Smartphones With the Best Battery Life

The best smartphone in the world isn’t worth much if the battery requires charging every few hours. That's why we decided to take a closer look at our Ratings to find the models that excel at powering through the day—those with the best battery life. (Check out our review of the best smartphone cameras.)

The five smartphones below manage to stand out, even in a field that has seen significant improvement in recent years, thanks to batteries with 3,000mAh of storage, plus processors and wireless connections that smartly adjust power consumption to suit the job at hand.

Two of the models let you remove batteries, which means you can carry a spare in your pocket on days that call for extra power. And all but one model offer rapid charging, which can bring a near-dead handset back to life at almost 50 percent capacity within roughly 15 minutes (assuming you use the high-output charger that came with your phone).

Best of all, each of the five smartphone models—ranked in order of battery performance—is among the top performers in our Ratings.

To test battery life, our engineers precisely measure smartphone battery drain under a variety of conditions, including cellular signal transmissions and display and processor activity.

Some of these models are equipped for wireless charging. If they support both Qi and PMA standards, they'll work with pretty much any wireless charger—even one you've had on hand for many years.

Remember, a large-capacity battery requires a large-capacity shell, so, yes, these phones tend to be on the bigger side.

Battery Life Tips

Here are five ways to squeeze more juice from phone:

Set the screen brightness to Auto so the device can adjust to indoor and outdoor conditions. For Apple users, this option is in the Settings menu under Display & Brightness.
Lower the baseline brightness (usually by using a sliding switch in the Display menu).
Set the screen to sleep after 15 or 30 seconds of inactivity.
Turn on airplane mode when you’re in an area with no signal.
Reduce the frequency of updates for email, social-network feeds, and other apps to once every hour.