Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 6 is not the type of phone you would expect to last longer than a traditional phone. After all, it has a huge 7.6-inch OLED display. Whereas the largest slab-style, non-folding flagships are 6.8-6.9 inches.

However, I was quite surprised by the results of Tom's Guide's battery test, which involved continuous web surfing on 5G (in this case T-Mobile) with the display brightness set at 150 nits. The reason I was surprised is that I expected better results thanks to the system-on-chip in the Fold 6.

In four tests, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 averaged 10 hours and 35 minutes, not bad. This run time is better than the Google Pixel Fold (10 minutes 21 seconds), but not as good as the OnePlus Open (11 minutes 31 seconds), which has a larger battery than the Samsung Fold.

More importantly, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 averaged 11 hours 15 minutes longer. To be fair, the best result in the Z Fold 6 test was 11 hours 13 minutes, but that is still on par with last year's model.

In contrast, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra lasted an average of 16 hours, putting it on the list of best phone battery life. All of the handsets on this list lasted 13 hours or more in our tests; considering the S24 Ultra's performance, the Galaxy S23 Ultra recorded 12:22, a significant improvement for Samsung's new model.

At the time, I attributed the S24 Ultra's improved battery life to the more efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. This is the same chip found in the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which Qualcomm says can save up to 10% power. However, the Z Fold 6 did not show much difference.

So why couldn't the Galaxy Z Fold 6 make the leap in durability that the S24 Ultra did? It is hard to say, as they are both different types of phones; both the Z Fold 6 and Z Fold 5 have the same battery capacity, so this should not affect the results between generations.

For everyday use, the Z Fold 6 was found to deliver fairly strong battery life. With a variety of uses, the battery indicator typically drops to the 20% to 25% range at 8 pm. However, during travel or on days of continuous Slack use, one would hope for more battery life.

In short, the battery life of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is quite good. However, given the precedent of the S24 Ultra, it was not as good as we had hoped.