Take a look at the battery recharging speed of the new Samsung Galaxy A54, and find out how its two refresh rate options affect its battery life!

 

Samsung Galaxy A54 : Two Fixed Refresh Rate Options

The new Samsung Galaxy A54 offers two refresh rate options (Settings > Display > Motion smoothness) :

• Adaptive : Get smoother animation and scrolling by automatically adjusting your screen refresh rate up to 120 Hz.
• Standard : Get longer battery life by automatically adjusting your screen refresh rate up to 60 Hz.

Although the description seems to suggest that the display switches dynamically between 1 Hz to 120 Hz like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, that’s not true.

By turning on the frame rate counter, we can see that the Galaxy A54 switches between two fixed refresh rates – 60 Hz or 120 Hz in the Dynamic mode, and uses just 60 Hz in the Standard mode.

The true Adaptive refresh rate offered in the Galaxy S23 Ultra is variable, changing from 1 Hz to 120 Hz according to the situation. This not only reduces power consumption, it also prevents “screen tearing” – a visual artifact that occurs when the game frame rate does not match the display’s refresh rate.

In the next section, we will look at how the two refresh rate options affect the Galaxy A54’s battery life.

Recommended : Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Battery Life + Charging!

 

Samsung Galaxy A54 : Battery Life Comparison!

The Samsung Galaxy A54 comes with a 5,000 mAh battery, which is the same size as the Galaxy S23 Ultra and Galaxy S22 Ultra.

To test its battery life, we turned off Automatic Brightness, and set its display brightness to 50%.

Why 50%? That is actually slightly higher than the average indoor brightness level of 40% during the day, and is what we usually use in all our mobile battery life tests.

It is important to fix the brightness level, to make sure the screen brightness does not change as the ambient brightness changes.

We then ran the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test until its battery capacity dropped to 20% several times, and this was the best result we obtained with 60 Hz and 120 Hz refresh rates :

Not bad at all! The Samsung Galaxy A54 has a battery life of 12.5 hours with Adaptive refresh rate enabled, and almost 14 hours with the Standard refresh rate. That’s equal to the Galaxy S22 Ultra at the Standard refresh rate, and 16.7% better at the Adaptive refresh rate.

But let’s also compare its battery life at 60 Hz and 120 Hz, against the S23 Ultra, S22 Ultra and Z Flip 3 smartphones.

Standard Refresh Rate (60 Hz)

The Samsung Galaxy A54 lasted almost 14 hours with the refresh rate set to 60 Hz. But it isn’t quite as efficient as the new S23 Ultra, or even last year’s  S22 Ultra.

Work 3.0	S23 Ultra (60 Hz)	S22 Ultra (60 Hz)	Galaxy A54 (60 Hz)	Z Flip 3 (60 Hz)
Battery Capacity	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh	3,300 mAh
Battery Life	15 hrs 18 mins	14 hrs 15 mins	13 hrs 57 mins	8 hrs 11 mins
Utilisation per min.	4.36 mAh	4.68 mAh	4.78 mAh	5.38 mAh

Adaptive Refresh Rate (120 Hz)

Will you look at that! The Samsung Galaxy A54 was about 13.6% more efficient than the S22 Ultra with the Adaptive refresh rate enabled, coming within 8% of the power efficiency of the S23 Ultra.

Based on what we see here, I definitely recommend turning on the Adaptive Refresh Rate on the Galaxy A54, unless you absolutely need the extra 1.5 hours of battery life.

Work 3.0	S23 Ultra (120 Hz)	Galaxy A54 (120 Hz)	S22 Ultra (120 Hz)	Z Flip 3 (120 Hz)
Battery Capacity	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh	3,300 mAh
Battery Life	13 hrs 0 mins	12 hrs 25 mins	10 hrs 38 mins	6 hrs 44 mins
Utilisation per min.	5.13 mAh	5.52 mAh	6.27 mAh	6.53 mAh

 

Samsung Galaxy A54 : Battery Recharging Speed!

The Samsung Galaxy A54 supports up to 25 watts of wired fast charging, but unfortunately, does not come with the charger in-the-box.

So we relied on the standard 15 watt Samsung fast charger than shipped with their previous smartphones – something we believe most users will end up doing.

Work 3.0	S22 Ultra	S23 Ultra	Galaxy A54	Z Flip 3
Battery Capacity	3,300 mAh	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh	3,300 mAh
Charger Output	15 watts	15 watts	15 watts	15 watts
Battery Life	64.5 minutes	88.8 minutes	120.7 minutes	88.5 minutes
Recharging Speed (per minute)	62.0 mAh	45.0 mAh	33.1 mAh	29.8 mAh

The Samsung Galaxy A54 fully recharges from 20% to 100% in just over 2 hours with the standard 15 watt Samsung charger. Oddly enough, this is significantly (36%) slower than the S23 Ultra.

I have no idea whether this was an intentional design decision to reduce the Galaxy A54’s thermal output while charging, or to further differentiate it from the much pricier Galaxy S23 Ultra.

In any case, the Galaxy A54 has a good battery life : recharging ratio of 7:1. As a rule of thumb, for every hour of battery life, you only need to recharge it for 8.5 minutes.

 

Samsung Galaxy A54 : Price + Availability

The Samsung Galaxy A54 comes with 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage, with the option to add a microSD card in the hybrid SIM tray. It is covered by a 2-year warranty, with the following launch prices:

• 8 GB + 256 GB : RM1,899 / US$449.99 / £499 / A$697 / S$648

Here are online purchase options (we may get commission from your purchase) :

• MY : 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours
• SG : 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours | 4 colours
• US : Graphite | Violet | Lime
• UK : Graphite | Violet | Lime | White
• AU : Graphite | Violet

 

 

Recommended Reading

• Samsung Galaxy A54 : Unboxing + Hands-On!
• Samsung Galaxy A54 : Three Key Colours Compared!
• Samsung Unveils 2023 QLED, OLED TVs + Monitors!
• Best Display Settings for Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra!
• Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review : Editor’s Choice!

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