Last time Samsung increased battery capacity with the Galaxy Note 7, which turns out to be a total fiasco. After that, the company has taken extra care with 8-Point Battey Safty measure. The recently launched Galaxy Note 9 battery capacity is the biggest with 4000mAh battery, after the last time’s fiasco the Note also gone to the Battey Safty measure. I have been using the Samsung Galaxy Note as my daily driver for more than two months and here is my review of the battery performance.
In the early weeks the battery wasn’t up to the par and had faced some problems with the device, like quick battery drain, device heating; even performance was also lagging in some cases. However, later on, with the software update, some fixed issues were fixed and battery life eventually improved with time. Like in most of the devices with Lithium-ion battery, in the early period the battery tends to have shorter battery life, but with some full charge cycle, the battery life improves. Same was the case with my unit.
In the early period of my review, due to my busy schedule around that time, the device used to easily last for a couple of days with some calls, text, checking emails and occasionally surfing through social media. Though when I tried my hand for “Chicken Dinner” on my brand new device, I was surprised when I saw battery low message just a couple of hours after playing my favorite PUBG, though I have fully charged the device before starting the game.
Later on with the full some charge cycles the battery life improved. With the improved battery, I was able to go for some more “Chicken Dinner”. On the later period of the review period, I had played lots of games intensively for the sake of testing the battery life. Well, I have to say the added juice has improved the battery life. Gaming was not only my method of testing the battery life. To test the battery, I had taken a lot of photos and video with my device and watch a lot of videos.
As we are just over with the festive time, it was the perfect time to test battery life with photos and videos. During the Dashain, I took a lot of photos and video with my device. As everyone wants the photo of them taken while receiving tika, for memory and to share on their social media profile. Well for me it same as well as to flaunt my brand new Note 9. During that time I look almost 200-250 photos and some videos continuously and during that time the screen of the device was on. The battery performed well during that period, as the battery dropped by some 20% during to shoot time. Same was the performance when I again test the battery with camera performance but times with night photography will all the twinkling lights of Tihar.
The Festive time also means a lot of free time, which means I had lots of time to catch up all the movies and TV-series I had missed. And I enjoyed watching the movie during that time. One time I watched two movies on a row, I started with around 30-35% battery and by the time I was done with both the movies that too with full brightness I still had some 8-10% of battery left.
And even with all this power intensive testing, with the quick charge adaptor bundle in the box, I was all ready for next round of testing with fully charged battery. I took along 1hr and 45mins to fully charge my device with that massive 4000mAh battery packed inside.
To verify all the results I have tested it further and give a real picture of the battery life. I started the testing with YouTube videos, where I played random Full HD+ videos on YouTube for 3hours+, I got a fair result, as expected. Next, I played WQHD+ (2960X1440) video from YouTube for few hours. Still, there was about half battery left, a screenshot is as below.
Further, to test to its optimum level, I recorded the random videos (UHD) and took random photos for a couple of hours or so. In between all the camera test, I also played the PUBG Mobile until the battery goes down to 20%. With all the results of the test, the screenshots of battery usage is as follow.
The above screenshots show the battery drainage pattern, which was intentional, just to test the battery backup. Therefore, it will be different from person to person because not everyone is like me. And also, keep in mind that the battery will degrade over time, reducing the backup time.
Besides, I also like to mention that the standby time also has some issues. One night, I fully charged the device and went to sleep, the next morning the battery was down to 89%, just in six hours. There were no notifications, always on display was turned off, no calls or messages were made, still, there was 11% power discharge from the device.
However, there are some options on your setting that will help you to save the battery. For example, strong battery saving mode can stretch the battery life a little bit longer. Similarly, removing always on display and reducing the screen resolution also helps.
Consider not using 4G all the time, it also drains the battery pretty quickly. Using S-Pen also reduces the battery, but not much as quick as 4G data does. Well, these issues are ignorable, but the battery life is average.
Final thoughts and experience
In these two months of usage, my experience was satisfactory. Galaxy Note 9 battery backup is good, but I was expecting more juice out of it. It will easily last for a whole day, from 8 AM to 8 PM, only if you avoid some intensive usage, like gaming and camera.
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