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5% gain on the Pro Max isn't much, and might just be to make up for the greater power drain thanks to the new AI stuff. Every little helps, though. My 15PM battery is good already, but some Android phones are currently well ahead. I'm not convinced Apple care to spend much on their batteries.
 
Exactly. That's what infuriates me about the "it's the software though" argument. It is true that Apple's tight coupling of software with its custom hardware allows it to get more battery life per mAh than its competitors but rather than that making me feel OK about Apple's choices it leaves me feeling more frustrated because I can't help thinking "so just imagine what sort of battery life Apple could be getting if it also maximised battery capacity".
Nail on the head, friend. As daft as it sounds they make the software more efficient just so they can get away putting in a lower capacity battery!
 
Solid State Batteries are coming. Game changer replacing lithium ion batteries. I imagine the slim iPhone being Apple’s first with the tech.
I hope they come. I'll upgrade from my 13Pro when they finally have a Solid state battery in them. I've been wanting SS batteries for at least five year. They may finally be on the horizon now that I've seen a commercial product with one

Yoshino Solid-State Portable Power Station​


on amazon. So looking forward to these becoming prolific over next 10 year. Would like for Apple to make the phones lighter while increasing iPhone life by 50%
 
I hope they come. I'll upgrade from my 13Pro when they finally have a Solid state battery in them. I've been wanting SS batteries for at least five year. They may finally be on the horizon now that I've seen a commercial product with one

Yoshino Solid-State Portable Power Station​


on amazon. So looking forward to these becoming prolific over next 10 year. Would like for Apple to make the phones lighter while increasing iPhone life by 50%
The Yoshino advertises as being solid state but having nowhere near the density to suggest it is with suggestions it could be a “semi solid state” as their is liquid or gel chemistry going on, take a look at comments on undecided with Matt Farrell youtube channel.
 
Car manufacturers are targeting Solid State Batteries to be in their 2028 lineups. Not sure if that's a pipe dream or not. Smaller consumer electronics would be sooner because of their size and scalability would be greater. It's been reported that Apple has been involved in this area. Imagine charging your phone to full capacity in 2 minutes and having it last 4-5 days or greater with heavy usage.

We have been hearing that it is 2-3 years away forever now. CNBC had a good special on solid state last year, most experts are skeptical we will see it in any devices before 2028, at the earliest.
 
I haven't kept up with the stats on iPhone batteries for a while now, but I visited an Apple store the other day. I compared the "Battery Health" of the demo versions of iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. Both with the same "start" date and the Max's battery health life percentage was significantly lower than the 15 Pro.

My replacement battery in my is only 1.5 years old and it's already depleted to 90%. Meanwhile in my spouse's iPhone 13 her battery life it 98% and they use their phone all the time. Both phones are identical in terms of disabling battery draining settings.

This makes me not want to get a Max as my next iPhone upgrade.
 
I know iPhones outside of the US have a physical SIM slot... Maybe this is the year that goes away on all phones, perhaps allowing for a slightly larger battery design?
eSIM is a nightmare. I hope Apple realizes this and brings back the physical SIM for the USA market. Carriers around the world aren't ready to go eSIM only. There are too many security risks and administrative headaches.
 
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I feel pretty sure the main driver is the AI features, which are going to be doing a lot of background processing all the time. This is not about longer battery life, it's about more power being needed.

I'm totally fine with that - I'd happily have a 30% thicker iPhone to have a decent assistant operating totally locally.
 
I feel pretty sure the main driver is the AI features, which are going to be doing a lot of background processing all the time. This is not about longer battery life, it's about more power being needed.

I'm totally fine with that - I'd happily have a 30% thicker iPhone to have a decent assistant operating totally locally.
Maybe I'll be converted but from where I am right now this could be a bit like 5G. At least when first introduced (and still now?) 5G was more power hungry than 4G so manufacturers had to beef up battery capacities a bit (and during one iPhone cycle a lot) to try and minimise the drop in battery life. That was good for 5G users but also good for me who to this day still has his phone locked to 4G so I get overall battery life improvements due to battery expansion to cater for 5G.

As I say, maybe my attitude on AI features will change, but I can see a scenario where I decide to turn off many or all of the AI features that I am allowed to disable (for instance I have never had my phone or watch set to listen for "Hey Siri") and just "bank" any extra battery capacity to reduce battery level anxiety between recharges especially if I forget to charge some nights.
 
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The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are rumored to feature bigger battery capacities compared to previous-generation models, but it looks like the smaller iPhone 16 Pro device could see the biggest improvement, according to new details.

iPhone-16-Pro-Front-Update-Blue.jpg

Chinese Weibo-based leaker Instant Digital today posted the mAh (milliampere-hours) figures for the iPhone 16 Pro (3,577 mAh) and iPhone 16 Pro Max (4,676 mAh), with only the larger model capacity lining up with previous leaked figures.

The mAh is a measure of battery capacity, or the amount of electric charge that a battery can store. The higher the mAh rating of a battery, the more charge it can hold, and the longer it can power a device. The following table shows the battery capacity comparison between the iPhone 15 Pro models and iPhone 16 Pro models.

iPhone 15 Pros (2023)iPhone 16 Pros (2024)% Change
Pro3,274 mAh3,577 mAh+9.25%
Max4,422 mAh4,676 mAh+5.74%
The change in capacity of the iPhone 16 Pro over the previous Pro model shows the most marked difference, with an over 9% increase (303 mAh). Meanwhile, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, while not as dramatic as its smaller sibling, gets an over 5% increase (254 mAh). Combined with efficiency improvements, the increases should see both devices offer more sustained real-world usage on a single charge.

According to one rumor, this year's ‌iPhone 16 Pro‌ Max will boast a 30-hour-plus battery life (compared to 29 hours for the iPhone 15 Pro Max). Not only that, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are expected to use stacked battery technology for increased energy density and prolonged lifespan.
Both devices are also rumored to support 40W wired fast charging and 20W MagSafe charging. For comparison, iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models are capable of up to 27W peak charging speeds with an appropriate USB-C power adapter, while official MagSafe chargers from Apple and authorized third parties can wirelessly charge the iPhone 15 models at up to 15W.

Article Link: iPhone 16 Pro Model to Get Biggest Battery Capacity Jump
All of those numbers are based on full charge. Since Apple is now recommending charging to only 80% to prolong battery life, the changes will be almost nonexistent.
 
My best wish for a battery fix would be a magic keyboard that doesn’t drain the battery like a 4 inch hole on the bottom of a sink. If I leave my iPad in the magic keyboard case I have to charge it every other day whether I use it or not.
 
This launch is all about Apple Intelligence and a big upgrade push of those who are 14 owners and older. Apple wants to see the biggest AI adaption in history. That is what they are looking to prove with this launch. The A18 and A18Pro are lucky to see a 10% increase in CPU, 25% difference GPU, and probably go with a 20-core Neural Engine. We won’t see a big difference in performance over the 15Pro Max.
 
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This launch is all about Apple Intelligence and a big upgrade push of those who are 14 owners and older. Apple wants to see the biggest AI adaption in history. That is what they are looking to prove with this launch. The A18 and A18Pro are lucky to see a 10% increase in CPU, 25% difference GPU, and probably go with a 20-core Neural Engine. We won’t see a big difference in performance over the 15Pro Max.
Agreed. We've already seen an even more extreme implementation of what you suggest with AMD's Ryzen processors (the mobile line at least, I don't follow desktop) where for the annual refresh from 7000 series to 8000 the CPU and GPU are identical between the two series, even identical base and turbo clock speeds, and the only difference is that the 8000 series have beefed up Neural Processing Units. (I stayed with a 7000 series for my miniPC.)

The cynic in me sometimes wonders, for Apple, how much of this is genuinely about AI and how much of it might be about digging Apple out of a bit of a hole that it and the rest of the mobile industry has got itself into at least for customers like me (and judging by other posts I see here I'm not alone).

I've been thinking for a while that at least for my use cases I just don't need any more CPU power on my phone. During that time there have people who weren't like me and did want/need more because I don't have anything more CPU/GPU-challenging than card and puzzle games on my phone whereas other people might want to play first-person shooters and so need more CPU power and GPU power but now that we have real-time ray tracing on iPhone I wonder how much extra GPU power even those people really need or are we at photorealistic gaming on iPhone now? (Bear in mind that with a small iPhone screen there will probably be fewer live elements needing to be animated before saturating the players field of view (attention) vs what the game designer might want to present on a 32" desktop monitor).

So if maybe the desire for initially more CPU performance and latterly a growing emphasis on more GPU performance has reached the point where most users needs are met then entering a world where the manufacturers can say "but with AI what you really need now is more NPU (Neural Processing Unit, Neural Engine, tensor ops per second or whatever) power" gives the manufacturers another metric to pursue year-on-year and position as a compelling reason for their users to upgrade.

We've actually already seen Apple do this (in a pretty lame way in my opinion) with Apple watch where the double finger/thumb pinch gesture was limited to the latest hardware on the justification that only the latest Apple Watch SoC had the necessary AI processing power to accurately recognise the gesture. I think they also mentioned more on-watch processing for Siri as a Series 9 feature as well.

I suspect we're about to enter a world where we that same sort of Apple Watch Series 9 stuff happening more and more across more devices. Of course for that to actually drive upgrade sales and have people actually saying "yes, I do need that doubling of NPU performance so that I can do <x>" Apple has to make <x> actually appealing and worthwhile to people (and I wouldn't say the Watch double-pinch is an example, I have it and never use it, and I also have a Series 8 watch and notice pretty much no difference in Siri performance between my Series 8 and Series 9). If Apple can make all of those <x>s be things that people genuinely want then at least some people who have switched to longer gaps between their hardware upgrades might start upping their upgrade frequency again.

The next few years could either be a load of smoke and mirrors and frantic marketing of marginally useful features or it could be quite an exciting shift of gears.
 
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Apple still cutting corners wherever they can. Their stingy RAM is why we’re only seeing AI in the top phones and now your £1300 iPhone still packs less battery than a £200 Android Phone.

I know the ADF will be out in force with the usual ‘it’s the software though’ excuses but it’s ok to demand better value from Apple!

Nothing really hit the ball into everyone else’s court this year with the CMF Phone. No it doesn’t have IP or NFC but the camera is actually really good and it has a 5000mah battery with a 120hz display. Its ludicrous value for £200 and crucially it looks interesting as well.

I’m not sure what their margins are but it should make every customer, Apple or otherwise demand more at their price point.

If Apple can’t find the room in their massive pockets for a 6000mah battery on their top phones and at least a 120hz display on the base models then something is terribly wrong.

A 6000mah battery with Apple’s software optimisations would give you 3+ days of battery easy and who doesn’t want that?!?
I completely agree in fact, I won't be upgrading this year at all, I'm sticking with my 13 pro Max, you can run a language model from the shortcut that connects to ChatGPT, or there's some new apps that have come out one that looks very promising that allows you to run large language models on your own device, I've been using that for a week and it's working very well, I don't need Apple intelligence going through my phone spying on all my stuff or not as the case may be, no I will be sticking with my 13 pro Max thank you very much.
 
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