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iPhone 16 Battery Capacities Revealed
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Less efficient display panel, possibly. Or it’s just marketing, as both numbers are within a 10% tolerance of 30 hours.
Battery capacity + Efficiency of the new 3nm process + Apple’s optimisation magic = Battery life
Same here, and that's one of the main reasons I'm upgrading to the 16 Pro Max. My 15 Pro Max is down to 90% capacity in less than a year.
Did you read my post? The chart right above the paragraph you posted seems to disprove their claim. See attached.
So I still take this with a grain of salt but this is what Apple support told me via chat just now about this:
Is that the same Honor Magic V3 that only goes for 10 hours? With that size battery, they should be getting 20 hours or more! Looks to me like they should have squeezed in a larger battery.
Agree, really strange, previous iPhone Pro Max models have lost between 0% and 4% in 12 months. I don't have the always-on display enabled, don't play games, don't watch media on it. Charge using 15 Watt MagSafe charger but to lose nearly 10% capacity in under 12 months something has to be wrong with the battery. I didn't bother trying to argue it with Apple as they would say it was working as it should be.
The Honor Magic V3 is a foldable. You need to use the rated capacity, in WHr. Rated is the minimum; typical is the average within a batch.
Honor Magic V3 = 7.61 WHr + 11.79 WHr = 19.4 WHr
iPhone 16 Pro Max = 17.955 WHr
Apple is only 7-8% behind.
PetaPixel's review noted that the charging upgrade only kicks in for heavy usage + charging at the same time.
Then, this Medium post (paywall removed)
So a small-ish upgrade. IDK, for longevity, I almost always charge at 5W overnight; if there's an urgent need, I can use a 65W laptop charger.
The Pros vs base:
- Titanium is much heavier than aluminum with equal volume (aka titanium is denser).
- LiDAR sensor
I found an interesting article on 9to5mac where some testers found that simply having iOS 18 on some older phones boosted daily battery life. Apparently the new OS takes a bit longer to kick in higher CPU speeds so that doing frequent short things doesn't use as much battery.
so essentially it only ramps over 30W in extreme use situations?
This might be one of those Google job interview problems where you have to figure out the order. Or maybe this is the only order where there is no order! 🤯
That's my understanding.
The "45W" is more of a limit, as I understand it. Previously, iPhones used the 9V x 3A USB-IF profile (which allows a maximum of 27W), where 3A is the maximum for normal USB-C cables.
USB-IF only has 5V*3A, 9V*3A, 15V*3A, and 20V*3A for most chargers (using the traditional fixed-voltage system). 12V is optional & thus rarely used.
5V*3A profile: 0 to 15W (3A) charging
9V*3A profile: >15W to 27W (3A) charging
15V*3A profile: >27W to 45W (3A) charging
20V*3A profile: >45W to 60W (3A) charging
So for Apple to even want 28W charging, Apple had to move to 15V and that profile allows up to 45W.
28W = 9V*3.1A = this violates USB-IF spec; you cannot exceed 3A
28W = 15V*1.9V = this is within USB-IF spec; it is below 3A
https://regulatoryinfo.apple.com/elabels/A3292 (can't find an active one for the 15 Pro, but I imagine it is 5V-9V⎓3A max).
Apple always lists its rated capacities with WHr in its regulatory information, alongside mAh + voltage. The only people that use mAh exclusively are tech blogs and Android OEMs.
Only the 15 Pro (Max), apparently? https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/19/iphone-15-pro-max-longer-battery-life-ios-18/
I appreciate Apple’s priority on optimization over just increasing hardware specs. It’s how we get such powerful yet such portable devices with such great battery life.
Can even the Pro Max handle that type of extreme usage all day? I don’t know if energy optimization advancements are going fast enough to give the smaller Pro (if not both Pros) that kind of battery life in the near future. Battery life improvements are pretty slow going, especially because it takes dips some years (likely as a result of phone slimming and/or adding resource-heavy features to the phone). So it’s likely you’d have to expect to use something like a MagSafe battery for that kind of usage for the foreseeable future, at least for the smaller Pro.
There are numerous reason why bigger batteries aren't always necessary or a good idea:
- They are more susceptible to potential issues, we all saw how that turned out when Samsung adopted a much bigger battery for the Note 7 and it literally blew up in their faces so they went back to smaller batteries.
- They take longer to charge unless the maximum wattage iPhones support is increased, and if the maximum wattage were to be increased, heat output would be increased and the overall lifespan of the battery would be reduced, even if slightly, which goes against people's need / want of longevity.
- They cost more to manufacture and produce, increasing overall manufacturing costs of each iPhone model.
- Apple does heavy software optimization within iOS' entire codebase, it's why Apple got away with so little RAM for ages up until the iPhone XS when they adopted 4 GB RAM, 6 GB RAM, and later 8 GB, and why their SoCs still haven't adopted more than six cores, despite Qualcomm having used eight cores in their SoCs for quite a long time, and why Apple can get away with not putting insanely large batteries in their phones. Android is significantly less optimized than iOS due to the additional overhead of Java / Kotlin and the Android Runtime so smartphones that run Android need SoCs with more cores, more RAM, and bigger batteries.
Magsafe is terribly inefficient in terms of the power required to charge. A lot of power is wasted. Also, as people have reported here over the years, wireless charging seems to ruin batteries. 🤷🏻♂️
I’ve had my 14 PM for almost 2 years, no idea how many charge cycles, and my battery health is at 90%.
I just use a 2W charger, with a cable, and let it charge overnight. Low power or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a race, and it has all night to charge. 🤷🏻♂️
I have a faster charger for when I need a quick top-up.
I wonder if Apple will ever switch to LiFePO4 tech? Slightly less energy density but 5x more battery cycles. Battery health angst would be a thing of the past.
Smartphones manufacturers want all the density they can get. For iPhone 15 and newer, Apple advertises 1,000 cycles. That's nearly three years of daily charging. Apple doesn't want users holding onto phones for 15 years because the battery is too good.