at lower screen brightness, this can represent a large percentage of the overall device power consumption, and vastly increase battery life for the new iPhone 13 Pro models.
> Comparing the 13 to the 13 Pro, the phones have quite different curves – while the 13 Pro uses less power to display full white up until 140 nits, the regular 13 becomes more efficient afterwards. We’re also seeing different curve shapes, meaning the phones are driven differently in regards to their PWM and emitter voltages.
The Pro phones are more battery efficient than the regular ones, and probably use the extra space gained with a slightly smaller battery for some other featureful hardware (cameras?).
The trade offs made seem to be reasonable for a Pro that’s between the regular and the Pro Max. It doesn’t seem to me like just a decoy.
Literally everyone I know with a Pro owns the regular-sized Pro.
The $100 is irrelevant to the target market of the Pro line, it's basically pocket change. You buy the phone that's most comfortable for your hand because that matters way more than the $100.
This makes no sense; virtually nobody is picking which phone to buy on the basis of 130mAh of battery capacity, and these are different devices to boot with different screens and cameras.
Same with Linux/Windows versus Macs. It is only recently that Linux/Windows laptops have begun to approach Macs in terms of battery life, and their battery efficiency is still far behind, especially with Apple Silicon being a thing.