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The music playback times of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus received a significant boost compared to those of their predecessors, as revealed by the official battery specs and estimates Samsung published shortly after announcing its latest pair of Android flagships at Mobile World Congress 2018. According to the South Korean phone maker, the Galaxy S9 can allow for up to 80 hours of MP3 playback with the Always-On Display turned off, which is 13 hours longer than what its direct predecessor was rated for. Under ideal conditions, the Galaxy S9 Plus delivers around 94 hours of MP3 playback, 16 more than the Galaxy S8 Plus. The duo is capable of delivering 48 and 54 hours of playback with the Always-On Display enabled, which is a four-hour year-on-year improvement across both models.
Maximum video playback and Internet use times on a single charge are largely the same ones from last year, with owners of Samsung’s new flagships still being able to expect around 12 or more hours of 4G activity and up to 16 or 18 hours of watching video content, depending on their brightness settings and model of choice. Talk times have been slightly upgraded and their maximum estimates are now well over the 20-hour mark; Galaxy S9 is estimated to allow for up to 22 hours of talk time on a single charge, whereas the Galaxy S9 Plus improves on that performance by three hours, at least in theory. Samsung’s projections are based on in-depth testing in a controlled environment, so real-world stats of both devices may vary depending on how aggressively one is using them.
As was the case last year, the batteries powering the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus have been based on Samsung’s latest technology meant to combat performance degradation. While the average Li-Ion cell loses approximately 20-percent of its maximum capacity after 400 charging cycles which amounts to about a year of regular use, the cells found inside the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus retain around 95-percent of their capacity over the same period. Samsung’s latest Android flagships will officially become available for pre-orders on Friday and are set to start retailing on a global level on March 16.