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Are we expecting significantly improved battery life with an OLED screen?

Ralfi

Ralfi

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 22, 2016
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Planning on going from a 6s to an 8/X/Edition & wondering what battery life benefits my first OLED screen will bring, not only compared to the 6s, but to its competitors.

Having watched an iPhone 7 v S8 v Note 8 comparison, the iPhone obviously lost out to the other 2, but now with the special edition, OLED featuring iPhone approaching, together with its bigger battery, it should be challenging for the title of the most energy efficient of the big name phones on the market, but do you think it'll be by a significant margin? Or will it be on par with the current Galaxy/Note models?
 
Apparently OLED displays are a lot more energy efficient, so I'd be surprised if the battery life doesn't improve further.

Having said that, the new features might negate that anyway.
 
It kind of depends - the efficiency benefit of OLED is it doesn't illuminate pixels for true black. Will Apple incorporate a system-wide dark mode using true black? Who knows. Will third party apps update to use true black? Who knows. Current iOS and its third party apps wouldn't bring much to the table with an OLED screen. A change would have to be implemented to take advantage of OLED's energy efficiency.
 
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I think with the savings of the new A11 soc and amoled screen and with the increase of screen size and smaller footprint, we will probably get the same as the 7+.
 
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My guess is there will be no notable, marketable change in battery life as Apple is fond of balancing power efficiency with device thinness - if they can keep the battery longevity the same as before, they'll make a thinner device.

Some extra variance in how long the battery actually lasts in the real world might however be introduced by the way OLED displays work (as stated above).
 
Remember OLED iPhones may probably get L-shape batteries which has a similar size to the ones in plus models.
 
Probably depends upon how you use a phone. Although you save with the new screen if you use one of the battery heavy apps you probably wouldn't notice the difference.
 
Even if the battery life is improved in the OLED model, to what extent? A lot of what battery life is user based on the users usage and settings. Nobody will have the same battery life when this new iPhone releases. Even last year when iPhone 7 launched, Apple claimed that both models had increased of two hours With the removal of the 3.5 Jack, some stated they did not believe that their device had any additional gains with the addition of two hours. So it's variable for everybody.
 
I don't think battery life is a major concern with Apple judging from their past. All the competitors have 3000+mAh and Apple? Not even 2000. I doubt the 8 is gonna see any significant improvements since Apple simply doesn't give a damn.
 
I hope it's better than my 7+. I'm not sure if it's my usage pattern or if my battery is just bad, but it's never lasted me a day (10 AM to 10/11 PM) even right out of the box. One of the reasons I upgraded to the plus was for the battery but I was really disappointed in the battery life compared to the 6S and hope the X will improve things with the OLED display. I'd love a dark mode like macOS
 
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i'm usually at 50% at the end of the day (iphone 7), so i really can't complain.
never had to charge it during the day. iphone X with the bigger battery (rumored to be 2700 mAH) should be even better.

probably helps that i have wifi almost everywhere i go.
 
The new high end iPhone is rumored to have nearly as large a battery as the + models typically have.

With the more efficient screen and Apple’s normal iterative battery life gains I would expect at least as good battery life as the current +.
 
tkwlee said:
Quite disappointed with the battery life of iPhone X.
Click to expand...

Why? It's slightly larger than the 7 and has up to 2 hours longer life.

And it's almost on par with the 7 Plus which is a much larger device with more space for additional battery capacity.

You may want to wait till next year for their X Plus.
 
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Ralfi said:
Up to 2 hours more than the iPhone 7, which means at least 3 hours more then my 6S. If I'm not mistaken, then that's pretty good progress.
Click to expand...

Aside from that, I think battery life is highly subjective. It depends on intensive applications, settings, and how frequently somebody is using the iPhone throughout the day. But I do agree that an additional two hours is still impressive.
 
Relentless Power said:
Aside from that, I think battery life is highly subjective. It depends on intensive applications, settings, and how frequently somebody is using the iPhone throughout the day. But I do agree that an additional two hours is still impressive.
Click to expand...
Yep, very subjective. My use probably veers toward the common end of the scale.

But yeah, they did say "up to 2 hours", which is what they said for the 7 over the 6S iirc, hence why I'm hoping for 3-ish hours improvement from 6S to X, & not 4.
 
Looks like my hunch was right; despite OLED the X does not have a notably different battery life compared to the comparably screen-sized 7 plus. The X is barely worse.

But as I noted, that makes sense. Apple balances these things out.
 
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