Forget iPhone 16 Pro Max — OnePlus 13’s battery life is unbelievably good

OnePlus 13 cameras
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

We’ve seen some incredible advances in phone battery life the past few years, with iPhone 16 Pro Max exceeding 17 hours on a single charge in our custom battery test while the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro almost hit 21 hours. OnePlus phones have also proven to be pretty long-lasting in recent years, and it looks like the just-announced, OnePlus 13 is carrying on with that trend.

A bit of background, first: we put every phone we review through a battery test in which we set the screen to 150 nits and run a script that forces the phone to surf the web continuously over cellular until it runs out of power. The average phone lasts a little longer than 10 hours on this test. The devices with the best phone battery life can go 14 hours or more.

Last yea,r the OnePlus 12 wowed us by lasting more than 17 hours on that battery test, while the mid-range OnePlus 12R went even further by exceeding 18 hours. Those are some pretty impressive results you'd think would be hard for newer phones to top.

Well, the OnePlus 13 topped both of last year's OnePlus 12 models. As part of our OnePlus 13 review, we ran our usual battery test, and the new flagship kept going and going, finally running out of steam after 19 hours and 45 minutes. It’s not enough to claim the top spot on our longest-lasting phones list, but it’s a well-deserved silver medal.

But this still means that OnePlus managed to outdo its biggest rivals and even its own top-performing handsets — exactly how we want things to progress when a new generation of phone is announced. Plus, as our OnePlus 13 review makes clear, the OnePlus 13 offers great performance in other areas too, including some of the best camera quality of any OnePlus phone. (See our look at the best camera phones to find out how the OnePlus 13's shots compare to the top models.)

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Row 0 - Cell 0 Battery sizeBattery Life(hours : minutes)Charging percentage (15 minutes)Charging percentage (30 minutes)
OnePlus 136,000 mAh19:4556%92%
iPhone 16 Pro Max4,685 mAh17:1729%55%
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra5,000 mAh16:4539%71%
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL5,060 mAh14:3735%63%
Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro5,800 mAh20:3437%74%
OnePlus 125,400 mAh17:0560%100%

The Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro still beats the OnePlus 13 by almost an hour, but that’s to be expected considering how solid the brand’s battery performance has been in recent years. As a gaming device, the ROG Phone 9 Pro is designed to last a long time on a charge, so that you don't have to cut a gaming session short because of a depleted battery.

The OnePlus 13 still outpaces the 2023 Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro (18 hours, 48 minutes) by almost an hour, and knocks the OnePlus 12R (18 hours 8 minutes) out of the top 3 in the process.

Out of the major flagships currently on sale, iPhone 16 Pro Max comes closest. But the 17 hour and 17 minute battery life can't really compete to the OnePlus 13. Even the 17 hour 5 minute result from the OnePlus 12 seems pretty paltry in comparison.

OnePlus 13 wireless charger and case

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

That’s not the only thing the OnePlus 13 does well, either. We haven’t been able to test the phone’s recharge speed at the full 100W charging speed available in other parts of the world, but using an 80W charging brick at our U.S. lab meant the phone was able to hit 56% battery in just 15 minutes. By the 30-minute mark that number was sitting at 92%. That's pretty spectacular, and very useful if you’re short of power and time.

It’s not quite as fast as the OnePlus 12 managed at 80W speeds, hitting 60% after 15 minutes and a full 100% after half an hour. Of course the OnePlus 12 has a smaller battery, and will likely be beaten by OnePlus’s 100W charging brick — assuming you have one. It makes the iPhone 16 Pro Max recharge time look positively glacial, with that phone hitting 29% and 55% after the respective 15- and 30-minute marks.

Meanwhile the Pixel 9 Pro XL did a little better with 35% after 15 minutes and 63% after half an hour. Then comes the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which hit 39% and 71% after the same amount of time. Obviously, all three of those phones have significantly slower recharging speeds, particularly the iPhone. So they’re obviously going to lag behind in this area.

The OnePlus 13 is a phone that offers a battery that should last you through just about any day in your life. But on the off-chance that you do need to recharge in a pinch, you’ll be able to recoup a lot of that missing power extremely quickly.

More from Tom's Guide

Tom Pritchard
UK Phones Editor

Tom is the Tom's Guide's UK Phones Editor, tackling the latest smartphone news and vocally expressing his opinions about upcoming features or changes. It's long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He’s usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of coffee, or complaining about how terrible his Smart TV is.

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