For some use cases I think the battery life gain might be far more than Apple is saying. I’m a Pro Max user so that’s the only one that I really care about and I’ve done some analysis based on the official Apple 12 Pro Max and 13 Pro Max specifications (here
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP832?locale=en_GB and here
https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-13-pro/specs/ respectively).
In the launch event Apple quoted 2.5 hours more battery life for the 13 Pro Max vs the 12 Pro Max and I assume that is a sort of average use case figure with a mixture of all sorts of activities during the day (or days if someone is a moderate user, I already get 2 day battery life from my 12 Pro Max). But if you dig a bit deeper using the specs linked to above you get the following application-specific increases according to Apple…
- Video playback (locally stored I assume): 20 hours for the 12 Pro Max vs 28 hours for the 13 Pro Max
- Video playback (streamed - WiFi or cellular?): 12 hours for the 12 Pro Max vs 25 hours for the 13 Pro Max
- Audio playback (locally stored I assume): 80 hours for the 12 Pro Max vs 95 hours for the 13 Pro Max
The streaming video figures seem anomalous to me, 12 up to 25 hours? Either there is a typo on Apple’s spec page or the 12 Pro Max figure is for streaming over a mobile network, maybe even 5G, and the 13 Pro Max figure is for WiFi or some other sort of change in the test case definitions so that it’s not comparing like with like. Whatever the reason I think it is best to ignore that number but that still leaves us with the locally stored video and audio playback figures where the 13PM gets 40% more video playback and just under 19% increase for audio playback.
The increase for audio playback is pretty much in line with the rumoured 18% increase in battery capacity (we have battery capacity increases confirmed but we won’t be able to confirm the exact mAh increases until people start doing teardowns of the new models). But that 40% on video playback is well above what I would have expected from Apple’s “2.5 hours longer” comment in the presentation.
My theory is that, as well as the gains from a bigger battery, the video playback is also benefiting from ProMotion adaptive refresh rates. I’m not a video expert but aren’t movies filmed at 24fps? If yes then presumably the screen adopts that refresh rate or close to it rather than the 60Hz of the 12 Pro models which could be a decent power saving.
If that is what’s going on then it could be a huge win for me because a big percentage of my usage is reading ebooks and listening to music so when reading an ebook I would hope that the screen clocks right down to 10Hz refresh rate and I might get well above 50% more ebook reading time between charges, maybe even double or more.
Finally, back to the streaming video anomaly. I do still suspect that it’s a typo or change in definition but just possibly one other factor that might be at play is that if the streaming is over a mobile network in both cases might the latest 5nm Qualcomm modem in the 13 Pro Max account for at least some extra gains there? I really can’t see it being enough to more than double the number but it is at least something else to conside.
Yet again I’ll be placing my upgrade order as soon as ordering opens on Friday simply for the battery gains alone.
