The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has one of the biggest batteries you can get in a phone at 5,000 mAh. And it's the same size as last year's Galaxy S21 Ultra. Based on a more dynamic display and more efficient chip, we hoped that the Galaxy S22 Ultra's would exceed its predecessor.
Based on our testing, this wasn't the case, but it's not all bad news. Because the adaptive 120Hz display can scale all the way down to 1Hz, we didn't see as much of an endurance hit as we expected with Adaptive mode enabled on the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
For each smartphone we perform the Tom's Guide battery test to see if a given handset can make our best phone battery life list. The test consists of surfing the web over 5G at 150 nits of screen brightness until the battery drains. And you can see the results for the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Galaxy S22 Plus below, which are fairly surprising.
Galaxy S22 Ultra battery life vs. other phones
| Model | Battery life adatpive (hours:mins) | Battery life 60Hz (hours:mins) |
| Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra | 10:02 | 10:11 |
| Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus | 9:31 | 10:12 |
| Google Pixel 6 | 7:46 | 8:13 |
| Google Pixel 6 Pro | 7:43 | 7:46 |
| iPhone 13 Pro Max | 12:16 | N/A |
| iPhone 13 Pro | 11:42 | N/A |
| Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus | 9:22 | 9:52 |
| Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra | 9:50 | 10:15 |
| OnePlus 9 Pro | 11:44 | 10:28 |
The Galaxy S22 Ultra lasted a good but not great time of 10 hours 11 minutes in 60Hz mode and 10:02 in adaptive mode, where the display can scale up to 120Hz but scale all the way down to 1Hz. These results are surprising because they're about the same as the Galaxy S21 Ultra (10:15/9:50), and we were hoping for some efficiency gains from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. Plus, the S21 Ultra's display could only scale down to 10Hz.
As for the Galaxy S22 Plus, it fared pretty well given that it has a smaller battery than the Galaxy S21 Plus (4,500 mAh vs 5,000 mAh). The newer S22 Plus endured for 9:31 in adaptive mode and 10:12 in 60Hz mode. In this case the display scales down to 48Hz. The Galaxy S21 Plus lasted 9:22 and 9:52 in adaptive and 60Hz modes, so that's a pleasant surprise.
The battery life times for the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Galaxy S22 Plus far surpass that of the latest Google phones. The Pixel 6 Pro maxed out at just 7:46 despite its large 5.000 mAh battery, and the regular Pixel 6 hit 8:13 with its 4,614 mAh battery.
The bad news is that both of these Samsung flagships trailed the iPhone 13 Pro Max, which lasted 12:16. The iPhone 13 Pro also lasted longer at 11:42. (Both of these iPhones have adaptive ProMotion displays, and you can't manually choose 60Hz model.) The OnePlus 9 Pro had more staying power than the Galaxy S22 Ultra and S22 Plus with an adaptive display runtime of 11:44.
The bottom line is that the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Galaxy S22 Plus offer solid battery life, but it's not as good as we had hoped. The good news is that the Galaxy S22 Ultra offers faster 45W charging, so it's easy to juice back up in a hurry.
