One of the most important stories about the Pixel 4 launch was the reduction in battery life compared to the previous model. Now, with the Pixel 4a still in purgatory, but supposedly coming out soon (??), I thought: what would a battery life comparison of Google Pixel phones look like?
Did the Pixel 4 range have a battery that was that bad? How has this evolved on different devices?
Well, we made some charts to find out. Because, well, yes, I have a little better to do. And what of that?
First, however, the methodology.
How we compare the battery life of Google Pixel phones
Our battery life data is from GSMArena as it has the most comprehensive information on this topic.
We have used four main data points in our graph. The endurance rating, which is the key figure, tells you how long it will be from a phone before it runs out of battery after making an hour of calling, an hour of video playback, and an hour of web browsing.
For example, the Pixel 4 XL’s endurance rating is 4,380 minutes. This means that the device will last that period of time after doing one hour of each of the activities described above.
The other three data points are resolved in a similar way, but we increased the time. So we have graphed how long the battery life of Google Pixel phones will last four hours of calls, video playback and web browsing. We accomplish this with the pretty handy slider:
Unfortunately, Google Pixel 3 XL and 3a weren’t really included in the battery list, so we haven’t included those phones in our graph. Do not get mad
We’ve also included the battery capacity on the main graph, you just need to hover over the bars and you can see it. All of these were taken from Wikipedia.
The graph that actually compares the battery life of Google Pixel phones
As a note, if you are viewing this on mobile devices, you will need to request the desktop version of the site to view the graph correctly. Does that seem like too much work? Well here is the regular image of that too:
The only thing to note is that the Y-axis on the right measures the overall resistance index (in minutes), while the normal Y-axis (you know, on the left) covers the bars.
Than? More graphics?
Because we are so kind, we also organize this data in a variety of different ways for you. Here are the four time measurements ranked against each other on a line graph, which is useful for seeing the scale of all the different battery measurements together.
We also created this graph that shows the respective capacity of all batteries in Google Pixel phones, something that is particularly useful to give a little context to the above, especially if you can’t access the interactive graph at the top.
And finally, here you could say my favorite graph, which is similar to OG, but has each data point divided, which helps you read it in a different way:
What can we learn about Google Pixel battery life from these charts?
First off, it’s interesting how stable the actual battery life of Google Pixel phones has been.
In terms of web browsing, there is a slight upward trend in battery life, but this is reflected in a slight decrease in talk time, which is strange, as you would expect an overall increase.
What about the Pixel 4 range? Well, it seems that the battery of these phones really did not live up to expectations. If you ignore these two devices, there is a slight upward trend from the Pixel to the Pixel 3a XL, while the two phones continue with the status quo, rather than improving it.
But the actual damning statistic for the Pixel 4 range is the resistance rating.
If you remember, this is the number of minutes that your phone will stay on after making an hour of calls, an hour of video playback and an hour of web browsing. There is quite a bit of a drop between the Pixel 3 and 4 range here.
One possible explanation for this, rather than just the reduced battery capacity, was the inclusion of the rather sleek Soli radar chip and its connected Motion Sense technology. Rumored to be removed in the upcoming Pixel 5, one of the reasons behind this could be the increased battery life that technology brings.
But who can really say? Power distribution on mobile devices is incredibly complex, and drawing it in one component is overly simplistic, even if it is satisfactory.
Anyway, we can log out knowing at least one thing: the battery life of Google Pixel phones has not shown the improvement you would expect. And the Pixel 4 range was particularly bad.
Solve it, Google.
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Posted on Jul 28, 2020 – 14:40 UTC
