Can low power mode really extend the life of a mobile phone? I conducted an experiment with two Android flagships

When the battery is low, you may think of turning on the low power mode first, but is the low power mode just a psychological comfort or can it really extend the life of the phone?

In order to find out, I decided to test it with two iQOO 8s respectively, one with low power mode turned on and one without. Let's take a look at the results together.

Before the test, I charged two iQOO 8s to 20% and recorded the power consumption of each phone at each stage and the final battery life. The test environment was room temperature of 25 degrees Celsius, the phone was set to airplane mode and connected to the same Wi-Fi, the system was upgraded to the latest PD2136H_A_1.8.16 version, NFC, Bluetooth, and positioning services were all turned off, the screen brightness was adjusted to 50%, the volume was turned off, and other settings remained default.

Test conditions

01 Test Method

The most commonly used mobile phone functions for most users every day are watching videos, browsing Douyin, and shopping on Taobao. Here, in order to simulate everyone's usage habits, I chose to test 5 applications including taking pictures, Weibo, Douyin, Taobao, and Bilibili. The specific tests are as follows:

① Watch Bilibili HD videos: play 30 minutes of videos in full screen;

② Watch short videos on Douyin: Slide the video on the video interface to browse, slide once every 5 minutes, for a total of 30 minutes.

③ Scroll through the Weibo information stream: Without logging into your account, search for the official Weibo account of “People’s Daily” and enter the homepage, scroll for 5 minutes; enter the list page and scroll for 10 minutes, for a total of 15 minutes.

④Camera recording: Record 1080P 60 frames video for 10 minutes; the default main camera takes photos for 5 minutes, with one photo taken every 1 minute, for a total of 15 minutes.

⑤ Scroll through Taobao’s mobile information flow: Go to the Taobao homepage and scroll for a total of 30 minutes.

02 Conclusion: Low Power Mode is not a panacea

After 1 hour and 29 minutes of testing, the iQOO 8 without low power mode turned on automatically shut down first, while the iQOO 8 with low power mode turned on barely maintained, with only 1% of power left, and could shut down at any time. At this time, it is not meaningful to conduct Taobao testing, so I locked the iQOO 8 screen for standby testing. After 10 minutes of screen standby, the iQOO 8 with low power mode turned on also automatically shut down.

Ultra power saving mode

Of course, if there is really no place to charge and you don't want to lose contact with the outside world, you can also choose to turn on the super power saving mode of iQOO 8. In this mode, you cannot connect to the Internet, and only basic phone and text messaging functions are retained. I tested that the super power saving mode can keep the phone on standby for more than an hour under the extreme condition of 1% power, which is more than enough to make a phone call to report safety.

Now let's summarize, is low power mode useful? According to the measured data, low power mode is still useful for improving battery life, but the effect is not very obvious. Super power saving mode is useful but it sacrifices most functions and is only suitable for maintaining basic connection in special occasions.

03 Conclusion

If you have the charger that comes with iQOO 8 ready, I believe you will not be in the dilemma of running out of power. iQOO 8 continues the 120W ultra-fast flash charging of the previous generation. It can be charged to 38% in 5 minutes, 60% in 10 minutes, and the entire 4350mAh battery can be fully charged in 20 minutes. The phone can be fully charged in the time it takes to eat a meal.

iQOO 8 charging test

With such a powerful "recovery" speed, plus flagship configurations such as Snapdragon 888, LPDDR5 memory, UFS 3.1 flash memory, and 120Hz high refresh screen, iQOO 8 is undoubtedly a rare artifact for the younger generation who regard mobile phones as external organs. The current price of iQOO 8 on JD.com starts at 3,799 yuan. Friends who are interested can pay attention to it.