Almost two months ago, we reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Note9 and ever since then we have been using the phone as our daily driver. In our Initial Impression article, we mentioned the brief nature of the Note9’s battery life. So in this article, we are going to be diving a bit deeper into the battery life of the Note9. Has it gotten better? Is it the gold standard in terms of battery life? Well, let’s find the answers to just that!
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 packs a large 4000mAh non-user removable battery. It is the largest battery capacity that a Note device has ever offered. Samsung claims it to have the best battery life out there in the market. But our findings of the battery life of the Note9 has been a bit all over the place.
As I mentioned in my review article, the initial battery life of the Note9 was mediocre. I barely got 3 hours with the bugger! This was the case for the initial 3-4 charge cycle of the Note9. For those of you buying the Note9 remember this, the battery life will be bad for a couple of days but it will slowly get better. From my intense internet research, I found out this was a type of safe to prevent any battery overload.
After the whole Note7 fiasco, it is normal for Samsung to want to protect the customers and the phone from any potential disaster. And oh, this is mostly found in the Exynos version of the Galaxy Note9. The Snapdragon variant is unaffected or doesn’t have the same mechanism. Like many of you, I too initially thought the unit that I received was a faulty one. Then I contacted some other users of the Note9 (in the tech community) to decipher the persistent issue.
After the first few cycles, the battery life on the Galaxy Note9 got better. I was getting around 5-6 hours of on-screen with the phone. This was very good and I appreciated the added battery life. That said, I was still not able to get the phenomenal battery life of about 7 hours that many of the people (including the international tech community) were claiming.
This had me concerned so I did a bit of digging. I started with some tweaks to the phone! The first thing that I did was I turned off many of the haptic feedback and vibration options. I also wiped the cache partition and put power consuming apps to sleep. During the period, I noticed that the device ideal was the main culprit to the battery drainage. Due to this, I couldn’t do much to improve the battery life and meet the 7-hour mark. And when all hope seemed to have been lost, an updated hit the Exynos version of the Note9. This update brought major camera improvements and also the much-needed battery issue fix. Now, I am finally getting the phenomenal battery life that the Note9 had advertised. Truly impressed!
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 is definitely a beast in terms of battery life. Doing the basics like watching YouTube videos, browsing the internet, and scrolling through Facebook will not drain the battery too much. Playing games, however, is another story! Like most of you, I spend quite a lot of time playing PUBG. And while doing so, the battery life depletes fast! This, however, is not an issue but something to keep in mind. Playing graphics intensive games will use a lot of resources of the phone depleting battery life. Don’t get me wrong, the battery life is not that bad while playing games. In fact, it is a lot better than the competition! But having a phone with the utopia of battery life is something of everyone’s dream.
For my needs, the battery life of the Galaxy Note9 is very good. For someone like me, who uses their phones a lot with WI-FI, Location, Always On Display, and Sync always on, to have good battery life is actually amazing. The average consumers will have no problem getting two days out of the phone. So is the Samsung Galaxy Note9 the pinnacle of smartphone battery technology? Has it gotten better over the course of time? Well, to call it the pinnacle of smartphone battery technology will be an exaggeration. It has good battery life but not the best. There are smartphones out there that offer better battery life! But that said, the battery life has gotten better over time. In fact, it is the best battery life on a Note device, heck a Samsung device.
Also Read – Samsung Galaxy Note9: Initial Review
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