Batteries seemingly can’t keep up with the technological demands of the new smartphones … so you may have to recharge them more frequently.

The Washington Post has published the results of tests it has done on the battery life on the new smartphones and the batteries are not lasting as long as they did.

In a series of battery life tests where smartphone models from the past few years were set at the same brightness and forced to reload the same sites, newer smartphones were not able to last as long as older devices. 

When it comes to the iPhone, for example, the iPhone XS died an average of 21 minutes earlier than the previous-generation iPhone X. Battery life impact was most noticeable with the Google Pixel 3 which lasted an hour and a half less than the Pixel 2. 

According to The Washington Post, the iPhone XR, which uses an LCD instead of an OLED display, was a notable exception, performing well on the battery life tests. The iPhone XR boasts the longest battery life of any iPhone with 25 hours of talk time, 15 hours of internet use, 16 hours of video playback and 65 hours of audio playback. 

Nadim Maluf, chief executive of battery optimisation firm Qnovo, told The Washington Post that batteries improve at about "5% per year" but smartphone power consumption is growing faster than that. 

The Washington Post consulted with other tech sites like Tom's Guide and CNET and came to the conclusion that high-resolution displays and cellular connectivity are major factors that impact battery life. 

Turning down display brightness and using Wi-Fi when possible, two well-known techniques for preserving battery life, are among the recommendations for getting more out of smartphone batteries.

Nadim believes that consumers should "start getting ready for compromise," settling for smartphones with increasingly bigger batteries that result in larger, heavier devices or lesser technologies like the LCD display in the iPhone XR. 

* Faulty or cheap batteries have been known to cause fires in mobile phones in a process which is called thermal runaway.

Lithium-ion battery fires on board planes are rarely publicised but a fire in a device could emit toxic smoke and potentially the battery may even explode, causing damage to the aircraft and putting lives at risk.

More than 50 airline companies across the world – including some of the biggest and best-known - now carry AvSax fire containment bags to deal with fires in personal electronic devices caused by lithium-ion batteries that power them.

The bag – which won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise this year - has been used 27 times to deal with emergencies since the start of 2017.

* Written by Andy Hirst at AH! PR http://www.ah-pr.com/