We tested 35 phones for the best battery life. These two brands are at the forefront of the industry

Main takeaways:

• Apple and OnePlus are the top phone brands with the longest battery life in our tests.
• Models from Apple, OnePlus, and Motorola made our top five phones for long battery life.
• 2025 phones have longer battery life on average than 2024 models, but just barely.
• Nearly half of our top picks for battery life use silicon and carbon batteries.

The new majority Smartphones It can be sold in 2026 for one day on a single charge. But even this is not enough for many people who obsessively surf the Internet, constantly take photos and videos, or just forget to connect their phone to the charger. While almost every other phone feature has seen massive improvements over the past few years (how many times have companies upgraded the phone? Cameras?), we haven’t seen much difference in basic battery technology over the past decade. But this is starting to change.

I’ve been reviewing and testing phones for CNET for nearly a decade, and I’ve heard from many readers that long battery life is a top priority. In a CNET/YouGov poll As of September 2025, readers ranked “longer battery life” as the top reason to buy a new phone (second only to price).

For better or worse, we’re more connected to our devices than ever before, and there’s not much you can do with your phone if the battery runs out. So it’s important to know which phones have the longest battery life before purchasing your next phone.

The year 2026 is a turning point for batteries

Over the past year, we’ve seen more phone manufacturers using a new type of battery with a silicon anode, often called an anode. Silicon-carbon batteryon their phones. This new power supply can increase capacity without requiring a larger actual battery. Space is really limited on phones, especially Designs become thinnerSo finding a way to increase capacity without increasing battery size is an amazing advance.

All of this leads us to the question: Do phones sold today have better battery life than previous models? If so, which phones and brands last longer on a single charge? We ran some tests to find out.

Which phone has the best battery life?

Multiple factors, such as your carrier’s signal strength and screen brightness, can affect battery life. How you use your phone throughout the day also has a big impact. Battery capacity, software efficiency, and processor also greatly affect battery life. To standardize our testing and reduce variables as much as possible, we run each phone through anecdotal stress testing and video streaming testing, starting with 100% battery. The results of each test show the remaining battery percentage. We averaged the two scores to determine the overall score and limited our rankings to phones officially sold in the US.

In 2025, CNET tested the battery life of 35 phones, and the best-performing phone overall was iPhone 17 Pro Max. With a starting price of $1,199, it was the most expensive phone among our top five. The 5,088 mAh battery capacity isn’t the largest, but it shows how efficient Apple’s A19 Pro chip is and iOS 26 We are.

Of our top five rankings, several were tied. the iPhone 17 and OnePlus 15which start at $829 and $900 respectively, both ranked second. The iPhone 17 has the smallest battery capacity of any of the best phones, proving that battery size doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, the OnePlus 15 has one of the largest devices on the list.

Notably, OnePlus had three phones at the top of our rankings, all of which had a carbon-silicon battery for that larger capacity. The only other phone with a silicon-carbon battery at the top of our rankings was the Poco F7 Ultrawhich you can purchase in the US for up to $649.

The smaller iPhone 17 Pro, which starts at $1,099, came in fourth place. Rounding out the top five were four phones tied for fifth place: $400 Motorola Moto G Stylus (2025)the 500 dollars Motorola Edge (2025)600 dollars OnePlus 13R And 700 dollars OnePlus 15 R.

In total, only two of the nine phones ranked in the top five cost more than $1,000. The least expensive phone on the list is the Moto G Stylus, which combines a large battery with a less power-hungry display and processor, resulting in incredible battery life.

Which brand makes the phones with the longest battery life?

We averaged the scores from both tests for each phone model, and for any company where we tested three or more models, we averaged those scores to set an average for each brand. Our lab data showed that Apple and OnePlus were the best brands in terms of long battery life.

Apple’s iPhones and OnePlus dominated the top five phone spots, so it’s no surprise that they rank highly in the brand’s overall battery life. Oppo was not included although there were two phones that performed well in our tests. (OnePlus is a subsidiary of Oppo.) Oppo Find X9 Pro and Oppo Find N5 foldable phone It got good scores, but since we didn’t review any other Oppo models, we couldn’t include it in our overall brand rankings. Also, neither phone is sold in the US, but if you’re abroad, it’s still worth getting either phone given their outstanding battery life.

In third and fourth place were Motorola and Samsung. We tested seven Motorola phones and nine Samsung phones, and the results were similar. Motorola barely beat Samsung. I’m excited to keep an eye on these two brands in 2026 and see how their collective battery life compares.

Rounding out our top five brands is Google. We tested five Google phones in 2025, and they got good battery life, especially Pixel 10but there’s a big step up from that in terms of the battery life we ​​get from OnePlus phones. What’s curious is that Google is the only other phone maker besides Apple that controls the software and processor design through its combination of Android and Tensor chips, respectively.

Battery test results

CNET runs two battery life benchmarks (video streaming and stress tests) that allow us to compare the phones. In our 3-hour video battery test, where we streamed video over Wi-Fi with full screen brightness and the battery starting at 100%, the iPhone 17 Pro Max was the best performer. Most of the other phones that did great in this test were in the top five overall for battery life. What a nice surprise Samsung Galaxy S25 Pluswhich starts at $999. It performed well, tying with the Motorola Edge (2025) for fifth place. Unfortunately, the S25 Plus didn’t perform as well in our second test.

In CNET’s 45-minute stress test, during which we played games, stream videos, browse social media, and make a video call with the battery running at 100%, iPhone 17 Pro Max It was again at the top and was joined by three other Apple models, including iPhone 16eWhich starts at $599.

We had plenty of links to the top five results, including a few phones we haven’t seen ranked yet. Google Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro Fold They both did a great job on this test, as he did Motorola Razr (2025) – That’s two foldables in the first five results.

CNET Buying Advice

Because we’ve been using these tests for years, we can also compare a new phone to older models. We were able to see the performance of 2025 phones compared to 2024 phones. We averaged the average for all 35 phones we tested in 2025 and did the same in 2024. Although the 2025 models had longer battery life, it was less than 1%, 0.78% on average. Most people don’t buy a new phone every year, but if you’re trying to decide between last year’s version of a phone you like and this year’s model, you probably won’t see a dramatic difference in battery life — just… Choose the cheapest and slightly older phone.

If you love your current phone (iPhone or Android) and the only problem is that the battery life isn’t what it used to be, consider replacing the battery instead of buying a new phone. You will save a lot of money and extend the life of your phone for another two years.