Iphone 6s Battery Question

[Orange Turtle]

I was hoping for even just a slight improvement in battery life- but according to the Apple website it says the iPhone 6s has the same battery life as the iPhone 6, even though it has been reported that the battery size is smaller. This has been attributed to improvements in other technologies inside the processor (and possibly other things).

Here's my question (or theory).

Both phones are listed as having 10 hours of battery life- BUT what if the iPhone 6 has 10 hours of battery life on IOS8, but once upgraded to IOS 9 it actually has 11 hours. That would mean the iPhone 6 actually has a longer battery life than the 6s.

What are the chances I am correct with this?

 

[MikesGravity]

They are both probably identical. Apples stats are in ideal situations. Play an intensive game on a 6 and 6s and the 6s will probably get better life.

They will probably end up being the same.

 

[Orange Turtle]

They are both probably identical. Apples stats are in ideal situations. Play an intensive game on a 6 and 6s and the 6s will probably get better life.

They will probably end up being the same.

I get that the stats are in ideal situations- I think you are missing the point. That ideal situation for the iPhone 6 that is listed was based on iOS 8. The stats for the iPhone 6s have to be based on iOS 9 as that is what it ships with. This would technically mean the newest iPhone gets worse battery life than the previous model. Thoughts?

 

[unagimiyagi]

I think the battery life is likely nearly the same no matter which OS.
IF you use the phone in an intense way, such as gaming, full brightness, or using the camera, then the battery life of all phones tends to converge to be proportional to the size of the battery.

When you go full throttle, all of those battery saving techniques go to mush and it's simply: how big is your gas tank? The bigger, the better.

If you look at the Sony z3c, it's a 4.6 inch screen. It runs android. It runs a qualcom processor. It runs a retina screen. It is by all means not as heavily hyped as being super battery efficient from the ground up, because it uses standard parts compared to everything being customized like the iphone.

Yet it has a 2600 mah battery. And lo and behold, it lasts twice as long as an iphone.

My point: bigger battery trumps almost everything else. It's pretty much all you have to look at when you want to assess how good the battery life is going to be. This is 100% true if you like to use your phone at "max" settings. Do not expect night and day differences in battery life when you se a phone that has a really small battery capacity vs the competition. The playing field is all pretty even between phone hardware.

 

[nostresshere]

...BUT what if the iPhone 6 has 10 hours of battery life on IOS8, but once upgraded to IOS 9 it actually has 11 hours. That would mean the iPhone 6 actually has a longer battery life than the 6s.

What are the chances I am correct with this?

What if the new phone with the new IOS has 12 hours?
What if the new phone with the new IOS has 9 hours?

What is their was a real question here?

 

[JulianL]

TL;DR - No one knows, we're all guessing. My guess is about the same with a possibility that there might be very modest 20 minute or half hour gains on a few specs such as talk time, video playback, internet browsing time, etc.

Longer answer...

iPhone 6 battery was 1810mAh. We can be pretty confident since Apple's own promo video showed it that the new iPhone 6s battery will be 1715mAh. That's 5.25% less battery capacity (capacity, not life) for the 6s vs the 6. To make that up the electronics in the 6s needs to get 5.54% more run time for whatever your typical usage pattern is compared to the electronics in the 6 if the battery life is to be identical for your usage between the two models. If the electronics in the 6s fails to achieve these efficiency gains vs the electronics in the 6 then the battery life will be worse, if it exceeds the break-even efficiency goal then the 6s will have better battery life.

Since no one outside Apple and its inner circle of partners has has access to the phone we don't know for sure so everyone here is guessing. My guess is that it will be almost identical battery life to the 6 and if there is any noticeable variance then it will be on the up-side, i.e. the 6s will have very slightly better battery life than the 6.

The thoughts behind my guess above are...

1 - Baseline assumption is the same life because that is what Apple claims in the specs on its web site. If it had been able to eke even an extra hour out of the specs it would have probably said so hence if there are any improvements I expect them to only be maybe an extra 20 minutes talk time or half an hour of music playback. This assumption could be wrong and we might get an extra hour for one or two of the specs that Apple quotes but Apple wasn't certain enough of that to increase its official battery life claims.

2 - Any improvement likely to be to the up-side because I think there is a good chance that the 6s electronics can beat the 5.54%-more-efficient figure due to geometry shrinks not only on the A9 vs the A8 but also on the Qualcomm LTE chip, I think a companion chip is now integrated into the main chip, the M9 now co-packaged or even on the same die as the A9, and I think at least one other of the comms chips also had a geometry shrink. All those should be positives for power efficiency.

For me the huge unknown is what Apple has done with the screen as far as power efficiency is concerned. Hopefully some very detailed teardown might attempt to instrument and measure screen consumption between generations because I would be extremely interested in knowing the answer to this.

 

[michael31986]

The 6s has more efficient chips. You can bet on that.

 

[sunking101]

Due to processor power drain improvements the battery life should be the same despite the smaller battery. However, an i6 running iOS9 might last slightly longer, if the battery were new. As most would be a year old then I think they'll last the same length of time as a 6S battery. I don't like to see the smaller batteries though, it's purely a compromise to make room for the 3D Touch engine.

 

[michael31986]

Do we know is the 6s plus will have a smaller battery?

 

[sunking101]

Do we know is the 6s plus will have a smaller battery?

They're both smaller in order to make room for the 3D Touch engine.

 

[sunking101]

Here's how much battery was sliced off, and the 3D Touch engine that takes up the space.

 

[bhayes444]

I would also imagine some efficiency improvements have taken place as Apple now includes HD video playback for the 6S and 6S+, whereas it was just listed as video playback for last year's models; indicating standard definition, I think. As another poster or two mentioned, most of the batteries on the iPhone 6/+ models running out there now are getting on in age and have less capacity. I do think, that if Apple retested the battery life it would use fresh batteries in the devices.

 

[Orange Turtle]

Not trying to beat this topic to death- but looks like disappointment in Apple's commitment to battery life.

My friend received a message on his 6 saying expect another 1.5 hours of battery life with ios9. That would boost it above the current model. Yes, an iPhone 6 that's a year old has a diminished battery.. but if you were to buy one new, it would have a better battery than the newer iphone.

Definitely a let down considering all the improvements Apple touts with the new 6s (they did a GREAT job of glossing over this issue). Great battery life should be a standard at this point- we aren't talking about an iPhone 4 here.

 

[JulianL]

Not trying to beat this topic to death- but looks like disappointment in Apple's commitment to battery life.

My friend received a message on his 6 saying expect another 1.5 hours of battery life with ios9. That would boost it above the current model. Yes, an iPhone 6 that's a year old has a diminished battery.. but if you were to buy one new, it would have a better battery than the newer iphone.

Definitely a let down considering all the improvements Apple touts with the new 6s (they did a GREAT job of glossing over this issue). Great battery life should be a standard at this point- we aren't talking about an iPhone 4 here.

I really don't know if they're glossing it over, if the messaging is just confused, or if Apple is actively trying to mislead. I confess that I am confused and most of that is because of what happens with iPhone 6 (not 6s) battery life.

Re your friend's message on his 6, go and look at the comparison chart on Apple's web site (http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/compare/) and compare the battery life figures for the 6 and the 6s. They are both identical. OK so far. But now look at what the table says about the iOS version running on each device (it's in the last sentence of the summary description). It lists the iOS version as iOS 9 in both cases.

Now, obviously a few months ago there was no iOS 9 (or iPhone 6s) so presumably the iPhone 6 description said that it ran iOS 8.<something>. But, and critically, what did it list for the battery life of the iPhone 6 a month ago? I don't have any cached copy of the old pre-6s comparison table but from memory I think it was the same battery life figures as we see now, i.e. Apple updated the table to show the iPhone 6 running iOS 9 but didn't update any of the battery life figures to reflect battery life improvements when it is updated to iOS 9.

If the old battery life figures claimed with iOS 8 were lower then I'm reassured but if they weren't then two possibilities, neither of them good, occur to me...

1) Apple doesn't believe its own claims and isn't confident that iOS 9 will give more battery life. All the savings that allow the 6s to claim the same battery life as the 6 are coming from better component efficiency in the 6s.

2) Apple needs both better component efficiencies and the iOS 9 battery life enhancements in order to get the 6s to the same point as the old pre-iOS 9 battery life of the iPhone 6. In reality, comparing like-with-like the battery life on the 6s is actually reduced compared to the 6 because if someone like your friend installs iOS 9 on his 6 he will actually get about 1 hour better life than the figures listed in the comparison table (whatever that means - 1 hour of what? Talk time? LTE browsing? Music? Video?) so the only way Apple can show the same battery life between generations in that comparison table is by deliberately understating the battery life of an iPhone 6 running iOS 9 (and frankly I call that more than glossing over, I think that's active dishonesty to hide the issue).

Not trying to beat this topic to death- but looks like disappointment in Apple's commitment to battery life.

You're allowed! It's your thread and I think you raise interesting and valid points. This issue deserves to be kicked round a lot more.

My guess is (2) above. Apple have updated the spec sheet to show iPhone 6 as running iOS 9 but are now deliberately understating the battery life figures in order to make the iPhone 6s look good. It's too late to cancel my 6s order now but it might go back under the 14 day return and get swapped for a 6 depending on what more detailed battery tests start showing on the true battery life of the 6 vs the 6s when both are running iOS 9.

I'm really hoping that after release people will start doing good tests on this and comparing iPhone 6 and 6s when both are running iOS 9 using some controlled tests (e.g. looping video with all radios off). Most of the early reviews that I've seen so far have been very vague "it had x% after a day of playing but I was reviewing it so I played with my device a lot" type of comments on battery life rather than the more methodical "the phone lasted x hours and y minutes looping an HD video with screen set to full, radios off, etc" which is what I want to see.