iPhone XS and XS Max Smart Battery Cases Each Have 1,369 mAh Capacity But More Watt-Hours [Updated]

[Creepitor]

False.
Read well.
Its capacity is 10.1 Wh.
More than previous models.

Glad at least someone’s realising that, Amphours is a terrible benchmark since it has no value unless you now the voltage. Previous Smart Battery Cases had a capacity of around 7Wh, it’s ridiculous how the vast majority of this forum is paying more attention to the Ah-rating than to the actual hours of supplementary usage these cases offer, which is basically doubling the usable time of these devices. Title of the article is pretty misleading since the capacity didn’t drop at all...

Edit: article’s title has been adressed.

 

[1050792]

finally some critical thinking.

Critical? What's next? They had to make room for the 3 cameras so they removed the battery entirely?

 

[12vElectronics]

I never understood the appeal with these cases? They're expensive, barely have any mAh and bulky. Literally everywhere I go now has a USB port, Wall port or Qi charger. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy an extra $20 apple lightning cable and carry it with you? or a 12watt wall charger?

 

[sofila]

I never understood the appeal with these cases? They're expensive, barely have any mAh and bulky. Literally everywhere I go now has a USB port, Wall port or Qi charger. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy an extra $20 apple lightning cable and carry it with you? or a 12watt wall charger?

Any wall is not going to move with you as soon as you need to relocate in a new position

 

[g35]

Glad at least someone’s realising that, Amphours is a terrible benchmark since it has no value unless you now the voltage. Previous Smart Battery Cases had a capacity of around 7Wh, it’s ridiculous how the vast majority of this forum is paying more attention to the Ah-rating than to the actual hours of supplementary usage these cases offer, which is basically doubling the usable of these devices. Title of the article is pretty misleading since the capacity didn’t drop at all...

The iPhone 7 case gave an 83% boost (22 hours when combined with phone, vs 12 for phone alone) to iPhone 7 internet usage time. The XS case gives a 75% boost (21 hours when combined with phone, vs 12 for phone alone)

The old case gave you more time any way you slice it.

 

[kemal]

Well Duh. Next month: Battery Case Pro.

 

[Wags]

It’s about time people stop putting up with crap like this. If no one buys them, maybe they’ll take the hint.

Average consumer probably doesn’t research or notice until too late after purchasing. The cost to manufacture these has to be very low.

 

[tkukoc]

Obviously you pay for convenience here! You pay for an apple product made by apple for your other apple product. There's no between man here, again convenience to know it works because it's automatic. Now can you say they went cheap by not loading a bigger battery? Absolutely! But can you also say they may have done this due to wireless charging with air power capacity issues due to heating? Umm i'm going with Yes! This is another sign of why air power wasn't released. These little trickles of information come out and if you piece it all together you can see what happened. Air Power = Charge 3 things at once.. but wait bigger batteries, longer charge over time, new apple watch which has a completely different back and charging core, new phones .. 3 of them.. with different battery outputs and watts. Now chuck in battery cases, also take additional charging watts and conduct heat. So at some point you watt yourself out. Still no air power and yet it is still referenced in products. To me it's obvious, you paid for convenience in terms of a battery case made by the same company that made your phone, watch and airpods. All the while kicking back and waiting for them to drop air power so everything as they say "just works".

Did you overpay? Well if you want to say total battery size compared to competitors.. sure you did. But with the research and development of each of these products and making them all work seamlessly, they had to make a lot of changes which cost money. You choose if you want to go to the secondary market for a larger battery. Frankly I'll stick with "just works" when it comes to hardware from Apple. Now if we want to get into the software part.. i've got major issues with them.. but that's a rant for another topic.

 

[manu chao]

The phone, to my knowledge, has no way of using the external power before/instead of it's own battery. It works the same way as plugging the phone in or having it on a wireless charger whilst in use. The power management in the phone will shut off the external power supply once the battery is full. It will then keep it topped up on a trickle charge. So the phone will use some battery until it reaches the predetermined level of drain, it will then take the power from the external power source to top it back up.

I don't think so. What is happening when a battery-powered device (phones, laptops) is plugged in and used at the same time, is that the external power source is used to power the device and any surplus power being fed to the device is used to charge the battery*.

Once the battery is at 100% (which is how you would start your day with such a battery pack if you let both charge overnight), the external battery pack is providing the power to operate the device with the internal battery being put on standby mode (ie, is left alone to slowly self-discharge until the self-discharge causes it the fall below some threshold**). Only once the external battery pack is depleted would the device switch to use the internal battery (at which point you could remove the battery case if you want a svelter device).

---
* There are situations when the device draws more power than the external source can supply (eg, when charging an iPad with a 5-W charger while heavily using it). Under these circumstances, it will also draw some power from its internal battery and will top up the battery again as the power usage slows down again.

** On Mac laptops that threshold is about 95% and you can clearly see the charge slowly oscillating between 95 and 100% over the course of a day while the laptop is plugged in. On phones that threshold might be closer to 100% but this slow cycling is also pretty much hidden in that the indicator will still show 100% even if the actual charge is only 99 or 98% in order not to unnecessarily worry people.
On iPhones, when the phone is largely sleeping (eg, when in Airplane mode, with the screen off and no audio playing), I've seen no visible self-discharge with the phone still displaying 100% after a 12-h period.

 

[Baymowe335]

LOL...with all their billions, still can't get batteries right.

Who gets batteries right in your mind?

There are limitations to current batteries, as Samsung found out the hard way.

 

[cashville2400]

I'm good, I already over paid for my XS Max. Plus, if I put this on my phone it would feel like an old 80s brick cell phone.

 

[gnipgnop]

Glad at least someone’s realising that, Amphours is a terrible benchmark since it has no value unless you now the voltage. Previous Smart Battery Cases had a capacity of around 7Wh, it’s ridiculous how the vast majority of this forum is paying more attention to the Ah-rating than to the actual hours of supplementary usage these cases offer, which is basically doubling the usable of these devices. Title of the article is pretty misleading since the capacity didn’t drop at all...

Misleading people about phone batteries appears to be the tech media stock-in-trade these days.

 

[Baymowe335]

Serious question:

Has anyone bothered doing any real research into what this actually means or are you simply basing your opinion on mAh and calling it worse?

I can almost guarantee the talk times are similar if not better and mAh are largely a consumer misunderstood myth like megapixels.

But hey, anything to fire up a forum for clicks!

 

[12vElectronics]

Any wall is not going to move with you as soon as you need to relocate in a new position

I guess the only time where I'd need something like this would be if I'm out and about and I forgot to charge my phone. In that case wouldn't a 20,000 mAh portable battery pack for $28 on Amazon be cheaper/more effective?

 

[manu chao]

Glad at least someone’s realising that, Amphours is a terrible benchmark since it has no value unless you now the voltage.

It had its value when USB charging always meant 5 V. USB Power Delivery 'amped' that up to 20 V (I don't know if it also allows intermediate values).

 

[bambooshots]

Instead of just complaining about it, offer your solution: so, exactly how large do these batteries have to be to satisfy those who disagree with their size?

What if they reduce the cost to $100 and keep the current capacity the same? Would that be acceptable?

If not, what?

 

[manu chao]

I'm good, I already over paid for my XS Max. Plus, if I put this on my phone it would feel like an old 80s brick cell phone.

But, but, but, everybody seems to be saying that they'd prefer their iPhones to be twice as thick with the extra space dedicated to a larger battery. Are you saying that not everybody would want their phones to be that thick?
[/sarcasm]

 

[drewcosten]

How and this is a genuine question?

The phone, to my knowledge, has no way of using the external power before/instead of it's own battery. It works the same way as plugging the phone in or having it on a wireless charger whilst in use. The power management in the phone will shut off the external power supply once the battery is full. It will then keep it topped up on a trickle charge. So the phone will use some battery until it reaches the predetermined level of drain, it will then take the power from the external power source to top it back up.

If it indeed does work the way you suggest then it is a worthwhile investment as it will save your phone battery. But I don't believe that is how it works. Happy to be corrected though.

The last iPhone battery case worked that way, so I see no reason to believe this one wouldn't also. Basically, because it's made by Apple, the iPhone is able to know when it's plugged into an Apple battery case and use the case's battery first before switching to its own internal battery. This also means that this is the only case that doesn't cause the iPhone to act like it's plugged into the wall when it's in the case and start doing battery draining stuff like iCloud backups and syncing photos to the cloud and such.

 

[SoN1NjA]

I was super excited for these cases, after all I did own a 6s one (+ bought another after I lost it) and a 7 case ― however I won't pay more money for less battery, that makes no sense

Apple, you just lost $129 from me

 

[bambooshots]

I guess the only time where I'd need something like this would be if I'm out and about and I forgot to charge my phone. In that case wouldn't a 20,000 mAh portable battery pack for $28 on Amazon be cheaper/more effective?

But less convenient.

 

[manu chao]

Instead of just complaining about it, offer your solution: so, exactly how large do these batteries have to be to satisfy those who disagree with their size?

Ask people how much thicker they would want their iPhones to be (to get a larger internal battery) and you get some people saying 2 mm, others 4 mm and yet others 6 mm. While some even are fine with the current thickness (and battery life).

 

[bambooshots]

The last iPhone battery case worked that way, so I see no reason to believe this one wouldn't also. Basically, because it's made by Apple, the iPhone is able to know when it's plugged into an Apple battery case and use the case's battery first before switching to its own internal battery. This also means that this is the only case that doesn't cause the iPhone to act like it's plugged into the wall when it's in the case and start doing battery draining stuff like iCloud backups and syncing photos to the cloud and such.

There was an article that detailed how Apple designed the Smart Case...I wish I could find it but I'm not having any luck.

 

[0014]

Glad at least someone’s realising that, Amphours is a terrible benchmark since it has no value unless you now the voltage. Previous Smart Battery Cases had a capacity of around 7Wh, it’s ridiculous how the vast majority of this forum is paying more attention to the Ah-rating than to the actual hours of supplementary usage these cases offer, which is basically doubling the usable time of these devices. Title of the article is pretty misleading since the capacity didn’t drop at all...

10.1 Wh
10.1 Wh
10.1 Wh

Learn it, live it, love it

Incorrect and i'm not sure how apple work out the 10.1wh if the output voltage is 8.7v according to the inside of the case.

If i remember the calculation correctly. To workout Wh you multiply the mah by the output voltage and divide by 1000

iPhone 6/6s Smart Battery case was 9.38wh (1877mah x 5v /1000)
iPhone 7 Smart Battery case was 11.83wh (2365mah x 5v /1000)
iPhone XS/XSM Smart Battery case 11.9wh (1369 x 8.7v/1000)

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

I'm a longtime Apple customer and fan for over 30 years. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to support Apple with my purchase dollars so long as these ridiculous antics continue of giving less and charging more. Apple is going down the John Scully road here, and we all know where that leads.

When Jobs was at the helm, Apple launched Intel's next-gen desktop CPUs before anyone else. Products were properly updated on a regular cycle to stay competitive. And Steve used to say, as long as we do right by our customer we will be successful and we don't have to worry about stock value. The new Apple apparently cares more about stock value than delighting its customers.

I'm done. And yes, I know many here will say "don't let the door hit you". That's fine, continue in your short-sightedness and living in your bubble. But when people like me—die-hard Apple fans for two generations—start to fall away, that means Apple's worst troubles are yet to come.

 

[manu chao]

I never understood the appeal with these cases? They're expensive, barely have any mAh and bulky. Literally everywhere I go now has a USB port, Wall port or Qi charger. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy an extra $20 apple lightning cable and carry it with you? or a 12watt wall charger?

Well, I regularly go on hikes where I am without a power outlet for 5 to 8 h (and I am OCD enough to keep checking my fitness app and digital mapping way too frequently such that battery can run out during this time period).