When the specs are the same, Windows Phone has better battery life than Android

Yesterday, HTC announced that they would begin selling a Windows Phone variant of their HTC One M8 smartphone. Seeing that the hardware is identical to that of Android version, the best test of performance is to see how long the battery will last when using the device.

Both devices have a 2600 mAh battery, the same 2.3 Ghz quad core processor, same display, same everything. What is different between the two devices is the battery life.

The Windows Phone version is stated to have talk time of 22 hrs and standby time of 528 hrs whereas the Android version is stated to have 20 hrs of talk time and 496 hours standby time. These figures were pulled from HTCs website (Windows Phone, Android); the Verizon website offered dramatically different stats for the Android that slanted the battery life much further towards Windows Phone but this could be a typing error.

That's about 10% better battery life by simply switching the operating system, and this shows that Windows Phone devices do get better battery life than their Android counterparts. It is worth pointing out that Windows Phone hardware is more restrictive than Android and therefore is optimized for the platforms that it runs on, where as Android is more flexible.

For those that love the hardware of the HTC One M8, the better battery life on the Windows Phone version may be enough to sway users to the platform. But, Android is still king of the market and crucially has a better app ecosystem.

Thanks for the tip Ginny!