I looked at 15 "typical" days for 3 different phones. I excluded days that I had tethered or been on calls an excessive amount. I can't say I used a rigorous scientific method but I believe that the sample is representative.
For this discussion I tracked 4 variables for each phone:
- End of Day % - Percent of battery remaining at 10:00PM
- OS Level - Operating system in use
- Battery Capacity - in mAh (milliamp Hour)
- mAh/hour - mAh consumed per hour
| Phone | End of Day % | OS Level | Battery Capacity | mAh/hour |
| iPhone 6s | 55.53 | 10.3.1 | 1715 | 54.27 |
| PRIV | 55.47 | 6.0.1 | 3410 | 113.54 |
| Nexus 5 | 42.53 | 6.0.1 | 2300 | 104.48 |
At the end of the day, all 3 phones were generally in the same range of percent of battery left. The Nexus 5 was lower and that aligns with its reputation of poor battery life.
The PRIV has a big honker of a battery, almost twice the capacity of the iPhone 6s. And it needs it.
But the real finding for me was that the mAh/hour rate of the iPhone 6s was roughly half that of the Andoid phones. That's why the iPhone 6s' battery is so much smaller than the Android phones and why the iPhone 6s is so much thinner.
How does the iPhone keep the battery usage rate so low? Simple, it doesn't let apps run in the background.
