Our two testing methods focused on measuring battery life after video playback and during general use. For the video playback testing (Figure 1), we left a three-hour YouTube video on and tracked the battery percentage over one, two, and three hours. Phone screen brightness was set to 100%, and auto-brightness and dimming were disabled. In addition, we used Wi-Fi only, notifications were turned off, volume was set to 50%, and the highest refresh rate was turned on.
Battery degradation is inevitable. But as technology advances and carmakers come up with better ways to improve battery life, it's slowly becoming a non-issue. That's what the statistics say, and that's what I discovered after doing a battery capacity test on my own 2023 Volvo V90 plug-in hybrid wagon, which I've owned for almost a year. My car is rare, and that's one of the reasons why I bought it in the first place.
Battery size is not always a straightforward comparison. The highest number of milliampere hours (mAh) doesn't always translate to the longest battery life. Indeed, "battery life" itself is somewhat subjective. A phone streaming a video saved to local memory will last longer than a phone exporting a 30-minute 4K video, and yet another phone streaming Spotify to a car on a road trip (with the screen off) will last longer than both.
Last month, my colleague Liz Lopatto explained how a gummy bear battery bank was taking over the ultralight backpacking world. I'm talking full-grown, outdoorsy adults nerding out about gummy bear merch beating the battery pros at their own game! Liz and I quickly agreed: We should put it to the test. Could the gummy bear company truly have the best ultralight battery, and could I bring some hard data to prove it?
For The Verge's exclusive tour of these secretive labs, I watch researchers peer at cell chemistries down to the atomistic level, using electron microscopes. Others work at a larger scale, all the way up to the Megashaker. Inside a cavernous hall, an enormous sliding test chamber envelops one of GM's double-stacked, 205-kilowatt-hour battery packs - the type that powers hulking models like the Cadillac Escalade IQ.