iPhone 16/Plus Based on YT reviews, iPhone 16 Plus has worst battery life than 16 Pro Max?

[IvoryChopsticks]

Been checking out reviews on YT and seems to be a significant difference of the battery life of the 16 Plus vs 16 Pro Max. Anyone 16 Plus owners care to comment on their experiences? I'm wondering if Apple is making software caps to make the Pro Max better.

 

[russell_314]

Right from the Apple website with some tasks there is a significant difference. I seriously doubt Apple is purposely sabotaging the 16 Plus to make the 16 Pro Max look better. The 16 Plus is better than the 15 Plus so it didn’t get worse.

 

[IvoryChopsticks]

Thanks. I notice this too, however battery capacity wise they are very close. 16 Plus 4675mAh vs 16 Pro Max 4685mAh. Up t0 5 hours more on the max because of 9mAh? I'm leaning towards a software cap or 16 plus is more inefficient somewhere but where in hardware specs would that be?

 

[Paddle1]

Thanks. I notice this too, however battery capacity wise they are very close. 16 Plus 4675mAh vs 16 Pro Max 4685mAh. Up t0 5 hours more on the max because of 9mAh? I'm leaning towards a software cap or 16 plus is more inefficient somewhere but where in hardware specs would that be?

It's the screen. The 16 Pro has ProMotion so the display can go down to 1 hertz when not in motion which saves battery. The display on the 16 Plus is locked at 60 hertz.

If you don't know what the means basically the screen always updates 60 times per second on the Plus versus just once per second on the Pro when there's no movement on screen.

Videos are often less than 60 FPS (frames per second) so battery is saved there too.

 

[GMShadow]

The A18 Pro in the Pro models also has 2x the L2/L3 caches which means fewer times needed to go out to main memory, saving some more power in the long run. IIRC the video encoder/decoder is also a bit more advanced than the base A18.

 

[thatJohann]

I had both for two weeks and the battery on the 16 Plus smoked the 16 Pro Max. Kept the 16 Plus.

 

[Chidoro]

Right from the Apple website with some tasks there is a significant difference. I seriously doubt Apple is purposely sabotaging the 16 Plus to make the 16 Pro Max look better. The 16 Plus is better than the 15 Plus so it didn’t get worse.
View attachment 2492115

Looks as if the video playback benefits a lot from a variable refresh screen

 

[russell_314]

I had both for two weeks and the battery on the 16 Plus smoked the 16 Pro Max. Kept the 16 Plus.

I suspect it depends on what you’re doing. I wonder if the processor in the 16 Plus uses less energy? It only has one GPU core so that can’t be much. The screen is about 4.7% smaller but that’s not much difference. Are you sure they were at the same screen brightness?

Looks as if the video playback benefits a lot from a variable refresh screen

Yeah, that would help save a bunch of power because the screen uses significant power.

 

[thatJohann]

I suspect it depends on what you’re doing. I wonder if the processor in the 16 Plus uses less energy? It only has one GPU core so that can’t be much. The screen is about 4.7% smaller but that’s not much difference. Are you sure they were at the same screen brightness?



Yeah, that would help save a bunch of power because the screen uses significant power.

Yup auto brightness on both. All I do is text and use safari. Not on social media or games ever.

The battery on the 16 Plus feels eternal. Like I’ve gone two days without a charge.