Our summer battery and display test: the beach effect

14 July 2024
We torture-tested a selection of phones to see how bright sunlight affects their battery life.

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  • ?
  • Anonymous
  • 0cB
  • 15 Jul 2024

My phone only gets hot when using android auto. With screen on and without car ac. Otherwise no any heating. Using s24+ superb phone.

    • ?
    • Anonymous
    • Jvg
    • 15 Jul 2024

    Anonymous, 15 Jul 2024aren't they all water resistant? give them a little sp... moreThey could invite some cute iPhone girls and organize a beach party like in that animated movie Sausage Party xD

      • ?
      • Anonymous
      • kt$
      • 15 Jul 2024

      21 comments after 10 hours?

      Without the iPhone in this comparison, not many people seem to care about this.

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        • Anonymous
        • U@F
        • 15 Jul 2024

        Anonymous, 15 Jul 2024aren't they all water resistant? give them a little sp... moreI hope you're joking because you cannot put sea water on any device even if it has any IP water resistance (that would void the warranty contract right there).

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          • Anonymous
          • U@F
          • 15 Jul 2024

          You could have mentioned the maximum temperature of each phone after or during the peaks of the tests. I was literally interested in that one piece of information as its the major annoyance for me. Also, 30 degrees Celsius does NOT represent a summer beach in most countries, at least anything between 35 and 40 degrees would have been more realistic.

            jiyen235, 14 Jul 2024You guys could've easily just did 2 different tests, f... moreI would argue that Insta, tik tok and Facebook is web browsing.

              Just wanted to express mz gratitude that the team is starting to do this sort of test - How Important is the peak brightness spec if it can't keep it up for 5 Minutes in the situation it was designed for.

              Thank you GSM Arena teem, thought seeing an iPhone here as well would have been interesting.

                • ?
                • Anonymous
                • 05e
                • 15 Jul 2024

                On three (four if you include whatever phone they used to record the video) you mostly see cloud reflections. One one, you don't see any reflections. Obviously, there is no test to compare a core feature like that, when it probably is the issue affecting outdoor legibility the most.

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                  • Anonymous
                  • Jvg
                  • 15 Jul 2024

                  Hahaha. I hate going to the beach, but taking your smartphone to the beach must be extremely pathetic. I guess GSMArena will never understand that some of us hate summer and the sun and for that reason we urgently need a dark mode for the website.

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                    • Anonymous
                    • Bi{
                    • 15 Jul 2024

                    aren't they all water resistant? give them a little splash to cool off

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                      • Anonymous
                      • xjH
                      • 15 Jul 2024

                      Such a shame result

                      Here I am riding with google maps for hours with max brightness on ips in 35C on average

                      While samsung ultra strunggling to maintain temperature just by taking notes under the sun

                        Can't believe the honor magic 6 Pro wasn't used with their massive battery and 5000 nits brightness

                          • v
                          • vale
                          • me}
                          • 14 Jul 2024

                          From my experience phones get really hot when you use the camera a lot, both for video and photo and then editing them. I think people would do that at the beach and want to post them then and there. The phones would reach 50 degrees

                            Even the midranger Poco or Motorola is litterary equal to a 1600 eur flagship from samsung what a fail.

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                              • Anonymous
                              • 0p}
                              • 14 Jul 2024

                              Put flagship phones to record 4k video outdoors.
                              Let's see if besides xperia, any else can pass 15 min.
                              Xperia can do hours of 4k30 or 60.

                                You guys could've easily just did 2 different tests, first do the display test to see how the display reacts by recording 4k60 videos for 30 mins and then checking the brightness. That would be hellish for the displays if you really wanted a stress test. If not you could've only done it for 2-5 mins as most people like to take some stories and stuff.

                                For the battery you could've come another day or used a power bank to charge them all back to 100% and then do the test.

                                Also, what's the point of a 100% white window? Nobody watches anything in the sun with that. Should've used your regular 75% white window test and better yet, just checked the brightness of the website at some place in the display. More realistic.

                                Best test scenario would be to scroll instagram as it's quite heavy for a social media app and see the brightness in a similar post in those phones to simulate looking at a normal shot. Due to the smaller size of the photos, the fully white window would be smaller like 30-60% size and so would be more realistic and allow you to see how the phones fare in a real scenario.

                                Idk who browses web pages for hours on the beach, that's just cringe lmao, most people go on TikTok, Youtube or Insta nowadays and old people go on Facebook. Web browsing is mostly done at home.

                                  IpsDisplay, 14 Jul 2024"You'll have to trust us on this, because it'... moreit;s impossible to capture because it is. It's tough to show on camera how legible a phone's display is. Your eyes adjust, cameras do not. They choose a specific exposure and ISO and have an SDR photo out at the end. If it were HDR maybe it could've been somewhat replicated but historically displays were never kind to cameras so yeah it's tough. There's a reason why cameras aren't used and lux meters and stuff are used.

                                  DXOmark just gives an approximation that you can use to get an idea of how the displays fare but they can never be used as a substitute for your eyes. If they don't say that then their reliability is questionable. The legendary Vincent Teoh from HDTV Test always has a disclaimer for this type of thing and RTINGS as well says that these are subjectively done. Only objective thing is the brightness and the colorimetry info that doesn't help much unless you really know your stuff.

                                    Could you guys do such a test between the samsung s24 ultra and the iphone 15 pro max ??

                                      "You'll have to trust us on this, because it's essentially impossible to capture in a photo or on video, but all phones remained easily legible throughout the test"

                                      Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't DXOMARK do display test and capture the results under some high LUX environments

                                      Makes me think maybe it's not impossible, but maybe gsmarena doesn't have the technical resources or knowledge how to get it done

                                      Which if true would make sense because gsmarena's review technicality has been stagnant for years especially display reviews which is basically just peak brightness, low brightness and colour accuracy

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                                        • Anonymous
                                        • txG
                                        • 14 Jul 2024

                                        Inventor class is different to copy paste class

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