You want a smaller battery? Give me a larger battery. Battery life is huge compared to a few grams of battery.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2020 iPhones Expected to Feature Thinner and Possibly More Power Efficient Displays
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You want a smaller battery? Give me a larger battery. Battery life is huge compared to a few grams of battery.
It is, iPhones have becoming thicker every year for 5 years straight. From the iPhone 6 onwards, each iPhone has been thicker than its predecessor.Predicting that Apple wants to go thinner on designs isn't much of a prediction.
OK? Let’s use the example with the iPhone 11 Pro, Apple eliminated the 3D Touch panel, which also resulted in a larger battery. So wouldn’t it be natural to assume that if the display is thinner, that Apple could also potentially increase the battery even more?
Dear Apple, how many times do we need to tell you this. WE DO NOT WANT THINNER. It is plenty thin already. In fact adding half a mm wouldn't make any difference to literally anybody. Now listen clearly to this next statement.
We want a larger battery with a higher capacity.
Many thanks,
Anybody who is sane.
We want a larger battery with a higher capacity.
Many thanks,
Anybody who is sane.
YES WE DO. iPhones have been getting thicker and heavier for the last 5 years. Who cares if you end the day with 35% vs. 40%? You still have to charge every night, but hundreds of millions of people are stuck with a thicker, heavier phone.
Why bother adding another half hour to an 11 hour runtime? Who uses a phone 11.5 hours a day anyway?
No conclusion jumping
Between the switch to an LTPS backplane and the process shrink to 5nm for the A14, it’s reasonable to expect battery capacity could be shrunk by 10% while still maintaining the current run time.
Sure most thinner bezel phones are OLED but there are some LCD’s with smaller ones.
The Essential phone is one that comes to mind. Newer Huawei’s as well.
It’s almost scary how well my 6S still runs. iOS 12 seemed faster than new, and 13 is just as fast. I’m not a big picture taker, and I really haven’t had much reason to upgrade. But 2020 could be it. Eyeing the 5.4” OLED...
Why would it? PWM is side-trait to OLED, not just with Apples OLED panels (Which are Samsung OLED panels), but OLED alike exhibits these tendencies across the board for the majority who experience PWM.
The only thing to stop PWM, would be the next Gen displays with Micro/mini LED.
It isn't so much the 3D Touch Panel removal that allows "room" or physical size increase in the battery that you got much bigger battery capacity, it was the combination more of the battery density increases as well as the Smartphone becomes thicker.
If anything the Apple Watch aluminium packing battery is even more interesting in that it packs around 10% more battery within the same space. ( And it is more recyclable )
[automerge]1578121729[/automerge]
If you look at your graph in detail, you will notice not all thickness reduction comes from touch sensor. And Apple isn't current using a rigid OCTA Screen.
Also "normal" LED can be controlled with PWM. All LED should be fed a certain voltage to operate efficiently. Dimming is simply done by having longer off periods in the PWM duty cycle which result in linear decrease in light. Reducing voltage gives a non linear decrease in light of LEDs not just for OLEDs but perhaps OLED is more sensitive to reduced voltage feeds. I am surprised that normal LED illuminated LCD are not PWM modulated.
Which frequency is PWM in iPhone operating in? The headaches must be a function of relatively low frequency PWM duty cycle and significant long off periods. Using PWM at >50kHz should result in fewer people detecting the on off of light as that would occur a frequency of >500 Hz.
Well if Apple does use a thinner display next year that also uses something like the 15% less power that the article mentions then some possible ways that Apple could go are...
1 - Maintain same overall phone thickness and use the space freed up inside for a bigger battery. That would be my preferred option to give decent battery life increases by both benefiting from greater component efficiency and increasing battery size vs 2019 models.
2 - Reduce thickness of overall phone to reflect reduced thickness of display component but leave battery size unchanged. At least that should still contribute to some modest battery life gains in the 2020 models vs 2019 if the screen display and hopefully other components are more efficient. I’d be slightly disappointed to not have got option 1 but I’d sort of be OK with option 2.
3 - Reduce the overall phone thickness even more than 2 above by not only taking the benefit from the thinner display but also make the battery smaller (thinner) to compensate for the reduced power consumption of the display, i.e. size the battery down to be just enough to maintain the same battery life specs as the 2019 models. Frankly I would be bl*#*y furious if Apple did this.
Sadly Apple has some form on doing 3 above so I will be delighted if it does 1 but still be breathing a sigh of relief if it does 2. I’ve already said what my feelings would be if we get 3!
1 - Maintain same overall phone thickness and use the space freed up inside for a bigger battery. That would be my preferred option to give decent battery life increases by both benefiting from greater component efficiency and increasing battery size vs 2019 models.
2 - Reduce thickness of overall phone to reflect reduced thickness of display component but leave battery size unchanged. At least that should still contribute to some modest battery life gains in the 2020 models vs 2019 if the screen display and hopefully other components are more efficient. I’d be slightly disappointed to not have got option 1 but I’d sort of be OK with option 2.
3 - Reduce the overall phone thickness even more than 2 above by not only taking the benefit from the thinner display but also make the battery smaller (thinner) to compensate for the reduced power consumption of the display, i.e. size the battery down to be just enough to maintain the same battery life specs as the 2019 models. Frankly I would be bl*#*y furious if Apple did this.
Sadly Apple has some form on doing 3 above so I will be delighted if it does 1 but still be breathing a sigh of relief if it does 2. I’ve already said what my feelings would be if we get 3!
Thanks. Disappointing. Well here’s hoping that the rumour of a 5.4 inch LED iPhone 11/12 is true - I find my XR a little large so that would do me until micro LED phones appears (2021-22?).
Maybe I’m an outlier but I’m a fairly light user who still wants more battery life even after the huge gains in the 11 Pro/Pro-Max battery life vs the 2018 equivalents. For me the convenience of being able to go away on an overnight trip, or even ideally on a long 4 day weekend, without having to take a charger is a big convenience for me. I do always keep a really short emergency charging cable in my wash bag but knowing that I’m unlikely to need it is a great benefit. With my 5.8” Xs I just about managed to leave home early in the morning and return home early evening the following day on a single charge. With my 11 Pro Max I can do that very comfortably and could probably stretch that to a 3 day weekend (leave Friday am, return Sunday pm) but I might be getting a bit nervous by Sunday late afternoon. It would be nice to be able to do that very comfortably too and ultimately on to a 4 day weekend.
I think my desire might become more widespread if the rumours of Apple ditching the charging port in 2021 turn out to be correct. Then people would need to carry a wireless charger with them if they expect to need to recharge when travelling and that is more bulky than a single 5cm long USB cable. I am always pretty confident that in an emergency I could find a USB port anywhere I go. There is almost always one on the TV in my hotel room as my easiest option although I very rarely get myself in a situation when I need an emergency recharge. The world will no doubt adapt if Apple and ultimately perhaps other manufacturers require wireless charging but for the next few years being similarly confident of finding someone else with a wireless charger on them is not, I think, going to be the reality.
It doesn't make sense to ditch the lightning port unless Apple can make the iPhone charge wirelessly over the air and able to charge as fast as the lightning cable.
Personally I think we've moved beyond "thin enough". I would totally be down for a marginally thicker phone that got 3-4 days of battery life...or more.
Your joke went over my head, I think?
Is it just simple sarcasm, without the “/s” tag?
Lol, it throws me off because iPhone really does have some genuine heft now... I try to appreciate the fact that it does pretty clearly emphasize the quality. I mean, shoot... even blindfolded, I feel like anyone could tell just by weight that what they’re holding is a metal & glass slab, no plastic whatsoever.
So, I actually agree with the opinion that they could now stand to lose some weight & slim down a bit.
I just don’t get the Ive reference?
Obviously, Jony is most famous around these here parts (by which I mean the entire internet) for a deep obsession for devices to be thinner & lighter. Saying “now that he’s gone” hopefully we can get something that embraces his two most forthright passions literally only works as a juxtaposition joke... that doesn’t quite land.
At any rate- if that entire post was just a Jony Ive dig... it’s too bad!
All the rest was sensical & resonated with me... right up to that point.
Predicting that Apple wants to go thinner on designs isn't much of a prediction
Of course it is a prediction. In case you have not been around, Apple has been making iPhones thicker since iPhone 6.
Apple is currently using a thicker in-touch AMOLED panel. The gains for Apple will be even greater than 0.6mm once they transition to Y-OCTA or TOE.
The gains come from not needing OCA film and a thinner touch sensor.
The battery will almost certainly be larger on the iPhone 5G.
[automerge]1578171149[/automerge]
No. There was no battery density increase with iPhone 11 Pro. The increase came from a bigger battery alone. The space for the bigger battery came from the removal of 3D Touch and a thicker chassis.
If you compare the battery density of the phones, the Xs has an advantage.
iPhone Xs = 10.13 Whr / 41g = 0.247 Whr/g
iPhone 11 Pro = 11.67 / 48g = 0.243 Whr/g
Last edited:
It was just ironic sarcasm 🤣 More than a few posters here accuse Ive of having a form over function “thinness fetish” without even realizing that under Ive’s direction/management, the iPhone has gotten thicker for the last five years lol.
I’ve added a “/s”
Last edited:
I just did the napkins maths, turns out to be about right. The iPhone X and Xs had a Display Panel thickness of 1.65mm, the newer 11 Pro had 1.35mm, along with the 0.4mm increase in chassis, that is 0.7mm increase from the 3.3 mm battery thickness. That is about 20% so it seems to be right. Turns out to be much larger percentage than I assume.
I dont have the Z height on hand with iPhone 11 battery. So I assume they did use those space for battery.
Edit: Holy Crap I just read up on the roadmap of AMOLED, turns out we really can shave out another 0.6mm from the Display panel alone. Personally I think the current Battery life is good enough, would have wanted to gradually starting getting back to iPhone 6 level thickness.
Last edited:
The dejonification of Apple needs to continue on from the MacBook Pro 16.. it now needs to happen to the iPhone. It’s time..
I'm gonna wait until 2021 for the S version, I have the 11 Pro Max right now.