Combating 5G Battery Drain Concerns

Chipset vendors driving generational efficiency gains

• 5G use drains your smartphone battery faster than 4G-LTE. Ookla® Speedtest Intelligence® data shows that smartphone users accessing 5G networks experience higher battery drain than for those using 4G-LTE, of between 6% and 11%, depending on the System on Chip (SoC) in their device.
• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon is the most efficient Android SoC. Qualcomm’s latest flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, recorded the lowest battery drain of all SoCs in our analysis, recording 31% for users on 5G, and 25% on 4G-LTE.
• Newer flagship SoCs demonstrate clear improvements in battery performance. While the gap in battery drain between 4G-LTE and 5G use does not appear to be closing over time, newer generations of SoC from Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and Google all demonstrate battery efficiency gains over previous iterations. MediaTek’s latest flagship SoC, the Dimensity 9200 for example, recorded 34% battery drain when using 5G, compared to 45% for its previous generation, the Dimensity 9000.
• Smartphone users concerned about 5G’s impact on battery life should consider upgrading. For users with 5G-capable devices camping on 4G-LTE networks due to battery life concerns, an upgrade to the latest flagship smartphone (and SoC) and enabling 5G service will in some cases deliver comparable battery performance. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for example recorded battery drain of 31% when using 5G, compared to 32% for the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 on 4G-LTE.
  

Methodology

Analysis based on Speedtest Intelligence data, for Android, split by SoC, for a selection of major markets globally. To measure battery drain, we identified all devices recording 100% battery level during morning hours (6am-12pm), and compared to their minimum battery level in the afternoon (12pm-6pm).