iPhone 11 Pro iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max Battery

[internetrando]

I scrolled through the first few pages and I did not see anything related to my particular question.

In regard to the battery claims touted during the keynote (and on Apple.com), this thought (and question) occurred to me.

I wonder how much of that additional battery life is coming from the addition of Dark Mode in iOS 13; considering the differences between OLED and LCD panels and how they function.

I would imagine that to see a majority of that advertised increase (short of the efficiency increases) you would have to use Dark Mode.

The iPhone 11’s one hour battery increase, while good, can largely be attributed to the efficiency increases since it is still using a LCD panel.

The iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max’s increases are ludicrous; 4 and 5 hours respectively. I certainly hope that they hold true because that is one of the main reasons I am interested in upgrading this cycle.

Considering that the 11 Pro phones share (for the most part) their hardware with the 11 outside of their screens and cameras, I would have expected their increases in battery life to be similar (1-2 hours at most). The only logical explanation that I can arrive at is that a lion’s share of that increased battery life is coming from another source; best guess is from lowered power consumption in dark mode with the OLED panel.

I’ll be interested to see what the reviews and experiences are when they come out. I won’t be upgrading for probably a month or two after launch at the earliest.

Does anyone know, or has anyone seen, what is required to attain these claimed battery increases? I scoured around and saw no caveats or requirements to achieve that increased battery life, just that it was there.

 

[Closingracer]

It has nothing to do with dark mode. They would have to say it which they didn’t. It’s mostly done probably by a bigger battery and more efficient SOC. Dark mode would have no effect on a LCD panel since you can’t shut off pixels I would assume.

 

[Bogey99]

The 11 Pro’s have much bigger batteries now. I’m sure that explains most of the increased battery life. Dropping 3D Touch helped make room for bigger batteries. Trade-offs...

 

[bushman4]

Apple saying 4 to 5 extra hour battery is different then everyone will get as everyone uses their iPhone differently

 

[C DM]

The 11 Pro’s have much bigger batteries now. I’m sure that explains most of the increased battery life. Dropping 3D Touch helped make room for bigger batteries. Trade-offs...

How much room was 3D Touch taking up that so much more battery could fit?

 

[nordique]

Apparently most of the gains come from a more efficient OLED panel

plusbigger battery & more efficient processor

 

[UKapple73]

I was also curious about this. One thing I thought was that Apple were being sneaky in the way they were describing it - something along lines of “5 hrs extra battery in your day” so does that mean 5 hrs screen on, or 5 hours in the day like if your battery dies at 6pm normally it will now die at 11pm.....
I highly doubt it’s the former so I reckon 5 hrs in the day probably translates to 1-1.5 hrs screen on time. Which is still pretty good

 

[JPack]

We won't know until next week when Apple releases the Whr specs for the iPhone 11 battery.

 

[JulianL]

In the SoC section of the keynote it was interesting that the 2 points they called out were machine learning and reduced power consumption. On the second point he did say that the 4 low power cores were powerful enough for them to be able to handle most of tasks without needing the high performance cores and that the low power cores now took 40% less power than before so that's a pretty big saving. The 2 high power cores were also faster and took 30% less power than A12.

Also earlier on I'm pretty sure that they mentioned a power reduction on the screen as well as the increase in brightness and I think the power reduction quoted was 15% (but might be remembering that wrongly).

Add all that to the bigger battery that I think was rumoured to be about 20% bigger on the 11S vs the XS (rumours on the increase in the battery size varied from quite modest to a similar 20%-ish increase) so at least for the 11S you can easily see how they might have got those extra 4 hours usage, which by my calculations is something like an extra 30%, without even considering what dark mode might bring. For the XS Max it looks as if the battery capacity increase might have been at the upper end of the rumours which again would all seem to tally with the battery life figures that Apple announced without needing to factor in dark mode.

I'm very excited about this upgrade just for the battery life gains. It's been the single biggest thing on my wish list every year since 2009 which is when I bought my first iPhone.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

Should be 3500 and 3100mAh on the Pro models.

 

[justabrake]

My reason would also be for the battery's additional hours, What I wished they had put in words was the exact hours of battery life it would last instead of saying 4-5 hours more battery hours of life sounds like they don't want to put an exact number on it just saying

 

[JulianL]

My reason would also be for the battery's additional hours, What I wished they had put in words was the exact hours of battery life it would last instead of saying 4-5 hours more battery hours of life sounds like they don't want to put an exact number on it just saying

They do put numbers on it. They are in the “Power and Battery” section of the specs here ... https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-11-pro/specs/

In some previous keynotes they have put those on screen during the presentation, in others not. Maybe it depends on how much is being announced that determines how much time they have to go into any detail on stuff although I’m pretty sure that they also deliberately don’t mention stuff if it’s not progress vs the previous year, e.g. this year they weren’t likely to go into detail about weight since the Pros have both got heavier vs the XSs last year (which is OK for me because I care more about battery life).

I think when Apple talks about these “up to 4/5 hours more” numbers it tends to be the video playback and similar time figures (on past versions internet browsing was an activity they also quoted a time for in the specs) that they are talking about.

Personally I find the watching-video figure quite useful since a big use of my battery is ebook reading and, since video playback has the screen lit up all the time just like reading an ebook does, I can get some idea of my likely ebook reading per charge from the video-watching number and hopefully even exceed it since reading an ebook is less computationally intensive than video playback.