Zenfone 3 Max Battery Life Test vs. Zenfone Max vs. Zenfone 3 Line-up

Asus has positioned the Zenfone 3 Max as their budget smartphone with an extra generous serving of battery so it’s only natural that people will expect it to have really long battery life. This was demonstrated by the first Zenfone Max which got a whopping 19 hours and 59 minutes under our standard PC Mark Battery Test.

We expected the same performance with the Zenfone 3 Max although not as long as the original one due to the lower battery capacity of 4,100mAh.

The results are both surprising and disappointing. The Zenfone 3 Max got a score of 10 hours and 49 minutes. While this score can be considered pretty good for a typical handset, it’s far below the original performance of the older Zenfone Max. We verified this by also running our standard video loop test and got 12 hours and 30 minutes which is pretty much within the range from the PC Mark Battery test. The older Zenfone Max got 26 hours and 32 minutes on that same video loop test.

Even the scores of the 5.2-inch and 5.5-inch Zenfone 3 were a bit better by 20 to 30% compared to the Zenfone 3 Max. Even the Zenfone 3 Ultra with its huge 6.8 full HD display was 10% better (although it had 500mAh more battery capacity). The only model that we have not really tested in the Zenfone 3 Deluxe which we think would get the same scores as the Zenfone 3.

Looking at the entire family of the Zenfone 3, it looks like the Zenfone 3 Max is the least performing in terms of battery life.

The only possible reason for these results could be due to the MediaTek MT6753T chip that is used in the Zenfone 3 Max. The chip isn’t really built for optimal battery performance compared to its Qualcomm counterparts.

* The MediaTek MT6737 is built on an older 28nm semiconductor size while the Snapdragon 625 is now on the more power-efficient 14nm process.

* The MediaTek MT6737 does not use the big.Little technology. This power-optimization technology works by using high-performance ARM CPU cores combined with the most efficient ARM CPU cores to deliver peak-performance capacity, higher sustained performance, and increased parallel processing performance, at significantly lower average power. This means that for smaller tasks where a low-power core would be handling, the MT6737 still uses the ARM-A53 1.25GHz to handle it, eating up more battery in the process.

You can read more about the Zenfone 3 Max first impressions here.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

16 Comments

Tan says:

8 years ago

mas ok pa ata ung zenfone laser 5.5s??
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gab says:

8 years ago

funny how their “max” phone has the shortest lasting battery of all the zenfone 3s. did they like, fire their previous design team and replaced them with people who think “screw the specs, add on the bling!”? geez, they already got the pricing wrong (justified, they say, by the “looks”), they even get the specs wrong. mediatek on a smaller capacity battery? that’s what you get.
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gab says:

8 years ago

no way, the processor on the f1s is miles ahead on the mediatek the zf3 max has. not to mention it does have better cameras and build. lets not forget the better deal in that price range in the form of the huawei p9 lite. the zf3 max is overpriced, just for the fact that its supposedly core strength (battery life) is actually its weakness now.
WC says:

8 years ago

Actually the phone is competitive in its price range, the OPPO F1s is priced much higher, yet but for better cameras, have specs that are not much better than the Zenfone 3 Max. Same with the Vivo V3, which despite a big price cut, is still a thousand quid more.

mel gaza says:

8 years ago

Hi ! What can you recommend as alternative for Asus 3 max ? (3GB/32GB, dual sim, around PhP10k)
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Batang may laban says:

8 years ago

Better rename it to “Zenfone 3 Min”, then. “Max” is so inappropriate.
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el gato says:

8 years ago

thanks for this very informative article.
hoping i can cough some money for orig zenfone max. hehehehe.. *evil laugh*
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yoda says:

8 years ago

is there heating problem for this unit? especially zen3max
also charging time to full batt
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yoda says:

8 years ago

is there heating problem for this unit? specially zen3max
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yoda says:

8 years ago

is there a heating problem for this phone?
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Alias says:

8 years ago

Are you sure its MT6753? Other sites show 6737.
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Abe Olandres says:

8 years ago

Thanks for pointing that out!
WC says:

8 years ago

It’s Mediatek 6737T. Although CPU-Z identifies it as 6735, guess CPU-Z still haven’t been updated for these new CPUs. Antutu identified it corrrectly as 6737T.

The 6737T is just an incremental update (MT6737 promises a 10-20% increase in performance, 25% more efficient battery use, and 52% improved battery efficiency during idle mode over the 6735).
Abe Olandres says:

8 years ago

Thanks for pointing that out.

WC says:

8 years ago

I think saying the Deluxe will get the same score as the Zenfone 3 is a bit premature, given that Snapdragon 820/821 runs at a faster speed and will thus consume more juice than the Snapdragon 625. Then there’s the Laser 3 with its (also new) Snapdragon 430 processor..
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Abe Olandres says:

8 years ago

Normally, for a big.Little architecture like the 820/821, the low-power cores will mostly determine the battery life on a controlled environment.

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