The iPhone 18 Pro Max has come first in a battery test of 32 phones published on 3rd November 2026. The list mixes 28 phones tested this year with four older ones.
Each phone went through two tests, both starting at 100%. The first streams a video over Wi-Fi for three hours with the screen at full brightness. The second is a 45-minute stress test of video, a video call, games and social media scrolling. The testers recorded how much battery was left after each one and averaged the two.
The Pro Max had 92% left after the video test and 99% after the stress test. That averages to 95.5%, two points clear of the next group. Four phones tie there at 93.5%: the iPhone 17, the iPhone 18 Pro, the Motorola Razr (2026) flip phone and the OnePlus 15.
A bigger battery didn’t decide it
The OnePlus 15 in that tie has a 7,300mAh battery. The iPhone 17 beside it has 3,692mAh, about half as much, and it finished on the same score.
How long a phone lasts depends on two things: how much charge the battery holds, and how fast the phone uses it up. The screen, the chip and the modem all draw power. So a phone with a small battery and parts that sip power can match one with a huge battery and hungrier parts. That’s how the iPhone Air, with a 3,149mAh battery, could end level with the Pixel 11 Pro XL and its 5,000mAh one at 90%.
In August we ranked the biggest phone batteries in the world by their mAh figure. That number tells you how much charge a battery holds. How long your phone lasts depends on the rest of the phone too.
Keep in mind that the test measures what’s left after three hours and 45 minutes, not how long each phone runs before it dies. The spread is small, too. The Nothing Phone 4A Pro came last, and it still averaged 82%. We doubt you’d notice a gap of two or three points between phones in a normal day.
The Pro Max in the results has the bigger battery
The results table lists the Pro Max at USD 1,299, or about KES 169,000 before shipping and duty, with a 5,567mAh battery. That’s the US price, and the battery in the eSIM-only model Apple sells in the US, the UAE, Japan and several other markets. The version with a physical SIM tray, sold everywhere else, has 5,391mAh.
Apple rates the eSIM Pro Max at up to 45 hours of video playback on its US spec page. The SIM-tray model gets up to 43 hours on its UK page.
The US model is also the only iPhone 18 Pro Max that uses a Qualcomm modem. Everywhere else, the Pro Max runs on Apple’s own C2 modem. The test doesn’t tell us how the C2 version would score.
iPhones in Kenya are imported, so you can find either version. A phone brought in from the UAE, where Apple sells only the eSIM model, has the bigger battery. Phones do come in that way: on 1st October 2026, KRA said it had found 40 iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max phones on one passenger arriving from Dubai. A phone from the UK has the SIM tray. Check for the tray before you pay.
Avechi listed the 256GB Pro Max at about KES 205,000 on 12th November 2026. If battery life is all you’re paying for, the iPhone 17 matched the OnePlus 15 and the iPhone 18 Pro on this test, and it starts at USD 370 less than the Pro Max in the US, or about KES 48,100. We think the Pro Max earned its win. It tied for first in the stress test and came second in the video test, behind only the smaller iPhone 18 Pro.
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