Samsung Galaxy Alpha (Exynos 5430) battery test

The Samsung Galaxy Alpha comes in two versions – one with Samsung’s brand new Exynos 5430 Octa chipset and one with the more common Snapdragon 801 chipset. Both have small 1,860mAh batteries. Small relative to the phone’s size, of course, 4.7″ phones typically have 2,000+ mAh batteries. The Galaxy Alpha is pretty slender though, just 6.7mm, which eats into the available volume for the battery.

Today we’re testing the Exynos version of the device.
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha is the first handset to use the Exynos 5430 Octa chipset. It’s the first mobile chipset to get the manufacturing process down to 20nm, which promises power savings all by itself but the chipset can also scale from a few Cortex-A7 cores active all the way to eight cores active (four A7 + four A15). The chipset is coupled with a power-optimized Exynos modem too.
Full-size flagships do over 20 hours of talk time, as does the Xperia Z1 Compact. iPhones don’t go over 11 hours. Still, the Exynos chipset and modem do a decent job with the available battery capacity and the Galaxy Alpha lasted over 13 hours of talk time, a bit longer than the Galaxy S5 mini.

Talk time

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  • Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 LTE 46:44h
  • Nokia Lumia 520 13:33h
  • HTC One X+ 13:31h
  • Sony Xperia C 13:29h
  • Xiaomi Mi 3 13:28h
  • Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo 13:20h
  • Samsung Galaxy Alpha 13:20h
  • Samsung I9190 Galaxy S4 mini 13:10h
  • HTC Desire 616 dual sim 13:00h
  • Samsung Galaxy Grand I9082 12:45h
  • LG Optimus GJ E975W 12:39h
  • HTC First 12:31h
  • Pantech Burst 4:46h
We weren’t holding out much hope for the web browser test as the Galaxy Alpha screen is fairly bright for an AMOLED, but the phone held its own and lasted nearly 8 and a half hours. The Xperia Z1 Compact beats it by 4 hours, the iPhone 5s by an hour and a half but both of those have smaller screens and are thicker than the Alpha.
The Galaxy S5 lasts an hour more so in terms of browsing endurance the Alpha stays close to its full-sized flagship sibling. The Galaxy S5 mini blows both out of the water with a time of over 13 hours, though.

Web browsing

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  • Samsung Galaxy S5 mini 13:14h
  • Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom 8:51h
  • Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 8:48h
  • BlackBerry Q10 8:42h
  • Motorola Moto E Dual SIM 8:42h
  • Motorola Moto E 8:42h
  • Samsung Galaxy Alpha 8:25h
  • Asus PadFone 2 8:20h
  • Nokia Lumia 810 8:20h
  • Huawei Ascend Mate 8:17h
  • Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 I9200 8:17h
  • HTC One mini 8:12h
  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus I9250 3:01h
The video playback time was just a bit shorter than web browsing time. The Xperia Z1 Compact and iPhone 5s come out ahead by a couple of hours and the S5 duo by three.

Video playback

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  • LG G Flex 19:57h
  • HTC One X+ 8:11h
  • Samsung Galaxy Grand I9082 8:11h
  • Motorola RAZR i XT890 8:11h
  • Sony Xperia J 8:11h
  • Huawei Ascend P7 8:10h
  • Samsung Galaxy Alpha 8:05h
  • Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II 8:00h
  • Samsung Focus S I937 7:55h
  • Samsung S8600 Wave 3 7:52h
  • HTC Desire 500 7:50h
  • Samsung I8190 Galaxy S III mini 7:46h
  • Nokia Lumia 710 3:27h
The final endurance rating is 52 hours. The Samsung Galaxy Alpha should last two days of moderate usage and a day of heavier usage. When we read “1,860mAh” we were picturing fast battery drain but as it turns out the smartphone is perfectly usable. It may not be an endurance chamption but it should be able to easily last the day even if you torture it a lot.

The iPhone 5 and 5s have 51-54 hours endurance ratings and the iPhone 6 will perhaps do a bit better. The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact gets 65 hours while the Galaxy S5 mini matches the big Galaxy S5 at 72 hours. Overall Samsung could have put it a bigger battery (and made the Galaxy Alpha thicker and heavier) but while the Alpha doesn’t conquer its segment, battery life certainly isn’t an issue.

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