Results: Battery And Throttling
Basemark OS II Full (Anti-Detection)
The Basemark OS II battery test scores are derived by repeatedly running the devices until enough data has been collected to determine the drain rate of the device.
Despite having the second largest battery of the tested devices (3100 mAh compared to 2600 mAh for the HTC One (M8), 3000 mAh for LG G3, and 2906 mAh for the iPhone 6 Plus), the OnePlus One turns in the lowest score in the Basemark OS II battery test. The G3 scores 5% higher than the One, while the 6 Plus scores 42% higher, both of these devices having the same size display.
GFXBench 3.0 Corporate
GFXBench's battery test measures battery life and performance stability by logging frame and battery discharge rate as the on-screen T-Rex test runs for 30 consecutive iterations. The results are given in two scores: estimated battery life in minutes, and the number of frames rendered on the slowest test run (to gauge if a device is throttling).
Things look a little different when the GPU is responsible for the power drain. The OnePlus One lasts just over three hours while looping the T-Rex benchmark, a little less than the G3.
While the batteries for the G3, Galaxy S5, and Note 4 keep T-Rex running longer, all three exhibit throttling due to high temperatures. The OnePlus One however, maintains the same level of performance for the duration of the benchmark as can be seen in the chart below.
Battery life for the OnePlus One isn’t stellar, coming in just below average for comparable flagship phones. It seems battery life for the One has varied over its brief history, lasting longer on previous software builds. For example, when running build CM11.0-KVT48L, the One lasted 226 minutes, with the same level of performance, in the GFXBench 3 battery test. Basemark OS II battery life scores were also much higher with the older build, with an average score of 829 (scores varied from 658 to 1000). Since this is primarily a software issue, hopefully battery life will increase again with a future update.
Ed. Note: Rerunning the GFXBench 3.0 battery test with the newer CM11.0-XNPH44S software release improves battery life to 226 minutes with 29 fps performance, placing it ahead of the Note 4 and about equal with the Galaxy S5.