Looking for a compact 2019/2020 Android smartphone with long battery life

[aluc24]

I read through similar threads, and most recommendations seem to be a bit outdated, so I thought I'd ask again. I am looking for a compact smartphone (5.5" or less) with a long battery life. Year 2019 or 2020. It can be thick to accommodate larger battery. But it can have a smaller battery as long as it is properly optimized, has no bloatware, no nonsense.

No other requirements. It would be nice if it had one good camera (30 MP or more), but I can do without it. I won't be playing games on it, so, just enough CPU and RAM to run browser and common day apps. Price is not an issue.

I come from Xiomi Redmi Note 4 - not too happy with it. Battery is big, but so is the phone, and the bloatware just kills battery life. Rooting is damn near impossible. Before that, I had Lenovo A5000 - that thing was amazing, used to last 4-5 days on a single charge with moderate usage. Unfortunately, CPU became too slow even for mundane tasks, so I had to upgrade.

I was looking at Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact, but it's a bit older, and reports on it's battery life are conflicting. Any other options?

EDIT: Due to some confusion, I want to clarify. By 5.5" I meant the length of the phone, not the screen. So that would be a screen of 5" or less.

 

[mustang7757]

Hi welcome!

[Moved this from general news forums to buyers forums]

 

[aluc24]

Hi welcome!

[Moved this from general news forums to buyers forums]

Hi, and thank you! I meant to post there, I made a mistake.

 

[mustang7757]

Hi, and thank you! I meant to post there, I made a mistake.

No worries

 

[the_boon]

I don't think there's such thing as a compact phone that's also an endurance beast right now.

But an S10e seems pretty good in the battery department, and has just about every feature you could need, in a compact enough package.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! The Pixel 3a would probably be a good choice. It's slightly above your screen size requirement (5.6"), but you'll be hard pressed to find a current phone that's much smaller. The 3a has very good battery life and, of course, has the vaunted Pixel camera. Remember, the megapixel count doesn't really matter much once you get above 12 or 16, unless you habitually want to print giant canvases. The processing is much more important, and none is better than the Pixel's.

 

[mustang7757]

Welcome to Android Central! The Pixel 3a would probably be a good choice. It's slightly above your screen size requirement (5.6"), but you'll be hard pressed to find a current phone that's much smaller. The 3a has very good battery life and, of course, has the vaunted Pixel camera. Remember, the megapixel count doesn't really matter much once you get above 12 or 16, unless you habitually want to print giant canvases. The processing is much more important, and none is better than the Pixel's.

Be better off with pixel 3a xl with slightly larger screen

 

[B. Diddy]

Be better off with pixel 3a xl with slightly larger screen

True, but since screen size and battery are the first two requirements the OP mentioned, I thought the 3a was the better one to suggest. My understanding is that the 3a XL has pretty much the same battery life (despite the larger battery), probably due to the larger screen.

 

[mustang7757]

True, but since screen size and battery are the first two requirements the OP mentioned, I thought the 3a was the better one to suggest. My understanding is that the 3a XL has pretty much the same battery life (despite the larger battery), probably due to the larger screen.

Oh no ...pixel 3a has pretty decent battery life but not like the 3a xl . So little more real estate shouldn't be a big deal.

 

[B. Diddy]

I was using this as a reference: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/pixel-3a-vs-pixel-3a-xl,news-30029.html

 

[mustang7757]

I was using this as a reference: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/pixel-3a-vs-pixel-3a-xl,news-30029.html

My cuz has the pixel 3a xl , thanks to my advice lol I had pixel 3a couple months battery was good but not as good as pixel 3a xl

 

[aluc24]

Welcome to Android Central! The Pixel 3a would probably be a good choice. It's slightly above your screen size requirement (5.6"), but you'll be hard pressed to find a current phone that's much smaller. The 3a has very good battery life and, of course, has the vaunted Pixel camera. Remember, the megapixel count doesn't really matter much once you get above 12 or 16, unless you habitually want to print giant canvases. The processing is much more important, and none is better than the Pixel's.

Thank you for this suggestion. I compared the Pixel 3a to my current Redmi Note 4, and both of these phones have the same size, but Pixel 3a has 3100 mAh battery, while Note 4 has 4000 mAh... Does Pixel 3a really have a better battery life than Note 4? I find it kind of hard to believe.

Aside from this model, anything smaller? When I posted the question, by 5.5" I meant the length of the phone, not the diagonal of the screen. My Note 4 has 5.5" diagonal screen, and it is WAY too large a phone. My older Lenovo A5000 had 5" screen and was 5.5"x2.8" in size - that is about as big as I want to go. I should have specified it more clearly in my question, sorry :/

 

[Morty2264]

I too would recommehd the S10e - I was going to recommend the Google Pixel 2 for its small screen size (5"), but it is pre-2019/2020, specifically, 2017.

 

[B. Diddy]

Does Pixel 3a really have a better battery life than Note 4? I find it kind of hard to believe.

The specs don't always tell the whole story. It's hard to compare those two phones side by side unless someone actually tested them using the same methodology. The closest I can get is by comparing these two articles:

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/pixel-3a-vs-pixel-3a-xl,news-30029.html
https://www.fonearena.com/blog/209885/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-battery-life-test-snapdragon-625.html

The Tom's Guide battery test was done by setting the phone up to browse constantly on T-Mobile's LTE network, while the Fonearena battery test was on an unspecified 3G network. The 3a lasted 12 hours, while the Note 4 lasted 9 hours. But I've also seen other browsing tests for the Note 4 that found that it lasts up to 18 hours. Like so many of these kinds of tests, real world results may differ significantly.

The fact of the matter is that the 3a squeezes an admirable amount of battery life from a significantly smaller battery (which means a lighter phone). Add on top of that the superb camera, zero bloatware, and reliably regular system updates from Google for 3 years, and I'd say that's a good deal.

 

[aluc24]

The specs don't always tell the whole story. It's hard to compare those two phones side by side unless someone actually tested them using the same methodology. The closest I can get is by comparing these two articles:

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/pixel-3a-vs-pixel-3a-xl,news-30029.html
https://www.fonearena.com/blog/209885/xiaomi-redmi-note-4-battery-life-test-snapdragon-625.html

The Tom's Guide battery test was done by setting the phone up to browse constantly on T-Mobile's LTE network, while the Fonearena battery test was on an unspecified 3G network. The 3a lasted 12 hours, while the Note 4 lasted 9 hours. But I've also seen other browsing tests for the Note 4 that found that it lasts up to 18 hours. Like so many of these kinds of tests, real world results may differ significantly.

The fact of the matter is that the 3a squeezes an admirable amount of battery life from a significantly smaller battery (which means a lighter phone). Add on top of that the superb camera, zero bloatware, and reliably regular system updates from Google for 3 years, and I'd say that's a good deal.

I see, thanks for that clarification. How does Pixel 3a compare to Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact? Because Xperia is significantly more compact with even larger battery - the only issue is that it is an older model and it's damn difficult to find it except for a few warehouse leftovers.

Here, I made a spec comparison of Xperia, Pixel and S10e: https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?&idPhone3=9537&idPhone1=9082&idPhone2=9408#diff-*,*,*

Is it just me, or does the Xperia seem to win on almost all points, despite being an older phone?

 

[B. Diddy]

Spec-wise, yes, the Xperia seems to win. But one of the big tradeoffs is the lack of significant system updates or support. The battery test, according to the Tom's Guide review (using the same methodology as the Pixel 3a review mentioned earlier), yielded 10 hrs 39 min, which is 1.5 hrs less than the 3a (although granted, the Xperia has a slightly smaller battery): https://www.tomsguide.com/us/sony-xperia-xz2,review-5522.html. Since it's an older phone, you'll probably have more luck finding used units being sold on Swappa or eBay, but then you have to worry about the possibility of defects or a deteriorating battery.

 

[the_boon]

My Pixel 3a (which I bought second hand with about 2 months of use) was supposed to be the device to pull me away from my KEY2 (as a main Communicator) and I went back to the KEY2 after a week for one reason: Battery life (though I did miss the keyboard too)

I don't know what it is with Google's efficiency, but they have to seriously work on the standby drain.

BlackBerry's Android is generally nothing to write home about, but it sure does better on standby.

i really wanted to have this thing as my daily, but just couldn't deal with the subpar standby drain.

Now that my SIM is in the KEY2 and my 3a is just on Wi-Fi, the battery life is substantially better, surprisingly...

Most of the time I was on a stable Wi-Fi and had good T-Mobile reception so I don't see what could have been the culprit.

I was struggling to get past 5.5 hours of screen on time (and that's with alot of optimization and disabling), even when running it on battery saving mode from full.

For this reason, I would recommend the S10e (not Exynos of course) as the best compact phone over the 3a.

If OnePlus made a phone of this size though, I'd be all over it. Sadly their slabs have only gotten bigger with each release.

 

[bradavon]

I too would recommehd the S10e - I was going to recommend the Google Pixel 2 for its small screen size (5"), but it is pre-2019/2020, specifically, 2017.

The Pixel 2 is the same size as the S10e because of it's bezels.

Don't concentrate on screen size but overall size.

Galaxy S10e or iPhone SE are the best. It's slim pickings.

 

[hgoldner#CB]

So I have shared your sentiments for years. Requirements were a sub 6" screen (so a phone easily pocketable); runs on Verizon; has a microsdcard slot. So until last year, that limited me to a Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact which I only recently retired. It was eminently pocketable, albeit a little thick. The screen was excellent, had been updated to Pie and was still getting security updates, and was perfect.

But I had always had my eye on the Samsung S10e because it added to the Xperia's feature set: (1) a headphone jack and (2) wireless charging, and was a full year younger (as it is now on Android 10 with got the May 1, 2020 security update only a few days after it was released by Google.) Plus it has 256g INTERNAL memory. So with a 400g sdcard, I've got almost two thirds of a terabyte of space for local storage.

The price, though, was ridiculous ($849 for the 256g model). Eventually, I found a second-hand S10e for less than half that, and I am very happy with it. Highly recommended if you can get it for $500 or less. (The 128g are much easier to find, and Verizon currently has a "get one free" deal).