I went from a big-battery phone to a normal mobile; now I'll never buy smaller again

Testing smartphones for a living, I often have to say goodbye to phones I enjoy using when I'm tasked with moving on to a new model or returning an old one to the company.

I've previously written about the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra tool I missed when I moved over, and other Android Police writers have discussed what they've liked and loathed about switching from a $1,000 mobile to a $200 one.

When you use Android phones as your job, small spec differences can feel like dramatic changes.

A fraction of an inch of screen space, a slightly different processor, or a few megapixels more on a camera can make marked differences.

This is something I've been finding out the hard way. I'd been using a big-battery phone for many months, but was forced to return to a 5,000mAh phone for a short while.

Doing so helped me realize that big-battery phones, or at least long-lasting ones, are the only mobiles I'll consider buying going forward.

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Posts 11
By  Jon Gilbert

Why I made the downgrade to a medium-battery phone

Bye-bye, big battery

I'd been using the Motorola Edge 70 Fusion for at least a month — that's a long time, in tech reviewer terms — before I lent it to another brand for testing.

The Moto has a lovely big 7,000mAh battery, which kept it running for multiple days during my testing process.

I'd have appreciated it more if my previous reviews didn't include Pocophone and OnePlus phones with even higher-capacity power packs, but it was still wonderful.

Using a meaty power pack like this, you get out of the habit of charging your mobile daily.

I'd plug in the Moto as and when I needed some charge. If I wanted to power overnight, I could ditch my fast charger for a slow one and wouldn't risk overcharging.

When I temporarily handed my Moto in, I returned to my fall-back device, a Realme 13 Pro Plus, which I've been using between review tests for nearly two years now.

This mobile has a 5,200mAh battery, which felt big in 2024, but the average size has been skyrocketing in the last year.

The battery health of the Realme likely isn't at 100% anymore, so the differences may feel a bit more pronounced. But returning to a sub-7,000mAh phone still felt dramatic.

OnePlus 15R

Battery
7,400mAh
Charge speed
80W
Display dimensions
6.83-inches
RAM
12GB

$700 at Amazon $700 at Best Buy
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Picking my gaming sessions carefully

Be careful about the charge

I'm a big mobile gamer. Outside of music and communication, it's probably my most frequent phone task. Slay the Spire is my stalwart bus-journey companion.

Testing big-battery phones, I've become used to gaming sessions only eating a small amount of battery charge.

However, since I returned to the Realme, the consumption has been greatly decreased.

Now, when I hop on a bus and boot up Slay the Spire, I'm looking at my battery charge dropping between 5% and 10% depending on the length of the journey, and sometimes more if there's traffic or if I overshoot my stop (very frequent, if I'm near the boss).

For some comparison, it only dropped a few percentage points when I gamed on the Motorola.

Using about 10% of my phone's charge on a bus ride may not sound like the end of the world, but if I have multiple rides through the day, it can add up.

Like many people, battery anxiety can set in if you're burning through battery charge like that, and it's made me miss the big-battery phones.

It's not only gaming that can eat through battery, though.

If I'm taking loads of pictures, either for personal reasons or for product reviews, I can see the power drop quickly.

When I went on a location scout for a video shoot, I lost about 20% of my charge snapping pictures of a room.

If you're out all day in a setting where you use your phone a lot, like while on holiday or at a music festival (the latter of which I've been doing recently), any big battery use can cause anxiety.

Monitoring battery use to optimize

Android tools to the rescue

With a lower battery capacity, I've found myself micromanaging my power use to a much greater degree than I've needed to in the past.

I've become reliant on a few different Android tools to keep the phone ticking.

I use Power Saving Mode liberally when I'm not actively using my phone. This restricts background and turns off some advanced features.

I always feel like it's a worthwhile payoff. I always get a few extra hours of charge.

Power Saving Mode is only worth turning on if I need some endurance from my phone, not for day-to-day use, but it's handy in a pinch.

I'm often also poking around in my Settings app's battery menu, checking out where my battery is going.

I always forget how much of a charge hog Spotify can be, and this helps me find out which apps are taking up charge, as well as how much time I've spent with the screen off.

I should acknowledge that 5,000mAh is still a reasonable battery size for an Android phone, as it ensures a day of use is feasible in all but the most intensive settings. Lots of the time, I find it's enough.

But hardcore use requires as much battery as possible, and I find that 5,000mAh isn't enough under these conditions.

That's why I wouldn't buy a phone with less than a 7,000mAh battery these days, even if I'm using all the Android settings that save battery life.