The Galaxy S23 Ultra appears to be more than just a refresh of the Galaxy S22 Ultra. With its wide range of changes, the flagship also gets a significant boost in battery life and manages to keep up with the iPhone 14 Pro Max in an extensive endurance test, which involves the active usage of both smartphones as well as standby time run.

iPhone 14 Pro Max only manages to stay on for 38 minutes longer than the Galaxy S23 Ultra

The battery life test was carried out by PhoneBuff, with the Galaxy S23 Ultra managing to keep pace with the iPhone 14 Pro Max in tests ranging from an hour-long phone call to an hour-long text messaging run to an hour-long of checking emails, browsing the web and binge-scrolling through Instagram. Impressive enough, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is ‘neck and neck’ with the iPhone, showing that the more efficient display and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2SoC can do wonders for the battery.

With both flagships trading equal blows, the next battery test is the standby runtime. The iPhone 14 Pro Max is notorious for guzzling through those percentage points, meaning that the Galaxy S23 Ultra finally gains the lead in this area. Unfortunately, that victory is short-lived, as Samsung’s top-tier handset loses that advantage in the YouTube video playback test. In the gaming test, history does not repeat itself because, unlike the Galaxy S22 Ultra, whose battery was in free-fall in this part, the Galaxy S23 Ultra gains the lead again.

The iPhone 14 Pro Max barely manages to edge past Samsung’s latest and greatest

Social media applications like Snapchat and Facebook have the biggest impact on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. We feel that if these were not included in the test, the flagship would have ended up victorious. Then again, there is a reason why Apple receives continuous praise for providing an all-day battery life, despite incorporating smaller cells in its devices.

Overall, the test was close, with the iPhone 14 Pro Max lasting for 27 hours and 44 minutes, while the Galaxy S23 Ultra powered off after 27 hours and 6 minutes. Both smartphones lasted for the same amount of time in the standby test at 16 hours, so these results are a testament to how switching to less power-hungry chips and components can drastically change the overall experience.

For the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Samsung will likely use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but this time, Qualcomm appears to be more focused on performance rather than power efficiency, according to a leaked specifications sheet. The details reveal that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 could switch to fewer efficiency cores, which should raise performance, but at the cost of battery endurance.

Another thing to keep in mind was that the test was not entirely fair, as the Galaxy S23 Ultra features a bigger 5,000mAh battery than the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which houses a 4,323mAh cell. Assuming the iPhone featured the same capacity as its latest competitor, the results would have been staggeringly different. Regardless, take a look at the video above and let us know what you think.

News Source: PhoneBuff