LG claims edge over Samsung on phone battery life

LG Electronics challenged its rival Samsung Electronics on Monday, claiming that the battery performance of its new flagship smartphone Optimus G surpasses the Galaxy S3.

In a media briefing event introducing the new features of its latest Optimus Vu 2, LG emphasized the superiority of Optimus G’s high-capacity battery.

According to an experiment conducted by LG, the Optimus G battery outperformed Samsung’s Galaxy S3 when talking on the phone and watching or filming videos. Both batteries have a relatively high capacity of 2,100 mAh.

For instance, a person could talk for 15.8 consecutive hours on the Optimus G compared to 9.5 hours on the Galaxy S3, according to LG officials. Optimus G also records and plays videos for 3.8 hours and 7.9 hours, respectively, in comparison with the Galaxy S3’s 2.8 hours and 7.3 hours, they said.

An LG official added that the test was conducted under certain conditions for both handsets ― the display brightness was fixed at 50 percent while the battery was fully charged. Both types of phones ran on the LG Uplus’ network.

LG officials also tested the battery of the two gadgets for reporters at the event, demonstrating the amount of electricity consumption in two different cases ― when playing a 1.8-gigabyte smartphone game and airing Psy’s “Gangnam Style” music video.

“The demonstrations were staged to correct what some people misunderstand about the battery performance and efficiency of the (Optimus G),” said Ma Chang, head of mobile communications Korea marketing division.

“It wasn’t done to attack our competitor.”

Samsung officials said they had nothing to comment on the issue.

However, this is not the first time that Samsung and LG have been engaged in such counterattacks.

Last year, LG said one could make a fried egg with the heat coming out of Samsung’s previous Galaxy S2. The two contenders also fought in the fields of 3-D televisions as well as the capacity of their refrigerators in the past.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)