All iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro Battery Capacities Allegedly Leaked

[Oohara]

Wouldn't a battery case defeat the purpose of having the Air?

Yes, I guess the combined weight would be similar to that of the Pro Max. So people who use their phone more than the Air battery can support will probably just want a Pro Max instead. Which most heavy users are likely to prefer anyway given the superior camera and specs.

For myself, I'd say my use is moderate but not heavy, and I don't foresee the Air battery being a problem for me. I want the largest display possible with the least weight so it's a no brainer purchase for me. On a really heavy use day I won't mind giving it a quick charge once or twice. And when traveling or otherwise without wall sockets I'll just bring a power bank.

This thing with the Air battery is just not going to be a problem.

 

[Princejb134]

What is the point of releasing a slim phone with such a small battery that you need a bulky battery case ?

Maybe if they find how to be more energy efficient with their chips we won’t notice the difference.

 

[bluecoast]

The iPhone air truly is going to be like the original MacBook Air, as pointed out by Gurman.

Ie Lots of people will admire it, not many people will buy it.

But hey, maybe they need to do the hardware engineering hard yards for iterations of the iPhone to come.

 

[thatJohann]

Interesting about the 17 Pro's massive battery boost. Might make me consider downsizing to the smaller 17 Pro this year.

I'm currently using the 16 Plus but def won't be going for the 17 Air as it will cause me battery anxiety from day 1.

My only concern is that I won't get used to the smaller screen of the 17 Pro coming from a 16 Plus. and my other concern is that I keep reading the 17 Pro Max will get thicker (maybe heavier?). That would be pushing it past the point of comfort.

 

[Dashey]

The 17 Air has less capacity than my 15 Pro (3274 mah). Glad I’m sitting out this round.

then get the pro?

 

[Biro]

Given that the Samsung Galaxy 25 Edge's battery life isn’t nearly as bad as many people had predicted (and, in fact, is the best among the Galaxy 25s according to PC Mag https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/samsung-galaxy-s25-edge), I would suggest everyone pause from clutching their pearls and wait until the iPhone 17 Air is in the hands of professional testers and we get some hard results. While I make no predictions, I strongly suspect the Air’s battery life isn’t going to be a huge issue.

 

[FastLaneJB]

But that just reinforces JPack’s point. A 22.7% increase in battery life on a 15.7% increase in capacity is negligible and pathetic. And that’s over multiple generations of new process nodes and new tech generally. Screen size is almost identical.

The reality is that Apple is under huge pressure (e.g. by Snapdragon 8 Elite) to constantly improve processing speed as demonstrated by benchmarks, because that’s what the wider industry cares about. Having to introduce special cooling features (vapour chamber) in a phone in 2025 after all these years of doing without is crazy. Reducing power consumption in a phone is far more important than improving speed, but reviewers don’t have the wit to realise that.

More powerful chips do also increase battery life at least when not taxing them hard in gaming because of th race to idle. The faster a chip can complete its task and get to idle, the better. Even if it draws a little bit more juice for the moments it is running, if it gets there significantly faster than a slower chip then the overall energy to complete that task is lower. Hence better battery life.

I don’t believe that iOS battery life in the past vs Android was so much better with smaller batteries was done to the OS so much vs the iPhone having a significantly better SOC. These days it’s much closer and battery life hence is closer. This feels like why Apple is finally going to battery sizes similar to Android flagships because they need to so they can compete on battery life still.

 

[switz]

That new huge camera bump will tell those around the user you have the latest and greatest Apple offering.

One would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 13, 14, 15, and 16 iPhone Pro Max if they were the same color white and laying on a table with no cases on.

When we went to southern Africa for 9 weeks a few years back, I had my iPhone Pro Max with sim card capability and a Leica Camera. Verizon Wireless was on the eSIM and I acquired the local capability at the border for a few dollars. The word eSIM was not in their vocabulary.

Verizon has become more international travel friendly, but we still need a UK capability when we are there for the extended family calls. Not nice to ask family members to pay for an international call when I am just down the street. The UK provider O2 did not have an eSIM for pay by the month two years ago.

I wonder if in today's climate, folks will just acquire a $30 actual just cell phone for international travel with no personal data installed? Then carry a small Canon pocket camera. Two main issues covered.

The other option for Apple users is to back up their iPhone to the cloud and initialize the iPhone before getting off of the plane so it is like it just came out of the box.

The world has changed a lot in the last few years and personal data protection has become a significant issue for many folks.

I wish Apple had a decent SPAM filter for both messages and mail.

 

[bebarhood]

Out of curiosity, how much of battery life is between

4,823 mAh

5,088 mAh

For the PM with/without SIM tray?

 

[Moreplease]

Out of curiosity, how much of battery life is between

4,823 mAh

5,088 mAh

For the PM with/without SIM tray?

5% less for the one without the tray. Below the typical “just noticeable” difference although of course you could measure it with a clock.

 

[justanotherdave]

The display area is nearly 10% larger than 16 Pro. Most of the power consumption comes from the display, not SoC. And it's not as if N3P has some magical improvement over N3E.

Apple will try their best with marketing but most consumers aren't stupid. They will look at the single rear camera, mediocre battery life, relatively high price and choose one of the other iPhone models.

Most consumers aren’t stupid. This is 100% fact.

It’s why the iPhone completely dominates Android flagships for sales. People know who makes the best phones.

 

[Reeneman]

The 17 Air has less capacity than my 15 Pro (3274 mah). Glad I’m sitting out this round.

If you care that much about a long battery life the Air won’t be the right phone for you. In my view the Air is first of all a device for people who don’t use their phone that heavily and who care about aesthetics of the phone. Back to the days with - as slim as possible.
This will for sure attract a lot of people and battery life won’t be that bad but for heavy users this will be disappointing.

 

[Reeneman]

5% less for the one without the tray. Below the typical “just noticeable” difference although of course you could measure it with a clock.

Tons a YouTube channels will be doing this. One the one hand nice, on the others hand we all will be bored about the never ending discussions about it.

I’m curious if we in Germany will get the version without the sim tray (or at least the choice). Personally would love to get the bigger battery but Germany isn’t the fastest with adopting „new“ technologies, means no traditional sim tray will cause trouble for some people and also a lot of afraid coverage in the media. „Apple gets rid of…“, „if you get the new iPhone you need to…“
All this exaggerated news, as always these days online and in social media.

 

[kerr]

Name a country other than the US that will release iPhone 17 base/Pro models without a SIM card.

 

[JulianL]

Name a country other than the US that will release iPhone 17 base/Pro models without a SIM card.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Even if they don't cover it explicitly during the announcement event, once the specs go up on the various country-specific Apple web sites they'll have to disclose whether a particular country's phones will still be getting a physical SIM card slot or not.

 

[SactoGuy18]

If the iPhone 17 Air eSIM only model has a battery capacity of 3,149 mAh, it could mean surprisingly good battery life per charge. The combination of the efficiency gains from the A19 SoC, the lower power usage of the C1 modem chip and Apple's new I/O chip for WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 (?) or even 6.0 could mean battery life per charge that matches the regular iPhone 17 with its 3,600 mAh battery pack.

 

[mlayer]

If you care that much about a long battery life the Air won’t be the right phone for you. In my view the Air is first of all a device for people who don’t use their phone that heavily and who care about aesthetics of the phone. Back to the days with - as slim as possible.
This will for sure attract a lot of people and battery life won’t be that bad but for heavy users this will be disappointing.

I just came back from a 36-hour trip in LA. I had to go several places so I packed one change of clothes, a multi-port charging brick, USB-C and Lightning (for an old iPad Pro) cables, and one of those small batteries (5000 mAh) I can plug into the bottom of my iPhone 15 Pro. According to iOS 26 I used 187% of my battery Saturday and 167% on Sunday while I was using maps, transit and rideshare apps, camera, social media, and the browser. Saturday's heavy use killed both the iPhone and the battery pack before I got to my hotel, thankfully the lyft driver saved me with a charging cable. I don't take many trips like this so most of the time the 15 Pro is fine and has a charging solution near it at home, in the car, or at the office. Whether I get the 17 Air or stay with the 15 Pro, my best solution is probably to carry multiple small battery packs wherever I go when I'm on the road, then deploy them on a modular basis. If anything, the weekend's experience helped me feel better about perhaps getting the 17 Air even though I'm not shopping for a phone right now.

 

[NetMage]

It's a similar issue with wanting more megapixels in crappy little sensor cameras rather than focussing on having less noise.

In general, all other things (e.g. technology generation, sensor area) being equal, most megapixels is always better for a given sensor size: when you have enough light, you have higher resolution and when you don’t, you can combine noise reduction and resizing to get the same result as a low MP picture.

 

[AlanBeyond]

Well it has a larger battery than initially rumoured (2,800 mh), so the battery life might be better than expected. Anyway, happy with the 17 Pro having just under 4,000 Mh for the SIM model (UK), so will be a noticeable gain on my 15 Pro.

Rumor says UK will get eSIM only models too this year

 

[Virinprew]

That’s one way to persuade people to e-SIM.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I have 15 Pro Max, but my thumb is suffering from "thumb reach" pain. So I am considering Pro. It's interesting how 17 Pro boasts nearly the same battery capacity 4,252 mAh vs 4,441 mAh.

iPhone 17 Air is intriguing enough that I'm hoping for a few surprises to sway my decision.

Why do you make use of the Rechability feature, along with the Tap back feature? It would make your iPhone usage a lot easier.

 

[PCtoMAC1]

Just here for the negativity.

 

[frownface]

Name a country other than the US that will release iPhone 17 base/Pro models without a SIM card.

I reckon there's a pretty high chance of that happening down here in aus.

 

[adrianlondon]

That’s one way to persuade people to e-SIM.

It's not the people who need persuading, but the mobile carriers. I'll happily switch to eSIM if every UK PAYG network supported it.

I currently have the 11 which can't handle two eSIMS active at the same time, so I have one eSIM and one physical SIM.

I'll be upgrading to one of the iPhone 17s (still undecided which one) and will have to wait and see what my SIM options are.

 

[JulianL]

It's not the people who need persuading, but the mobile carriers. I'll happily switch to eSIM if every UK PAYG network supported it.
...

Very true. I was terrified by the prospect of Apple going eSIM-only in the UK a few years ago but the situation has now got sufficiently better that, at least for me, I would quite welcome the move now especially if the rumour about that giving slightly bigger battery capacities is true.

I'm pretty certain that Apple will be pushing hard behind the scenes to get at least its major markets to the level of eSIM adoption where it believes it can take the risk of switching a country's iPhones to the eSIM-only variant because, on the scale that Apple operates at, every $0.01 off the build costs is worth having. Removing a cutout in the outer case and not having to form a separate moving part (the tray) plus not needing the PCB component must surely be a saving that Apple would like to bank. The risk behind that is offsetting that savings by lost sales in a market that wasn't actually at a high enough level of eSIM adoption/acceptance but I'm pretty confident, given that Apple already took the eSIM-only route in the USA, that over time it is a direction of travel that it wants to take in the rest of the world.

In the UK PAYG does seem to be the biggest issue right now. In the old days I pretty much only used my phone for on-device apps (local music, ebooks, games) and only used data for calendar sync and occasional use of maps or looking up things on Wikipedia or news apps so I was 100% a PAYG fan but now I do use a bit more data (still rarely more than 2GB a month) so about a year ago I transitioned to a monthly Lebara £4.95 a month plan. While I realise that eSIM availability for PAYG plans will still be an issue for some I'm now more concerned with all of the major UK MVNOs offering an eSIM option on all of their monthly plans including the very cheapest.

As it happens my provider (Lebara) is one of the MVNOs not offering eSIM yet but its FAQ says by the end of Q3 2025, i.e. by the end of this month. If Apple does announce the UK as an eSIM-only market today then I won't be at all surprised if Lebara then launches its eSIM option within a few days of today's announcement and certainly before shipments of the new models begin. If Lebara doesn't do that then there are enough UK MVNOs already offering eSIMs for plans in the £5 - £7 per month range to give me options I'd be OK switching to.