The Galaxy S26 Ultra may have the same battery capacity as its predecessor, but it lasts longer on a charge based on our testing. Just not as long as the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
We run every phone we review through the Tom’s Guide Battery Test, which involves continuous web surfing over 5G at 150 nits of screen brightness. The longest-lasting handsets make it to our best phone battery life list. So how did the the S26 Ultra do? Here’s the results.
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Battery capacity
Battery life (hrs:mins)
Galaxy S26 Ultra
5,000 mAh
16:10
iPhone 17 Pro Max
5,088 mAh
17:54
OnePlus 15
7,300 mAh
25:13
Galaxy S25 Ultra
5,000 mAh
14:27
Google Pixel 10 Pro XL
5,200 mAh
14:20
The Galaxy S26 Ultra endured for an average of 16 hours and 10 minutes. That’s more than two hours longer than the Galaxy S25 Ultra using the new version of our test. It’s worth noting that we ran the S25 Ultra on the new version after several months of use, so it may have performed better fresh out of the box.
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The endurance gain could also be caused by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Elite for Galaxy chip, which promises 35% higher CPU efficiency as well as 16% better overall power management. The S26 Ultra also benefits from a larger vapor chamber, and a cooler phone could help with battery life because it’s under less stress.
(Image credit: Tom’s Guide)
In addition, the Galaxy S26 Ultra lasted nearly two hours longer than the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, which packs an even bigger 5,200 mAh battery.
However, the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s endurance falls behind the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apple’s flagship lasted for nearly 18 hours in our testing, giving it close to a 2-hour advantage over Samsung.
All of these flagship phones get blown away by the OnePlus 15, which benefits from a whopping 7,300 mAh silicon carbon battery. This technology allows phone makers to offer higher capacity batteries in a similar size chassis, though there are some trade-offs. Silicon carbon batteries tend to expand over time, and they may not offer as many charging cycles overall.
Regardless, the OnePlus 15’s amazing 25 hours and 13 minutes of battery life is a good 9 hours longer than the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
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