Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra battery life and charging speed results

We're adding the finishing touches to our review of the Galaxy S23 Ultra. But in the meantime, we know all of you want to know just how good the battery life is, thanks to the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. Well, we'll tell you.

We'll lay the numbers here, but the review will still be a deeper dive.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra beats the endurance rating of its predecessor by 18 hours. But, arguably more importantly, the new phone beats its predecessor in each of our onscreen tests as well - it achieved 4 hours more in web browsing, and 5 hours more in video runtime. Those are impressive results considering the S23 Ultra works with the same battery capacity.

But even more than that - the Galaxy S23 Ultra is competitive against the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max - something Samsung's big phones haven't been able to do for years. The Galaxy scored a higher endurance rating by 5 hours and outlasts the iPhone by 12 whole hours in our call test. But the 14 Pro Max still beats the Galaxy S23 Ultra in onscreen tests.

On paper charging hasn't improved. It's still technically capped at 45W, though we did see an improvement in charging speed compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Using the faster 45W Samsung adapter, the Galaxy S23 Ultra got to 68% in our 30-minute test - 8% more than its predecessor. Both finished their 0-100% charge test in 59 minutes, though.

Interestingly, if you use the slower 25W Samsung adapter, the Galaxy S22 Ultra was faster in both the 30-minute test, and the 0-100% test.