We tested 35 phones to find out the best battery life. These 2 brands are leading the pack

Key points to remember:

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

The majority of new smart phones sold in 2026 can last a day on a single charge. But even that’s not enough for many people who obsessively check the Internet, constantly take photos and record videos, or simply forget to plug in their phone to charge. While almost every other feature on the phone has seen huge improvements over the past few years (how many times have companies upgraded the cameras?), we haven’t seen much difference in the underlying battery technology over the last decade. But that 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 survey As of September 2025, readers ranked “longer battery life” as the top reason to buy a new phone (after price).

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

2026 is a turning point for batteries

Over the past year, we’ve seen more and more phone makers use a new type of battery with a silicon anode, often called a rechargeable battery. silicon-carbon batteryin their phones. This new power source can increase capacity without requiring a larger physical battery. Space is already limited in phones, especially since the drawings become finerso finding a way to increase capacity without making the battery bigger is an incredible breakthrough.

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

Which phone has the best battery life?

Several factors, such as your carrier’s signal strength and the brightness of your screen, can affect your battery life. How you use your phone throughout the day also has a huge impact. Battery capacity and software and processor efficiency also significantly influence battery life. To standardize our testing and minimize variables as much as possible, we put each phone through an anecdotal stress test and a video streaming test, starting with 100% battery. The results of each test indicate the percentage of battery remaining. We averaged the two results to determine an overall score and limited our rankings to phones officially sold in the United States.

In 2025, CNET tested the battery life of 35 phones, and our top performer is the iPhone 17 Pro Max. With a starting price of $1,199, it was the most expensive phone in our top five. Its 5,088 mAh battery capacity wasn’t the largest, but it shows how well Apple’s A19 Pro chip and iOS26 are.

Among our top five rankings, several were tied. THE iPhone17 And OnePlus 15which start at $829 and $900 respectively, both finished in second place. The iPhone 17 has the smallest battery capacity of any high-end phone, proving that battery size doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, the OnePlus 15 has one of the largest on the list.

Notably, OnePlus had three phones in our ranking, all with a silicon-carbon battery for that greater capacity. The only other silicon-carbon battery phone in our rankings was the Poco F7 Ultrawhich you can buy in the United States for just $649.

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

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

Which brand makes phones with the longest battery life?

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

Apple’s iPhones and OnePlus handsets dominate our top five phones, so it’s no surprise that they rank high in overall battery life for a brand. Oppo was not included despite having two phones that performed well in our tests. (OnePlus is a subsidiary of Oppo.) The Oppo Find X9 Pro And Oppo Find N5 foldable performed well, but since we hadn’t reviewed any other Oppo models, we couldn’t include them in the overall brand rankings. Additionally, neither phone is sold in the United States, but if you’re abroad, it’s still worth getting either phone for the exceptional battery life.

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

Google rounds out our top five brands. We tested five Google phones in 2025 and they have decent battery life, especially the Pixel 10, but it’s a big step up from the battery life of OnePlus phones. What’s curious is that Google is the only other phone maker besides Apple to control both software and processor design through its combination of Android and Tensor chips, respectively.

Battery test results

CNET runs two battery life tests (streaming video and stress tests) that allow us to compare the phones. In our 3-hour video battery test, in which we streamed video over Wi-Fi with the screen at full brightness and the battery starting at 100%, the iPhone 17 Pro Max performed best. Most of the other phones that performed fantastically in this test were in our overall top five for battery life. A nice surprise is Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Plus, which 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 endurance test, during which we played games, streamed videos, browsed social media, and made a video call with the battery starting at 100%, the iPhone 17 Pro Max was again right at the top and joined behind by three other Apple models, including the iPhone 16E, which starts at $599.

We had plenty of ties for the top five results, including a few phones we haven’t seen ranked yet. Google’s Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro Fold both did very well in this test, as did the Motorola Razr (2025) – that’s two foldables in the top five results.

CNET’s buying advice

Since 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 2,025 phones compared to 2,024 handsets. We averaged the 35 phones we tested in 2025 and did the same for 2024. And even though the 2025 models had longer battery life, it was less than 1%, or 0.78% on average. Most people don’t buy a new phone every year, but if you’re trying to choose between last year’s version of a phone you love and this year’s model, you probably won’t see a drastic difference in battery life – just go with the cheaper, 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’ll save a lot of money and extend the life of your phone by a few more years.