4/16/2015

Galaxy S6 Edge Battery Life – 4 Days Later

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Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone has a lot going for it but the biggest concern for most would-be owners is the battery life. With a 2600 mAh battery powering a Quad HD display, octa-core processor and 16MP camera, there are concerns that the battery might not last a full heavy day’s usage.

The Galaxy S6 Edge launched around the world on Friday and we wanted to ask – is the 2600 mAh battery really enough? I’ve already run you through the first day’s battery life and as the battery can take a few charges to optimise itself for your usage, let’s take a look if the next few days’ usage has made any difference.


First, a recap of the Galaxy S6 Edge battery life on Day One:

  • Total battery life: 14 hours 11 minutes
  • Screen On Time: 3 hours 07 minutes
    • Full brightness: 1 hour 59 minutes
    • Screen battery used: 25 percent
  • Video streaming: 1 hour 11 minutes
  • Gaming: 36 minutes
  • Phone Calls: 28 minutes
  • Top 3 Battery App Usage:
    • Screen: 25 percent
    • Facebook: 15 percent
    • Twitter: 11 percent

Now let’s move on; after the first days’ battery life, the next day was an eye-opener. The next day saw the Galaxy S6 Edge used predominantly for LTE streaming at full brightness which definitely drew a lot of power.

Related – Best Android Phones of 2015​

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Here’s the battery life on charge 2:

  • Total battery life: 7 hours 56 minutes
  • Screen On Time: 2 hours 16 minutes
    • Full brightness: 2 hour 16 minutes
    • Screen battery used: 13 percent
  • Video streaming: 1 hour 14 minutes
  • Gaming: None
  • Phone Calls: 14 minutes
  • Top 3 Battery App Usage:
    • Android OS: 13 percent
    • Screen: 13 percent
    • Twitter: 12 percent

The battery draining from full to empty in under eight hours was definitely a concern and I wasn’t sure if it was due to the full brightness of the display or a rogue app.

With this in mind, I set about reducing the brightness to 50 percent or less for the next full charge. At the same time, I removed an app I had installed at the beginning of the previous day (AirDroid if you were wondering) to see if that was also a cause of the poor battery life.

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Here’s the details on charge 3:

  • Total battery life: 23 hours 45 minutes
  • Screen On Time: 3 hours 31 minutes
    • Full brightness: 0 hours 0 minutes
    • Screen battery used: 6 percent
  • Video streaming: 0 minutes
  • Gaming: 0 hours 48 minutes
  • Phone Calls: 1 hour 45 minutes
  • Top 3 Battery App Usage:
    • Facebook: 11 percent
    • Google Play services: 10 percent
    • Twitter: 9 percent

One thing that is certainly clear is that having the screen at full brightness draws an extraordinary amount of power. Unfortunately in some scenarios – such as in direct sunlight – you need to go to full brightness for the screen to be legible so the next test was all about average usage.

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Here’s the stats from Charge 4:

  • Total battery life: 13 hours 14 minutes
  • Screen On Time: 3 hours 9 minutes
    • Full brightness: 1 hour 07 minutes
    • Screen battery used: 12 percent
  • Video streaming: 35 minutes
  • Gaming: 1 hour 06 minutes
  • Phone Calls: 41 minutes
  • Top 3 Battery App Usage:
    • Screen: 13 percent
    • Google Play services: 11 percent
    • Twitter: 11 percent

The fourth charge brought more questions as the age old problem of Google Play services draining battery reared its head.

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Let’s see how long the fifth charge lasted:

  • Total battery life: 15 hours 39 minutes
  • Screen On Time: 3 hours 41 minutes
    • Full brightness: 1 hours 01 minutes
    • Screen battery used: 12 percent
  • Video streaming: 22 minutes
  • Gaming: 49 minutes
  • Phone Calls: 1 hour 11 minutes
  • Top 3 Battery App Usage:
    • Facebook: 13 percent
    • Screen: 12 percent
    • Android OS: 9 percent

Another day of 13 to 16 hour battery life suggests that with my usage pattern, this is the most I can expect from the Galaxy S6 Edge. However, considering that the average user works approximately eight hours per day, it’s clear that the Galaxy S6 Edge will last a full working day, allowing you to charge it overnight and rely on it until you get home after work.


Another thing to take away is that using your phone at 50 percent brightness or less adds several hours to your battery life. I’ve done further testing on this and it’s certainly a key factor. The octa-core processor drives over 3.6 million pixels and if the brightness is set to full, it draws a large amount of power. Reducing to around 50 to 60 percent could increase your screen-on-time by over 50 percent.


I’ll be back with more on the Galaxy S6 Edge battery life in a couple of days where I’ll be aiming to answer a few of the requests from the first in the series. If you want me to test how long the handset lasts whilst using a particular feature, do let us know in the comments below. Samsung has issued an update for the Samsung Push Service app to help improve battery life and I’ll be testing this ahead of the next set of results in a few days’ time.
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