Android’s Best Advancement This Year Is Battery Life

I used a lot of phones this year, and the battery life has been consistently good to great across the board.

For as long as I’ve used smartphones (which began in 2008 with the iPhone 3G, if we’re not counting the T-Mobile Sidekick in the early 2000s), there’s been one constant companion in my bag when I’m out for the day: an external battery pack. I’m not alone; the majority of smartphone users in Hong Kong and many other metropolitan parts of Asia carry one around at all times. That’s because smartphones can never last a heavy user like me through an entire day — until this year.

It’s 1:30am in Phuket right now, where I’m currently on vacation — happy holidays, y’all — but I had to take time to write this post because I have been out and about all day for the past 14 hours, and somehow my Huawei Mate 9 Pro still has 26% of juice without needing to top up, despite my heavy use all day, shooting videos of my paragliding, WhatsApp chatting with friends back home, keeping up with NBA games on ESPN, and posting a dozen “stories” on Instagram.

As recently as a year ago, when I juggled between the LG G4, Samsung Galaxy S6, and LG V10 as my daily drivers, I would have certainly needed to whip out the portable battery pack (which I still carry with me out of habit but has been mostly collecting dust) at around 8pm. It’s most just those phones, I have never been able to make a phone last me a full day before this year, whether it was the iPhone 4 or OnePlus One or Galaxy Note 4.