Motorola's claim that its Droid Turbo's massive battery lasts for two days isn't true after all, but it's still one of the best performing smartphone batteries out there.
Earlier this week, Motorola and Verizon jointly announced the launch of the new Droid Turbo, exclusive to Verizon customers only. The biggest feature both companies touted was the 3,900 mAh battery that supposedly gives the new smartphone up to two days of battery life, aside from all the bells and whistles that came with it, such as the Quad HD AMOLED display, the 21 MP rear camera and top-of-the-line Snapdragon 805 system-on-a-chip.
Folks who were raring to get hold of the first Droid Turbos once they were released by Verizon got them early and took them through the battery test to see if the smartphone really lived up to its claim. Unfortunately, it doesn't, but the good news is it still performs better than many other smartphones in its price range of $650 without a contract.
Testers at PhoneArena have pitted the Droid Turbo against flagships including Apple's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S5, Sony's Xperia Z3, LG's G3 and HTC One M8 by running a custom web script that replicated battery consumption of "typical real-life usage."
The test shows the Droid Turbo lasted 10 hours and 42 minutes, which PhoneArena calls "excellent," especially when compared to the other phones' performances. The second best performer was the Xperia Z3, which lasted 9 hours and 29 minutes, followed by the Galaxy Note 4 dying out after 8 hours and 43 minutes.
The iPhone 6 Plus has a rating of "good" with 6 hours and 32 minutes, while its smaller brother, the iPhone 6, scored only "average" with 5 hours and 22 minutes.
The Moto X, Motorola's own flagship, also didn't do as well as the Droid Turbo, with only 5 hours and 45 minutes.
On charging time, PhoneArena notes that it takes 126 minutes to power the Droid Turbo's battery to full charge, longer than the Galaxy Note 4's 95 minutes and the LG G3's 120 minutes. However, it should be noted that the Turbo has a 3,900 mAh battery, far bigger than 3,220 mAh and the G3's 3,000 mAh batteries.
Tom's Guide also did its own battery test, which consists of browsing 50 popular websites over 4G LTE with 150 nit units of brightness. The test results show the Droid Turbo lasted 9 hours and 30 minutes, over an hour longer than the smartphone average, but not as good as the iPhone 6 Plus, which lasted 10 hours on the Tom's Guide test and the HTC One M8, which had 9 hours and 52 minutes.
On PhoneArena's battery test, the HTC One M8 registered 7 hours and 32 minutes. However, the big winner on the Tom's Guide test is the OnePlus One, which lasted far longer than any of the flagships tested, with 13 hours and 16 minutes of battery life on a single charge.
Phandroid also conducted its own battery test without the comparisons and saw the Droid Turbo lasted 21 hours of heavy use, with more than five hours of continuous screen time in full brightness. The test is a heavy-use test consisting of activities such as browsing image-sharing sites, watching YouTube videos, playing games, taking pictures and installing apps.
"Typically, we only see around two hours of screen on time (full brightness) from most of our Android devices in the same amount of time with light or normal usage," says Phandroid.
That said, it is worth noting that battery life will never be the same for every user, since users have unique usage patterns. With the Droid Turbo's accompanying Turbo charger, which Motorola says can give users up to eight hours of juice on a 15-minute charge, users should get their battery life to usable levels. However, that has yet to be put to the test.
