Four great compact smartphones with outstanding battery life

We live in the age of handset screens getting ever larger, and it seems this trend will not be fading out anytime soon. Of course, with big displays come a lot of goodies – aside from the fact that the user can consume media more comfortably, the required bigger phone body can house this much extra hardware, and more potent batteries. Now, on the flip side, people that prefer to own smaller handsets still exist, however, it seems that they are generally not viewed as powerusers, since most of the demographic appears much more interested in having an easily pocketable device, able to keep them connected at all times, rather than owning a portable media-blasting machine.

But there is something that compact phone lovers can possibly find themselves envying in bigger handsets – the generous juicebox. Indeed, while a device with a 5.2”-plus display will usually have something around a 3,000 mAh battery, sub-4.7-inchers will usually linger around the 2,000 – 2,500 mAh mark. However, we've come to find that battery life is often much more than simple numbers – it's what the manufacturer does with the phone's optimization that can really count, as it can make or break battery life, regardless of what's powering the phone.

So, we decided to sift through the tests and see which compact smartphones still deliver some satisfying usage times, despite their smaller batteries. Of course, we still want them to be well-working, modern-looking handsets, so we added a couple more prerequisites in the mix. Here's what we are looking for:

• A result of 7 hours and above in our battery life test
• A display of 5” or less
• A screen-to-body ratio above 65% - anything lower than that is just a waste of real estate, and doesn't look attractive by today's standards
• A review rating of 7 and above

After put through these grinding filters, the sub-5-inchers that survived were the following 4 handsets:

LG Lucid 3

Nokia Lumia 635

Samsung Galaxy Alpha

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact