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That’s not my experience with the iPhone minis, it took over a year for a decline in battery to become noticeable, and with the 13 mini the battery is still sufficient after three years now.
We shall see. I hope you’re right.
 
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Apple could make the new iPhone as efficient as it wants to be. But the point of having bigger batteries is also about longevity. Bigger battery tends to decay slower, and vice versa.

My old 10.5" iPad Pro from 2017 can stay all day battery life until now. Yes an 8 years old tablet, its battery health surely degrades, but perfectly tolerable, and still very much usable.

Can't say the same for most iPhone batteries though, three years in and surely enough it's barely half day usage before it needs charging.
 
So it's iPhone7 battery life with much bigger screen. Mkay...

I don't get it who wants bigger phone with less battery life. IMHO That's pretty limited target group of customers.
 
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I can literally already hear it ...
"worlds thinnest iPhone ever, no other phone was ever as thin as the iPhone 17 Air! To use it please use the also newly designed and released air-battery pack with only 1.2 cm thickness..."
 
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“ the iPhone 17 Air should achieve full-day battery life.“
Why is such a low goal the standard for Apple? Why can’t Apple get us a watch with a 5 day battery or an iPhone with 2-3?

Is it really worth shaving off a few mm ( especially since 99% of phones get a thick protective case )?

They do have a phone with 2+ days capacity. My 15. Last charged 100% on Thursday late, now Saturday morning and it's at 36%, after streaming Apple Music via BT all day at work on Friday.

I wrote a bit of a review somewhere else in here about power draw on 5G. Basically, don't use it unless you are 100% sure you actually need it.

I'm really curious how the 17 Air will handle 5G.
 
So it's iPhone7 battery life with much bigger screen. Mkay...

I don't get it who wants bigger phone with less battery life. IMHO That's pretty limited target group of customers.

I think there’s loads of people that want what is a normal sized screen today without it being thick and heavy, I am for sure one of them if we are talking about a normal slab phone.

If it is 2800 mAh it will still last me more than a day for 99% of my days, and for the days I am traveling and it might be a bit tight I bring a power bank in my carry-on anyway. I’d rather have it be thin and light for all other days.

I might have to actually start charging it once a day though, instead of just throwing it on a charger every other day or so when it hits 40% like with my 16 PM.
 
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I can literally already hear it ...
"worlds thinnest iPhone ever, no other phone was ever as thin as the iPhone 17 Air! To use it please use the also newly designed and released air-battery pack with only 1.2 cm thickness..."

Something like this?


IMG_8964.JPG
 
I have my MacBook handy so often that it takes up much of the load others might put on their phones. Everyone is different.

Same here. I have the M1 Air 13". 5 years later it still goes the whole day. I don't play with my phone much at all when I'm home, and even if I'm waiting around in places like airports I just whip out my laptop to watch a movie. I've even used my laptop to watch movies in flight.
 
Looking forward to this. I have never used a case on my phone, other than an experiment with a wallet case with iPhone 1.0, and always valued a smaller phone. The original SE — 6S internals in the 5 body — was may favorite. I currently have a 13 mini and was very tempted by the 16e until we saw the details of how Apple deliberately borked it (I'm still on the wallet thing but now get by with MagSafe, so not having it is a complete deal-breaker), but my future fantasy Minority Report phone has always been something the size of a credit card that just looks like a piece of glass, although I can see that future fantasy morphing to a puck, and using my watch and some kind of glasses. I totally get there are tons of people who see their phone as the proverbial "truck," to quote Steve — but I'm not one of them. Unfortunately per iPhone mini, there maybe aren't enough of us for a viable segment but I am definitely very curious about the Air.

Has anyone noticed no one in Ted Lasso uses a case on their iPhone? But, this is in a very controlled environment. I use a cheap rubber case, just so the damn thing doesn't slide out my hand, but I gave up on screen protectors years ago, because even though I've road tripped through Africa in an old Landrover and been snowboarding many times with it, and also just shoved it in my pocket with keys, no scratches, the screen now much more clear and responsive.
 
“A previous rumor pegged the iPhone 17 Air's battery capacity at around 2,800 mAh, which would indeed be below the 3,000 mAh mark.“

2,800 < 3,000 🤯

Thanks MacRumors, for this detailed reporting 🙄
 
Is it really worth shaving off a few mm ( especially since 99% of phones get a thick protective case )?
Why do so many people parrot this?

Statistically, people put cases on an every phone … so a thin phone with a protective case is still thinner than a thick phone with a protective case.

Everyone who says “who cares about thinness, it’s just going to end up being as thick as the iPhone X” completely ignores the fact that people also put cases on the iPhone X, so they are comparing apples and oranges just for dramatic effect.

Also, if you don’t want it, don’t buy it. This is not the VisionPro which was an objectively stupid product and a total failure. Plenty of people do not care about battery life and would like a thinner phone.
 
So Apple is going with a smaller battery and relying on software (adaptive power mode) to make up the shortfall to get to a full day of battery life. From the description of adaptive power mode in the Macrumors article about it some of it doesn't bother me so much but stuff like dimming the screen below its user-set level doesn't sound great. If it's doing that because the phone is down to the last 5 or 10% and the alternative is the phone dying then OK but if Apple is relying on that for the Air to get to a full day of use then for how much of the time will adaptive power mode be active during a day of use and potentially compromising the user's experience?

I also worry that, if Apple judges this Air smaller-battery-plus-adaptive-power-mode strategy to have been a success, it might then start applying the same thinking to future non-Air iPhones by starting to reduce battery capacities year-on-year for other models so people end up with adaptive power mode on for parts of their day and get screen dimming when they didn't want and if they adjust the screen brightness upwards to fight back against adaptive power mode they end up with a dead phone before the end of the day.

Admittedly I haven't experienced how adaptive power mode does affect the user experience yet so my fears might be unfounded if the effects are essentially imperceptible but even if that is the case and adaptive power mode turns out to be an amazing tool for extending battery life I would still be sad to see the Air smaller-battery strategy applied to other iPhone models in the future because, as a Pro Max user, I would be left wishing that Apple had kept the same Pro Max battery capacity and used adaptive power mode to extend battery life even further compared to what it is now.

I will be interested to see how adaptive power mode behaves in practice.
 
I just don't get why Apple isn't going all out at this point. They seem to be under a bit of pressure with their thoroughly botched Apple Intelligence "launch" and the competition is offering some serious battery technology in thin and light phones. Why wouldn't they put a silicon carbon battery in it, even if that gave them lower margins? Are they so confident that they can't fail?

And I get the argument that "I'm never far away from a charger so I don't need a big battery". Yet that doesn't justify smaller capacity for me. Why would I accept that when tech is here so we could have both. And for anyone who wants to use their phone for longer than a year this likely also means the necessity of more frequent battery replacements. My Galaxy S10e as much as I liked it had mediocre battery life on day one and was ******* after a little more than a year...
 
This was the first year I went for the Pro instead of the Pro Max. Going back to the Pro Max because of the battery this year. Cameras and battery life are my priorities this year. I understand the appeal of the Air and was in that camp last year.
 
In one hand, you’d expect some big Chinese account to have access to accurate information, on the other side you’d expect some bias against Apple.
 
Absolutely ridiculous, utter rubbish and frankly embarrassing. What is Apple thinking with this model? Way way too many compromises for what gain?

Return on R&D spending for a foldable phone for Tim.

Yes Apple will release a foldable in the next year or so but Tim wants to milk everything they've developed, hence why they're releasing half the foldable this year.
 
That’s not my experience with the iPhone minis, it took over a year for a decline in battery to become noticeable, and with the 13 mini the battery is still sufficient after three years now.
I love my mini, but have been using a MagSafe battery pack since about a year into ownership. At least for the mini my thumbs easily reach the top of the screen. I can’t imagine the appeal of the air + battery pack combo.
 
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think you meant pro max ;-) but I agree ! Always go for the pro max model if you want the best iPhone battery life for sure
Pros don't have the better better life. It's usually the plus models as pro motion saps battery. Size of battery? Maybe the pro, but not actual battery usage, which is what we should be measuring.
 
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