Samsung made some big claims about the Galaxy S6’s battery at launch, so we decided to put its Fast Charging prowess to the test to see if the numbers add up.
The 10 minutes charge test
At the S6’s launch party Samsung’s Justin Denison stated, “we’ve invented one (battery) that charges faster than any other in the industry.” Both the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge shy away from the removable battery designs of older Sammys and finally seal their cells inside.
Naturally, users want to feel confident that they can charge their S6 at the start of the day and know that it’ll keep running until they hit head to pillow at the other end, or failing that, be able to top it up quickly and efficiently should the need arise.
Samsung claims that just ten minutes of Fast Charging will give you four hours of general usage or at least enough juice to watch a feature film – for those times when you absolutely need to re-live one fifth of the Twilight Saga or something…
We drained our Galaxy S6’s battery dry, set up a timer, a time lapse camera (an iPhone 6 if you’re curious) and pressed start the moment we plugged in Sammy’s official Fast Charger.
As you can see in the above video, we managed to grab 18 per cent charge after the 10-minute timer had elapsed and in turn that doled out a respectable 1 hour, 19 minutes of HD video streaming over WiFi. Not bad for such a brief stint with a wall plug, but perhaps pick a Pixar short if you want power left to spare for a phone call at the end.
The zero to one hundred test
The Galaxy S6 fared pretty well after just ten minutes of juice time, so once again we exhausted the battery, set up a timer and then set said timer off the moment we plugged the phone back into the Fast Charger. We also kept tabs on the charge level every ten minutes by tapping the home button, which is what you’ll occasionally spot in the time lapse. At full charge the indicator LED on the S6 switches from red to green and a brief on-screen percentage meter is seen.
Battery life climbed pretty consistently for the first 50 minutes, taking the S6 up to 80 per cent charge, after which the rate of charge levelled out, a trait not uncommon to Li-ion batteries.
The last 20 per cent took an additional 35 minutes to finish charging, bringing the S6’s battery from empty to full in exactly 1 hour, 25 minutes; pretty snappy by most people’s standards. Comparatively the iPhone 6, which Samsung made a direct comparison to, filled its tank using a standard iPhone 6 charger in 2 hours, 14 minutes – not exactly twice as long, as Samsung claims, but still almost an hour longer.
The only test we aren’t able to undertake is whether fast charging reduces the life span of the phone’s battery in the long term. It might be great filling your phone up in seconds now, but if it drains just as quickly a year or so down the line, then you’re not going to be best pleased.
For those of you already rocking a Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge, how have you found battery life? Let us know in the comments below.
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