Which mobile genres actually drain your battery

We measure battery on every review, and after a while you start seeing the same story. It's rarely about the genre label and almost always about what's happening on screen every frame.

Heavy 3D games — racers, big strategy maps with lots of units — burn through a charge fastest, especially with uncapped frame rates. Particle effects are a silent killer; boss fights in RPGs can spike temperature more than an entire hour of a puzzle game.

On the other end, hand-drawn adventures and static-ish sims barely register. If your phone lasts a full day of normal use, one of those cozy games will happily ride along without you noticing.

The single most useful setting across every genre is a frame rate cap. Dropping to 30 fps often roughly doubles play time and, in slower games, you genuinely can't feel the difference. Turn it on before a long trip.

If you take one thing away: check the settings menu before you complain about battery. Half the time the game already has the switch you need.