A while back, there was a race to create a smartphone with the highest resolution possible. At one point in time, it felt like we could expect that smartphones with 4K displays to become the new standard, but for the most part, a lot of companies have stopped at QHD, with only a handful of smartphones sporting 4K screens.
The reason we’re not seeing 4K on our smartphones, at least not yet, could be due to battery issues, where obviously a screen with a higher resolution would need more battery, so the question is, how much more battery would a phone drain if it had a higher resolution compared to a lower one? That’s what PhoneBuff is trying to find out in a new battery test.
In a video shared on YouTube, PhoneBuff compared the battery life of the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus where one model had a 1440p display and the other having a 1080p resolution. The test tries to find out if both phones were used in a similar manner, what the difference in battery life would be.
What’s interesting is that in this test, it seems that there was almost no perceptible difference between the battery lives of either handset. Both devices seemed to drain at roughly the same rate, with the 1080p phone actually running out of battery about a minute before the 1440p phone does.
We’re not sure how scientific of a test this year, but it suggests that maybe any battery drain using a higher resolution could be negligible enough for users to safely ignore.