Technologies

Battery Battle: Here’s Who Wins Between Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S22

The newest phone from Samsung has a larger battery. We compare to see which one has the most power.

This story is part of Samsung Event, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Samsung’s most popular products.

My biggest complaint about last year’s Galaxy S22 was that its battery didn’t last long enough on a single charge. Samsung addressed that shortcoming with the recently launched Galaxy S23, which has a larger battery and a more efficient processor.

The Galaxy S23 doesn’t offer record-breaking battery life, but it’s enough of an improvement to make me feel comfortable using it on a busy day without carrying a charger. That’s more than I could say for the Galaxy S22, which left me with battery anxiety on long days spent away from a power outlet.

Petite Android phones like the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S22 can be hard to come by, which is why I’m glad Samsung made this fix to its 6.1-inch flagship phone.

Galaxy S23’s bigger battery makes a difference

A photo of the battery status screen on the Galaxy S23 — The Galaxy S23 has a bigger battery than its predecessor.

Lisa Eadicicco/CNET

Samsung increased the Galaxy S23’s battery capacity by 200 mAh compared to the Galaxy S22. The new phone has a 3,900-mAh battery; last year’s device had 3,700 mAh. But that’s not the only factor influencing battery life.

The Galaxy S23 family runs on a version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor that’s been optimized specifically for the Galaxy S23 series. Samsung says this new processor brings better power efficiency, contributing to the phone’s longer battery life.

Even after spending a short time with the Galaxy S23, these changes are noticeable. The Galaxy S22’s battery would sometimes dip to the 30s or 40s by roughly 9 p.m. after a long day in the office. I even had to borrow a colleague’s charger once while attending an all-day work event because I was worried I wouldn’t make it to the evening. (I typically had the always-on display turned off and the refresh rate set to standard instead of adaptive.)

My experience with the Galaxy S23 has been very different so far. I still had 64% of my battery left by 12:36 a.m. on a recent Sunday having taken the phone off its charger at 10 a.m. However, it’s important to note that I also wasn’t using my phone very frequently that afternoon. I was spending time with my family for a large chunk of the day, so I mostly kept my phone tucked away in my pocket, only retrieving it to occasionally check my texts or take a photo.

But even on a busy day, the Galaxy S23 still had more of its battery left than the Galaxy S22 likely would have. After a day of running benchmarks, taking lots of photos, recording videos and streaming YouTube videos as part of my review testing, I still had 46% of my battery left by 9:45 p.m. That’s not so bad when you consider the Galaxy S22 sometimes had 30% to 40% of its battery left by around 9 p.m. after using the phone heavily throughout the day. I also left the adaptive refresh rate setting turned on most of the time I spent with the Galaxy S23.

To further test the battery, I put each phone through a 45-minute endurance test and a three-hour battery drain test. During the 45-minute test, I continuously streamed videos on YouTube, made a video call, played mobile games and scrolled through social media feeds to see how much of a dent these everyday tasks would make in each phone’s battery. For the three-hour test, I streamed YouTube with the display brightness set to 100% and checked the battery percentage once every hour to see how much it had drained.

Unsurprisingly, the Galaxy S23 beat the Galaxy S22 in both tests, as you can see in the tables below.

Galaxy S23 vs. Galaxy S22 45-minute test

Galaxy S23	91%
Galaxy S22	89%

Galaxy S23 vs. Galaxy S22 3-hour test

	1 hour	2 hours	3 hours
Galaxy S23	95%	88%	81%
Galaxy S22	91%	81%	71%

It’s important to remember that battery life will always vary depending on how you use your device. Factors like screen brightness and the types of apps you’re using will impact battery life, so your experience may not directly mirror mine. For example, even though I sometimes struggled to get through a whole day using the Galaxy S22, I was able to preserve roughly 60 to 70% of my battery by 9 p.m. with the always-on display turned off on days mostly spent at home.

How to get the most battery life out of your Galaxy S22

Samsung Galaxy S22 — The Galaxy S22.

Lisa Eadicicco/CNET

If you own a Galaxy S22 and are struggling with battery life, there are a few steps you can take to maximize your device’s longevity. First, try turning down the screen brightness by pulling down from the top of the display to access your phone’s quick settings menu.

You’ll also want to make sure the adaptive brightness setting is disabled to prevent your phone from automatically boosting brightness when needed. While that can be a useful feature under normal circumstances, you might not want the brightness to increase when you’re trying to conserve battery life. Open your Galaxy S22’s settings menu, choose the display option and make sure the switch next to adaptive brightness is toggled off.

It’s also a good idea to try turning off the adaptive refresh rate and always-on display settings if you’re trying to extend battery life, which you can toggle in the settings menu.

Samsung devices have a power savings mode that disables certain settings to make the battery last longer. Open the settings menu, select the battery and device care option and then tap battery to access it. From this battery menu, you can also limit battery usage for apps that you don’t use very often.

These tips will work on the Galaxy S23 too, which also has a light performance mode to prioritize battery life and cooling efficiency over high performance. To turn this on, open the Galaxy S23’s settings menu, tap battery and device care, and select battery. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and choose the more battery settings option. From there, you should see a field called performance profile, which you can tap to switch between standard and light. (During my time with the Galaxy S23, I had it set to standard.)

If that’s not enough, you can try purchasing a portable charger or power bank to power up your device on the go.

With its new $700 price, the Galaxy S22 is a tempting choice alongside the $800 Galaxy S23. Just remember you’ll be sacrificing some battery life to save that money.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5, #970

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 5 #970.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Star-spangled signs.

Green group hint: Smash into.

Blue group hint: Not green or red.

Purple group hint: Same surname.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Cultural symbols of the US.

Green group: Collide with.

Blue group: Blue things.

Purple group: Lees of Hollywood.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is cultural symbols of the US. The four answers are American flag, apple pie, bald eagle and baseball.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is collide with. The four answers are bump, butt, knock and ram.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is blue things. The four answers are jeans, lapis lazuli, ocean and sky.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Lees of Hollywood. The four answers are Ang, Bruce, Christopher and Spike.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5 #704

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 5, No. 704.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, once you clue in on the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Quint-essential.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Not four, or six.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DAYS, GIVE, WOVE, DOVE, LOVE, DOGS, SCONE, STOLE, GEEK, LODE, SIEGE, SLEW, HENS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TOES, OCEANS, SENSES, VOWELS, BOROUGHS, WEEKDAYS

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is GIVEMEFIVE. To find it, start with the G that’s three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

The Motorola Signature Is the Moto Phone I’ve Wanted for Years

Motorola’s new phone is its best flagship yet and could be the Galaxy S26 Plus rival that Samsung didn’t see coming.

At CES 2026, among the AI humanoids, flashy concepts and next-gen foldables, was a Motorola phone that I didn’t expect to be a CES highlight. And no, I’m not talking about theMotorola Razr Fold. While it was the talk of the town (after all, it is the company’s first-ever book-style foldable), there’s a premium smartphone with top specs and a sophisticated design: the Motorola Signature.

Recent high-end Motorola phones have had good-looking hardware, but they don’t compete with the Galaxy S25 Ultras or Pixel 10s of the world. They fall short in one or more areas, including display, performance, cameras, software or battery. The Motorola Signature is the company’s first flagship phone that looks confident enough to take on heavyweights like the upcoming Galaxy S26 Plus and the current iPhone 17, without faltering on either hardware or software.

I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, and this Motorola phone doesn’t have any major downsides, especially for the price. The biggest one could be availability: It won’t be coming to the US, but it is now available for purchase in India at an unbeatable price. It undercuts the OnePlus 15, iPhone 17 and the Pixel 10 by almost $150 or more (directly converted from INR).

With the ever-increasing prices of premium phones, the Motorola Signature is the flagship killer we’ve been waiting for. At about $660 (INR 59,999), it is hard to beat, and I can admit I’m finally excited about a Motorola phone that’s not a Razr.

Motorola Signature is lightweight, slim and rugged

The Motorola Signature has a 6.8-inch 1,264×2,780-pixel resolution AMOLED display with support for a 165Hz refresh rate. It is an LTPO panel, so it can be set to 1Hz for an always-on display (like the iPhone 17 series and Galaxy S25 Ultra), thereby saving battery life. Its resolution might not be as high as the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s, but it is a promising screen for gaming and content consumption.

I couldn’t find a game to test its 165Hz refresh rate, but watching YouTube videos, Instagram Reels and reading ebooks — both indoors and outdoors — was a pleasing experience. The screen remains legible in all lighting conditions.

Motorola’s new phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and is paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. While it’s not the highest-end chip available (that’d be the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5), it packs plenty of power. I had no issues in day-to-day use, occasional multitasking or gaming. My only complaint was with the camera shutter in low light, but we’ll get to it in a bit.

The Motorola Signature ships with Android 16 with the company’s in-house Hello UI on top. It is a comparatively clean interface with plenty of customization options to fine-tune your experience. One of my favorite features, Moto gestures (twist to open the camera or make a double-chop motion to turn on and off the flashlight) is always handy in unexpected ways.

You get an AI Key on the left side of the phone to trigger Moto AI (uses Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot), but it can only be triggered once you create a Motorola account. You can configure the button to do other shortcuts, like double-press it to take notes and press and hold to trigger Moto AI. But in reality, I didn’t use any of these features in my daily life and would’ve preferred the ability to remap them to a shortcut. Google’s Gemini assistant is also available.

The Signature has a 5,200-mAh silicon-carbon battery and supports 90-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging. Should those speeds hold up, that battery might fill up quickly using either method. It lasted me an entire day on medium use, but on another day, I had to charge it twice when I pushed it with streaming, browsing, Google Maps navigation for 30 minutes and active camera usage. It doesn’t compete with OnePlus 15’s massive 7,300-mAh cell but does well to reduce battery anxiety.

All of this sounds more impressive when you take the Signature’s design into context: The flagship Qualcomm processor’s power, 5,000-mAh plus battery, big AMOLED screen and three 50-megapixel cameras housed in a slim and lightweight design. The new Motorola phone is 6.99mm thick and weighs just 186 grams. For context, the Galaxy S25 Plus, with a smaller battery, measures 7.3mm thick and weighs 190 grams, while most recent big phones weigh 200 grams or more.

I shifted from the iPhone 17 Pro Max and enjoyed using the Motorola Signature because it weighed less. But I didn’t expect it to be so light. The Signature feels good in my hand. I’m glad it doesn’t have sharp flat sides like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Plus, I love its linen-inspired finish on the back, which sets it apart from the competition. Like its Edge siblings, the Signature is rated IP68 and IP69 for dust and water resistance (meaning it can survive being submerged under a meter of water for 30 minutes and high-pressure water jets), so there’s no fear of dust and water damage.

Improving on the 2 weakest links

Most Motorola phones that I’ve used in recent years, including the $1,300 Razr Ultra have one or two downsides: software support and/or cameras.

The Signature marks a new beginning for the brand as it joins the ranks of Samsung and Google with seven years of Android OS software and security updates. This is on par with Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones and better than what OnePlus offers. I hope this new software update policy is implemented on more Motorola phones launching in 2026.

Secondly, the Motorola Signature (finally!) introduces an impressive camera system. On the back, you get three cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with OIS, paired with a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x zoom lens and OIS, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. This is the first Motorola phone with cameras that I wouldn’t trade for another setup during my vacations.

Photos from the primary and telephoto cameras have better color accuracy than previous Moto shooters. Images have a slightly warmer tone and are saturated — not as much as the OnePlus 15, which delivers much more saturated tones. I prefer Signature’s look in most scenarios.

However, the ultrawide-angle camera retains fewer details, and OnePlus does better in that regard.

The telephoto lens struggles with edge detection in low-light portraits, but I loved using it for architecture shots and capturing scenery around me. It can deliver some stunning shots even in 6x. Mind you, it has 3x optical zoom, but I shot the above photo in 6x, and it has a nice bokeh, good details and an overall pleasing look.

Motorola Signature final thoughts

Overall, the Signature has solid cameras for the price and the best optics yet for a Motorola phone. But there’s one hindrance: The camera shutter in low light is slow to process images. For instance, I wanted to snap a few action shots during a badminton game, but I missed some great smashes because the camera wouldn’t allow me to capture images faster.

The Motorola Signature marks a solid flagship comeback for the brand. It has a big and bright display, a capable processor, a versatile camera setup and good battery life. This phone is hard to fault in its price segment.

The Signature is now available to purchase in India at a starting price of INR 59,999 (approximately $660) for the 256GB variant. It will go on sale in Europe for €999 (approximately $1,170) with 512GB storage in the base version. Motorola has plans to launch its new flagship phone in more countries across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions. However, the Motorola Signature won’t be coming to the US.