The Galaxy S26 has a lower battery life than the S25, with only 16h37 of continuous use compared to 18h26. Despite a larger 4300 mAh battery, the Exynos 2600 chip appears to consume 40% more power than its Snapdragon competitor.
Last week, we published our test of the Galaxy S26, the latest from Samsung, which has the heavy task of securing the entry ticket to the high end of the Korean market. One of the negative points that we highlighted in our test is the following: the autonomy, despite a larger battery, is less good than on the Galaxy S25.
Less good autonomy on the new generation
Chez 01neteach product that allows it goes through our independent autonomy test. The latter measures its ability to maintain its autonomy starting from a full battery and reaching 5% of the remaining battery, all by carrying out a loop of actions supposed to simulate continuous use of the relatively intense device.
Pourquoi nos tests d’autonomie s’arrêtent-ils à 5 % ?
This choice comes from the fact that we cannot guarantee that the autonomy test will work properly after these 5% due to numerous automatic mechanisms that can be triggered to preserve the remaining autonomy (switching to hyper-energy saving mode, changing brightness settings, etc.). We therefore decided to block the test once we reached this stage. Since all the smartphones tested do so on the same basis, this allows them to be compared on this basis and to arrive at conclusions, even if it is “missing” 5% of autonomy.
In this small game, the Galaxy S25 lasted 18 hours and 26 minutes last year. An honorable score which, without breaking the ceiling, placed him at the top of the table at the time. Since then, the silicon carbon batteries of Chinese competitors have been there and this score remains correct, but it is more located towards the soft underbelly of the ranking.
Suffice to say that we expected at least the Galaxy S26 to maintain this level of performance. Well, it won’t.
 Battery capacity Mixed autonomy Charging time Charge a 10 min
According to our test, it even lost ground on its predecessor. Here we are at 16 hours and 37 minutes of continuous use, a loss of almost 2 hours of autonomy in our test. With such a score, the Galaxy S26 is a little below average in autonomy for us.
How to explain this? Exynos pointed out
This result is surprising to say the least when we look at the technical sheet of the Galaxy S26. In fact, this one has a larger battery than its predecessor: 4300 mAh, compared to 4000 mAh previously.
A start of an answer can be found in the Exynos 2600 chip, included in the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus in their European version. A YouTube channel called TechStation 365 had fun comparing the S26 under Exynos with a OnePlus 15 under Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
And the observation is clear, according to the videographer’s measurements, on the same benchmark, the S25 under Exynos would consume 40% more energy than its counterpart under Snapdragon, all while offering a lower score.
Here, for example, are the results on Geekbench 6, an authoritative benchmark:
- Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
- Monocœur : 3,641 points
- Multicœur : 10,902 points
- Consommation maximale : 21,48 W
- Exynos 2600
- Monocœur : 3,271 points
- Multicœur : 10,745 points
- Consommation maximale : 30,22 W
If this does not entirely close the subject of the consumption of the Galaxy S26, which can be explained by other components (screen, modem, etc.), we still have a fairly central element of the device which must necessarily weigh in the balance.
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