The results of a GSM Arena benchmark test on the battery life of four of the most popular Android smartphones are in. The test results show surprisingly good performance by the Samsung Galaxy S5 and confirm what many Nexus 5 owners have been complaining about poor battery life since days after the release.
One of the slick, new features touted by Google about Android Lollipop before its release in November is Project Volta, a collection of optimization settings that promise to offer better battery consumption for devices upgrading to Android Lollipop. Aside from a power-saving mode native to the platform, Project Volta allows developers to specify when their apps need to connect to data or Wi-Fi in order to save up on juice.
To check whether Android Lollipop delivers on Project Volta, the folks over at GSM Arena decided to run a benchmark test for four Android smartphones already running Android Lollipop, namely the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8, Nexus 5, and LG G3. The phones were subjected to four tests each: standby, talk time, web browsing and video playback. The results were compared to the same phone's benchmark results when running on Android KitKat.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 showed the best results. In all but the web browsing test, Samsung's flagship device showed significant improvements on Android Lollipop over when it was on Android KiKat. In standby, the Galaxy S5 gained a total of 11 hours, while the HTC One M8 saw a six-hour boost from 71 hours on Android KitKat to 77 hours on Android Lollipop. The LG G3, on the other hand, slipped six hours to 63 hours, while the Nexus 5, although dropping only two hours, had the poorest standby time at 38 hours.
The Nexus 5 again lost another six hours on talk time, and so did the HTC One M8. While the LG G3 saw a slight decline from 25 hours, 54 minutes to 25 hours, 38 minutes, the Galaxy S5 again showed an impressive six-hour improvement in talk time to 27 hours, 37 minutes.
In terms of web browsing, only the HTC One M8 showed significant improvement, as browsing time for the Taiwanese smartphone jumped from nine hours, 39 minutes to 12 hours, 29 minutes. The Galaxy S5, LG G3, and Nexus 5 only showed minimal improvements. The Nexus 5 displayed a negligible one-minute increase in battery life while web browsing.
As for video playback, the Galaxy S5 was again the best performer, although it did not demonstrate significant improvement in battery life during video playback on Android Lollipop compared to Android KitKat. All the other three devices included in the study lost around an hour of battery life on Android Lollipop.
