Each of the phones featured in this guide has been granted its own miniature review. I applied the same five key metrics when judging the smartphones: design and features, display, performance and battery life, software and AI, as well as camera. Where available, I’ve linked to in-depth reviews for the phones listed.
We typically score battery life together with performance, but I’ve given the former element particular prominence for this guide. As well as offering general impressions of each phone’s stamina from my day-to-day experience, I also ran our in-house battery benchmark.
This demanding test involves playing a looping 20-hour Full HD (1080p) resolution video via the VLC video player app (available on iOS and Android). The video is set to display across the whole screen, with a fixed screen brightness of 250 nits (the unit of measurement for luminance), and aeroplane mode is switched on, which turns off all data connections. Any automatic battery saver modes are also deactivated. I do all of this to ensure our tests are repeatable and consistent with one another.
When the phone finally ran out of battery and powered down, I charged it back up and recorded how long the video ran for.
If you’re curious about our testing process at Telegraph Recommended, you can visit our Who We Are page to learn more.
