Let’s look at Battery drain on entry level phones vs Midrangers. So I was scrolling around social media when I happened to come upon a complaint.

It was from a guy who was using a Redmi 8 and then he moved up to the Redmi Note 11 Pro. So what was his complaint?

The battery on his previous phone lasted longer than the battery on his new phone, despite both batteries being capped at 5,000mAh.

He’s not the only one that I have seen complain about this.

I have noticed that lots of people moving from entry level devices to Midrange phones usually have this complaint.

Short answer

Battery drain on entry level phones vs Midrangers can be explained as follows: when you move from entry level up to the Midrange, your battery requirements will increase.

This is because Midrangers have higher specifications that requires more battery power to work.

Now here’s the long answer…

Battery drain on entry level phones vs Midrangers

Let’s look at the two phones in question; Redmi 8 and Redmi Note 11 Pro.

Redmi 8

Redmi Note 11 Pro

So these are the main specs of both phones.

Quite clearly, you can see that the RN11 pro boasts more superior specs.

Let’s move on to the most important part of the phone. The SoC of course.

SoC

Now we know that some processors are much better than others.

Why? Or how is this achieved?

Simply put, better processors use better logic. Better logic needs more transistors.

More transistors need more current and therefore will swallow more battery.

The Snapdragon 439 has around 4 million tiny transistors. The Helio G96 has well over 5 million.

More transistors equals to a greater power draw on the battery. More processing power equals to more battery consumption.

This is why when you fire up a game and engage the big cores, they become hot and your battery drains really fast.

When you quit the game and your big cores go to sleep, the battery drain is reduced back to normal.

The way an Snapdragon 439 processor will drain battery is very different from the way that a MediaTek Helio G99 will drain battery.

Remember that MediaTek’s efficiency and battery optimization are not as good as those on Qualcomm Snapdragon.

So one cannot get a phone with a more powerful processor and expect the same battery drain.

Next up

The display

Now a display is made up of very tiny units called pixels or picture elements.

The pixels are what light up to display the image on your screen. For these pixels to light up, current must enter.

The more pixels on a display, the more current it will draw.

So a 1080p display will draw more current than a 720p display. A 1440p display will draw more battery power than both the 720p and 1080p display.

So when you’re moving from a 720p to a 1080p display…this screen is sharper, this screen is sharper than my old phone. Expect the sharper display to drink battery more sharply

Next up is the camera…

Cameras

Now what a lot of people do not realize is that bigger cameras require a lot of battery to work, especially when you use the video function.

I once tried to cover an event with my phone in 28°C weather. My phone became incredibly hot and died on me. You should have seen me that day 😭😭😭😭

I was sweating from my soul outside.

The phone wouldn’t come on. No matter what I did. In my desperation, I bought two cold sachets of water and put them on my phone for about ten minutes. When the phone cooled down, then it came back on.

The more pixels are on your camera, the more work your processor has to do to process those images and video coming out of the camera.

The more work the SoC has to do, the more battery it will have to consume.

Higher resolution cameras will heat up your phone pretty quickly. Now when you feel heat, you should know that it means current is flowing. The excess current is usually what is translated to heat.

Moving from 12MP cameras to 108MP cameras means that the battery is going to cry and bleed current (electrons).

Battery

Now one can see that despite the increased load, the battery is still 5,000mAh.

Will a 5,000mAh under such load last as long as a similar 5,000mAh under a lesser load?

Absolutely not!

But I have seen people coming from (especially Transsion) entry level devices that use Helio A22, 720p display and 13MP cameras complain bitterly.

They’ll complain about how they used their entry level phones for 900 years before it would shut down. The battery is much better, yen yen yen…

It’s mostly because of them that I charge consultation fees, at least if you’re going to waste my time, pay me something for it.

In conclusion

I decided to just throw more light on it this evening so the members of this community should be very informed enough to tackle topics like this.

Especially when ignorant people outside start to mislead others. Because I see it alot especially on Nairaland and Facebook.

It would be crazy for me to expect my RN9 Pro battery to drain the same way that a Tecno Pouvoir 3 plus battery will drain

So that’s the long explanation.

If you’re moving from entry level to Midrange or from Midrange to flagship…

Expect your battery to last lesser and lesser. Especially now that network is very very unstable these days.

So that’s my plenty sermon for this evening. Thank you for coming.

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