Smartphone shipments in the Rs 30k to Rs 40k has grown massively this year in India, fueled by 5G chipsets and an attempt to filter down some flagship features to more buyers, in the first half of 2021. Xiaomi made some splashes with the Mi 11X series that includes the Mi 11X and the Mi 11X Pro (review), while iQOO made a spectacular comeback with the iQOO 7 and the iQOO 7 Legend (review). Not wanting to miss out on the action, OnePlus repurposed its previous OnePlus 8T into a budget ‘gaming’ OnePlus 9R smartphone. Not to forget Vivo’s well-crafted Vivo X60 Pro, and choosing the best smartphone in this price range can be nerve-wracking.
While all these smartphones fare quite well in terms of overall performance and camera quality, promising at least a certain benchmark, what remains up for debate is the battery life. Well, not anymore. Our in-house professor spent a night putting all these smartphones through his epic battery test to find out a definite winner. But before we move on to revealing the results, let’s take a look at the test conditions
Table of Contents
Battery Test Conditions
All the phones were tested at room temperature after they were fully charged and the brightness set to 100%. We kept them all on Airplane mode without a physical SIM card installed. This test includes various types of tasks including battery drain, performance test, social media usage, gaming test, video playback test, camera test and charging test. Here are the parameters we followed –
Test Type
Duration of Test
Video Playback (Youtube)
2 hours
Benchmark Test
20 minutes CPU Throttling, 3 rounds AnTuTu
Gaming (Asphalt 9)
1 hour
Social Media
2 hours
Camera (4k 30fps video recording)
30 minutes
Note: The dash sign (–) indicates that the phone died before the round finished.
OnePlus 9R Battery Test
OnePlus 9R is an India exclusive phone. The brand calls it a budget gaming phone, however, the specs are very similar to OnePlus 8T with the chipset swapped with the Snapdragon 870. It rocks a flat 6.55-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and runs on Android 11-based OxygenOS 11 out of the box.
The smartphone packs a 4,500 mAh battery with 65W fast charging. For our battery test, we used the OnePlus 9R till the time it switched off. Here are the results –
Test Type
Battery Percentage Left After Test
Video Playback Test
79%
Benchmark Test
56%
Gaming Test
32%
Camera Test
20%
Social Media Test
—
Total Time
365 minutes (6 hours 10 minutes)
OnePlus 9R Charging Test
OnePlus 9R is one of the few phones in this segment that support fast charging higher than 50W. The brand claims that the OnePlus 9R can be charged from 1 to 100% in 39 mins. Here’s how much time OnePlus 9R took to charge from 0 to 100%.
Time Intervals
Battery Percentage
15 minutes
46%
30 minutes
88%
Total time
38 minutes
iQOO 7 Legend Battery Test
The iQOO 7 series marks the return of iQOO brand in India after a gap of more than a year. The top of the line iQOO 7 Legend features a 6.62-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and a 300Hz touch sampling rate.
This one is powered by the Snapdragon 888 SoC and comes with 3GB virtual RAM. It runs on Android 11-based Funtouch OS 11.1 out of the box, and features a 4000mAh battery with 66W fast charging support.
For our battery test, we used the iQOO 7 Legend till the time it switched off. The results are as follows –
Test Type
Battery Percentage Left After Test
Video Playback Test
78%
Benchmark Test
50%
Gaming Test
26%
Camera Test
14%
Social Media Test
—
Total Time
340 minutes (5 hours 40 minutes)
iQOO 7 Legend Charging Test
iQOO 7 Legend offers 66W fast charging which is fastest in this segment so far. The brand claims that the iQOO 7 Legend can be charged from 0 to 100% in just 22 mins. Here’s how much time the iQOO 7 Legend took to charge to full capacity.
Time Intervals
Battery Percentage
15 minutes
65%
30 minutes
100%
Total time
27 minutes
Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro Battery Test
The Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro was launched as the rebranded version of Redmi K40 Pro Plus in India and features a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate. It runs on the Snapdragon 888 SoC with Android-11 based MIUI 12 out of the box. There’s a 4,250mAh battery keeping the lights on that tops up with a 33W fast charger included in the box.
Here are the results of the battery test we did on the Mi 11X Pro.
Test Type
Battery Percentage Left After Test
Video Playback Test
75%
Benchmark Test
51%
Gaming Test
30%
Camera Test
19%
Social Media Test
—
Total Time
346 minutes (5 hours 46 minutes)
Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro Charging Test
Xiaomi claims that the Mi 11X Pro can be charged from 0 to 100% in just 52 mins. Here’s how much time it took –
Time Intervals
Battery Percentage
15 minutes
30%
30 minutes
58%
Total time
60 minutes
Vivo X60 Battery Test
The Vivo X60 also runs on the Snapdragon 870 SoC featuring a 6.56-inch Full HD+ E3 AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support. The smartphone packs a 4,300 mAh battery with 33W fast charging support. This is the largest battery available in the Vivo X60 series. As mentioned above, we used the Vivo X60 till the phone died. Here are some of the key points from the Vivo X60 battery test.
Test Type
Battery Percentage Left After Test
Video Playback Test
81%
Benchmark Test
56%
Gaming Test
32%
Camera Test
21%
Social Media Test
—
Total Time
355 minutes (5 hours 54 minutes)
Vivo X60 Charging Test
Vivo X60 offers 33W fast charging on its 4300mAh battery. There are no official claims by the brand for charging. Here’s how much time Vivo X60 took to charge from 0 to 100%.
Time Intervals
Battery Percentage
15 minutes
27%
30 minutes
53%
Total time
70 minutes
iQOO 7 Battery Test
The iQOO 7 is the affordable option in the iQOO 7 series. This too runs on the Snapdragon 870 and features a 6.62-inch full HD+ AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate. The phone sports a 4,400 mAh battery with 66W fast charging support. Below is a table to explain the battery test of iQOO 7:
Test Type
Battery Percentage Left After Test
Video Playback Test
81%
Benchmark Test
57%
Gaming Test
37%
Camera Test
27%
Social Media Test
0
Total Time
390 minutes (6 hours 5 minutes)
iQOO 7 Charging Test
iQOO claims that the 66W fast charger can juice up the device from 0 to 100% in just 30 minutes. Here’s how much long the iQOO 7 took to fully charge.
Time Intervals
Battery Percentage
15 minutes
59%
30 minutes
97%
Total time
33 minutes
Mi 11X Battery Test
The Mi 11X was launched as the rebranded version of Redmi K40 in India. Powered by the Snapdragon 870, the Mi 11X features a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate. The battery capacity is 4,520mAh and it comes with a 33W fast charger out of the box. Clearly, this isn’t too different from the Mi 11X Pro, save for the primary camera sensor. Here’s how it fared in our battery test –
Test Type
Battery Percentage Left After Test
Video Playback Test
78%
Benchmark Test
59%
Gaming Test
39%
Camera Test
30%
Social Media Test
—
Total Time
373 minutes (6 hours 21 minutes)
Mi 11X Charging Test
Xiaomi claims the Mi 11X can be charged from 0 to 100% in just 52 mins. Here’s how much time it took –
Time Intervals
Battery Percentage
15 minutes
32%
30 minutes
58%
Total time
68 minutes
A note about performance
Till now, we revealed the stats related to only the battery and charging test, but how did they perform in other aspects?
During the video playback test, we noticed that the display on all these premium offerings are actually pretty good. They support Widevine L1, HDR10+ and 120Hz screen refresh rate at a bare minimum. However, the OnePlus 9R takes lead by offering better details in shadow and brightness control. Coming to the speaker, the Vivo X60 sounded the worst, whereas the OnePlus 9R had the best speakers in this lot.
During the CPU throttle test, Mi 11x and Mi 11X Pro show a big dip in CPU performance, whereas the iQOO 7 and iQOO 7 Legend maintain the clock speeds pretty well. Both OnePlus 9R and Vivo X60 CPU throttling performance were above average. iQOO 7 Legend scored the highest in AnTuTu and storage test, while Mi 11x scored the lowest.
Conclusion
The iQOO 7 was the last phone standing in our epic battery test in the 30-40k price segment winning with a screen-on time of 6 hours 30 minutes. The runners up were the Mi 11X and the OnePlus 9R respectively with 6 hour 15 minutes and 6 hours 10 minutes.
Compared to some of the mid-rangers out there, almost every phone included in this test had average battery life, but were decent enough to last you through the day. But if you are someone who demand the fastest charging speed, then the OnePlus 9R and iQOO 7 series should be your best choice. And that brings us to the end of this epic test.
Which one do you think is the best among these? Let us know in the comments section.
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