A closer look: Battery life on the HTC One M8

The HTC One M8 is one great performing piece of brains and metal! Sure that is a very biased comment, but what HTC fan wouldn’t agree with me. I’ve had the all new HTC One in my hands since launch day and one of the things about it I least expected to impress me was the battery, but all I can say at this point is, “Wow!” Not only has the HTC One M8 exceed my expectations, but gone are the days when I had to worry about how long it will be until I get my next charge. I was previously sporting the HTC One M7 and after Kit Kat, battery life was not as good as it used to be.

The HTC One M8 has great battery life, but not all the credit can be attributed to just the size of the battery. There are a few software features that help to conserve energy like the HTC Power Saver and Extreme Power Saver features. It is said that while in Extreme Power Saver mode the phone will switch the user interface to a simple, non-Sense looking layout with limited data pushes and can run for 15 hours with 5% battery life. None of the US carrier-based models deployed with these power saver features enabled, but Sprint has already unlocked them with a quick update and we hope other carriers will soon follow suit. International versions didn’t skip a beat and reach store shelves fully enabled. Results are going to be different from person to person, but rest assured there’s a lot of juice in this cup.

Let’s cover the details about the battery/power saving ability:

• The battery size is 2600 mAh.
• Up to 20 hours talk time and 496 hours on standby both while on 3G.
• The battery is sandwiched between the gorgeous screen and stylish metal body so it can’t be removed.
• Qualcomm Quick-Charge 2.0, a feature of the Snapdragon 801 processor that boosts charge time.
• Power saver software options increase battery life.

The battery in the all new HTC One isn’t much bigger than the battery in the HTC One M7 which was 2300 mAh, but the difference in obvious once it is in your hands and you don’t have to reach for your charger for extended periods of time.

My basic observation on the battery was done under normal circumstances. I didn’t have time or resources to see how long the HTC One M8 could last on standby or some other specific test outside of my normal operations. Between video watching, streaming music over Bluetooth for hours, Ingress game time (this is a heavy drain on battery due to GPS and lots of data usage), photo taking, and social media my phone still has life in it to tuck me in at night before charging on my nightstand. My average battery life is around 11 and a half hours. I recently installed the Qualcomm Battery Guru app, but I haven’t allowed it to learn my activity and start managing my consumption yet. Occasionally, I will dim my display brightness, but the drain on battery juice is always less than I anticipate. The photos below were taken on a day where I had the phone on for extended periods of time.

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I will refer to a test recorded by a fellow HTC elevate member and his results were impressive. Kevin Salt, cruised with a dimmed screen for 45 hours of normal usage before dropping below 5% battery life.

Qualcomm introduced a second generation feature in February, called Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 and the estimated charge time of the HTC One M8 is about an hour when plugged into a Quick Charge 2.0 compatible wall charger.

Products with Quick Charge 2.0 can charge up to 75% faster than products without Quick Charge technology. -Qualcomm

Apparently, these chargers haven’t hit the market yet, but Qualcomm ensures the public they are working with manufacturers to join this technology into any standards based charger to be available early this year. Even with the charger that came in the box, I observed a full charge from 14% in just under three hours. We hope to get our hands on a new Quick Charge 2.0 wall charger as soon as they become available and we’ll follow up with readers at that time.

The battery life on the HTC One M8 will likely exceed your expectations of a single, non-removable battery that isn’t as large as the one found in the HTC One max, but don’t take our word for… Get out there and pick up your all new HTC One M8.

What have your experiences been with the M8 so far? Are you content or discontent with your time between charges?