Name: Kestrel
Brand: EE

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Battery life

Packed visibly behind the back plate of the EE Kestrel is a 2000mAh battery, but despite being very visible you're unable to remove it.

I found this to be most confusing, although not something that would ever prove too much of a problem as portable chargers are so easy and cheap to get hold of these days.

Running the HD 90 minute battery test at full brightness (a score of 320lux) gave a battery drain of 30% (with 15 minutes of Temple Run 2 giving a drain of 6%) meaning it out performed the Moto G.

This can be attributed to the much lower screen resolution; where the Kestrel has a qHD screen, the Moto G has a 720p HD offering.

Something that I found really frustrating with the battery was that there was no definitive battery percentage on offer. Where some handsets allow you to choose to put the exact numbers there, the Kestrel leaves you relying on the battery icon or a third party app.

Rarely during my time with the Kestrel was I in need of a quick top up. Despite the extra cores under the hood the battery coped well during daily use. This is thanks to a few different UI touches such as the notification bar toggles.

This meant that I was able to take active control over what was on and when. Elsewhere were Huawei's power management plans; Smart, Endurance and Normal.

Endurance is akin to Sony's STAMINA mode, and the same power limiting modes that come on a lot of handsets as it limits the CPU and data usage to maximise the power used. This unsurprisingly gave the longest quoted battery life.

Smart mode automatically adjusts the CPU and network data allowance in order to maximise performance and battery life, leaving Normal mode to allow for maximised performance.

As with every battery management program I've tried, I found that the quoted battery life wasn't being hit, but again I never found that the Kestrel was lacking in the power department.

In order to help you further this, apps can also be changed to allow you to enable or disable whether or not they keep running when the screen has been turned off. This doesn't include the whole range of apps that come installed on the Kestrel, but does allow you to take greater control.