LG G6 early battery life test

Another installment in giving you what we have on the LG G6 as soon as we have it series is here, and it's a hot topic - battery life.

Mind you, we've done our testing on a pre-production G6 unit running early firmware. The results from the final firmware may differ from the ones posted here.

The LG G6 is powered by a 3,300mAh battery - a significant upgrade over last year's G5 and its 2,800mAh. The G6 has a larger display, you'll counter, but the the battery capacity has been upped by 18% while screen area is just 8% more now. In fact, the G6 packs more juice than the V20 (3,000mAh), which has a larger display to light up - 5.7" in 16:9 is more area than 5.7" in 18:9, plus the V20 has that secondary screen on top. The G6's battery, however, is sealed in, unlike both the G5 and the V20.

Anyway, all this is to preface that we expected better battery life from the G6 than what we got out of the G5 and V20, neither of which were particularly impressive. As it turned out, we had predicted correctly.

The G6 is good for 22 and a half hours of voice calls on a single charge in our testing environment - 5 more than the G5, and 3 more than the V20. In both comparisons the endurance is actually better on the G6 than the proportional increase in capacity - so great, then.

Talk time

• Google Pixel XL
  33:21h
• OnePlus 3T
  30:55h
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  26:13h
• LG G6
  22:30h
• LG V20
  19:48h
• LG G5
  17:38h

The G6 also manages to outlast its two siblings by an hour in Wi-Fi web browsing - 8:31h for the new flagship vs. 7:35h for both the G5 and the V20. It's not a tiny improvement, but it's not amazing either - the Pixel XL can keep reloading web pages for another hour after the G6 has quit, and the Galaxy S7 edge's time in this test is 10:35h (though, for rather obvious reasons, we don't have the numbers for the S8). The OnePlus 3T is close to the G6 in this test - 8:43h.

Web browsing

• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  10:35h
• Google Pixel XL
  9:20h
• OnePlus 3T
  8:43h
• LG G6
  8:31h
• LG G5
  7:35h
• LG V20
  7:35h

In video playback the G6 will last a whopping 6 minutes more than the G5. Seriously, though, 10 and half hours is a pretty good number, especially when you put it up next to the V20's 8 hours. The Pixel XL can do 11:09h, which is like an episode more, so not that big of a deal. The OnePlus 3T's 13:23h time does mean significantly better binge-watching capabilities, but the champ remains the Galaxy S7 edge, which lasted over 15 hours of looping videos, and that's after Nougat sliced a large chunk off its surreal Marshmallow stamina.

Video playback

• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  15:12h
• OnePlus 3T
  13:23h
• Google Pixel XL
  11:09h
• LG G6
  10:27h
• LG G5
  10:21h
• LG V20
  8:04h

Dialing in those numbers in our formula produces a 72h overall Endurance rating with the always on display turned off. Switch on the feature and you're looking at a lower number, because stand-by consumption gets higher (duh) and it is included in the calcs even if it doesn't get a field in the score card.

However, and we've always tried to point that out, the effect of the always on display consumption can vary wildly depending on usage - it's one thing if the phone is held in your pocket (where it will eventually turn off the display altogether), it's completely different if it stays on the table in front of you, and the ambient lighting is strong enough that it needs to crank up the brightness higher. Which, as it happens, is also a setting in the always on display menu - you can actually tell the phone to keep the always on feature brighter. Additionally, you are much more likely to deplete your battery from actually using your phone than from the always on feature.

The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritties. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.