Galaxy S23 Ultra vs iPhone 14 Pro Max: who has the longest battery life?

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and the iPhone 14 Pro Max represent the best of the high-end smartphone market. Let’s focus today on a crucial point if you are still hesitating between the two products: the autonomy. For the past few years, the “Pro Max” iPhone models have dominated the rankings of smartphones with the best endurance. But the competition has not said its last word, as proven by the various tests of autonomy that oppose the mobile Samsung to Apple.

Three races, two marathoners

In 2022, we highlighted the disappointing battery life of the Galaxy S22 Ultra and its Exynos chip. Samsung seems to have heard the critics by integrating a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip in its Galaxy S23 Ultra this year… which works wonders. Here we will look at three tests that compare the battery life of the S23 Ultra and the iPhone 14 Pro Max: the one from the YouTube channel PhoneBuff, the one from DXOMARK and the one from our 01Lab. But first, let’s take a look at the forces at work.

We start with Phone Buff’s comparison, which subjected both devices to a series of tests consisting of launching different applications to perform different tasks to see how the battery drains at each stage. As you can see, the two smartphones are neck and neck throughout the test, but the Galaxy S23 Ultra eventually shuts down while the iPhone 14 Pro Max still has 6 percent battery left.

A first test that suggests that the iPhone 14 Pro Max manages the last battery percentages better than its opponent of the day. This is confirmed by the second autonomy test, but the results are quite different. It is the one from DXOMARK. The French laboratory, best known for its tests related to photography, also measures the endurance of smartphones.

According to their testing procedure, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra scores 142 for endurance, compared to “only” 133 for the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Samsung’s phone comes 6th in the ranking of smartphones with the best battery life, Apple’s is now in 22nd place. Also according to DXO, the S23 is distinguished by its excellent autonomy in video. On the other hand, the rapid drop in battery level from 5% is pointed out, confirming what we saw on the PhoneBuff video.

Let’s finish this duel of autonomy with the tests we have done in our 01Lab. As we detailed in our test of the Galaxy S23 Ultra, Samsung and Qualcomm have done a colossal job to finally offer a worthy autonomy to the last “flagship” of the Korean brand.

On the other hand, the charging time remains to the advantage of the S23 Ultra, which goes from 0 to 100% battery in 1 hour 05 minutes, against 1 hour 40 minutes for the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which has a smaller battery. In both cases, neither brand provides a charger in the box.