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I’d prefer a thin iPhone with double size battery bringing it up to the current size iPhone 🤩

Imagine being able to leave your house all day and night knowing your phone would work.
 
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iPhones have generally had better battery life in recent years. They used to be atrocious.

But I think there is still a long way to go. Sometimes I wish there was actually a software feature to restrict brightness of screen to 50 percent, processing to x of maximum etc

The screen is especially a battery hog in sunlight and I can actually see if even if it’s not on full brightness. But on auto it goes to full brightness and the battery life can be impacted massively unless you manually adjust etc

More fine grained control for users who wish to adjust such features would be great. They have already added a lot of info and features for battery management in latest iOS versions.

I suspect this would help the iPhone 17 air.
I think Apple has very far to go for battery life. My 16 PM still doesn't get what I consider good battery life.
 
Is there an engineering/technology reason why Apple couldn't redesign its phones so as to eliminate the "camera bump" and use the extra space for a bigger battery?

I can't imagine that there's a huge market for people who want a slim phone that needs an external battery in order to be truly usable. But what constitutes "slim" anyway? In real world use, a phone is as thin as its thickest point, not its thinnest point. So why not optimize for maximum battery life instead of making the phone unbalanced by thinning the non-camera area?
The engineering reason is physics.
Assuming Apple did what you suggested and just made the phone thicker with no bump at all, the thickest phone would be almost 5MM thicker than today.
We are talking iPhone 3G levels of thickness, with a phone that has a 6.9 inch screen.
That’s the thickest iPhone ever, with more weight for the materials, the significantly thicker battery is going to add more weight and with more battery comes more thermal concerns.
We’re not talking about a 12 mm thick phone that’s still around 200G, now we’re talking about a 12 MM phone that’s 300+ G.

The thing about phones getting significantly thinner is that they also will get lighter, and feel different in the hand. This thing will feel like a massive iPod touch more than an iPhone if it’s actually 5.5 MM, and 99% of the time you won’t be interacting with the camera bump. That’s not where you hold the phone, it’s not the majority of the phone.
 
Really? My 16 Pro best I've had so far. I could easily get two days per charge, but I usually plug in at bedtime.
I think it depends on usage. I'm constantly using my phone for work so it's only gonna get a couple days sitting idle on the weekend.

Edit: and maybe app optimizations? For my use it's really heavy grabbing MFA codes or working with Excel and loop. I could see it getting much better battery if it was just my personal device.
 
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The M4 iPad Pro is only 5 MM thick or so and it has fantastic battery life. Especially with standby, the thing can just last for days and days.
Maybe that will be where the Air shines, given that it’s going to have the C1 modem. Maybe if you constantly use the phone the battery won’t be anything impressive, but standby it will impress.
My thought as well
 
Sadly, I expect people to just accept this when it should be customer uproar to release a phone with less battery life instead of more just to make it thinner by a negligible amount and then create a profitable solution to the problem with upsell a battery pack!

Personally I don't care about thinness. I just want a decent battery life as the air + battery pack will be thicker than a regular phone and likely more expensive!

Bravo Apple. People will actually buy this ans buy into the advertising of super thin naked phone when reality is a thick case + battery.
The thing is, those that really care won't buy the Air (and Apple expects just that). You, like I, don't want the Air that sacrifices various things for thinness, but you and I aren't the target for this. While I have a hard time understanding how some DO want this, I know everyone is different and there is certainly a market for thin that sacrifices other things to get thin. There won't be much of an uproar because there is a choice.

By the way, I doubt most will put a case on the Air (battery or otherwise). They purposely chose a thin phone knowing the limitations because they wanted thin -- they won't want to ruin the single reason for buying this phone. They may charge it more often but they will show it off naked.
 
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This isn’t complicated guys. If you need crazy battery life, this model isn’t for you. And that’s fine.

I have MagSafe everywhere. I don’t need insane battery life with my iPhone. This model should be just fine for me. If that isn’t the case for you, then don’t get it. Pretty simple.
 
I hope so. My iPhone 16 Pro Max has the worst battery life of any iPhone I’ve ever owned.

Honestly, mine has had the best battery life of any iPhone I've ever owned. It lasts me over a day, the battery is still at 100% max capacity (my 15 Pro Max was around 93% at this same point a year ago and was at 87% by the end of the year I had it).
 
A big unknown is what type of battery pack will the iPhone 17 Air use. Given the rapid advances in battery chemistry recently (thanks to the demands of the electric car industry), I wouldn't be surprised the iPhone 17 Air uses a thinner battery with much-improved battery chemistry so the battery life per charge would be almost exactly the same as the iPhone 16 Plus currently.
 
I think it depends on usage. I'm constantly using my phone for work so it's only gonna get a couple days sitting idle on the weekend.

Edit: and maybe app optimizations? For my use it's really heavy grabbing MFA codes or working with Excel and loop. I could see it getting much better battery if it was just my personal device.

I don't think your expectations for battery life are reasonable. Obviously if you're using it all day long doing heavy processing, it's not going to last all day. A laptop wouldn't either.
 
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A thinner phone is going to have sacrifices, including processing power and battery life. That should not be a surprise to anyone.
 
A thinner phone is going to have sacrifices, including processing power and battery life. That should not be a surprise to anyone.
yep. Even if they can compensate with better chips, better battery chemistry, etc. then ALL the phone models will get those same advantages and so the thin one is still sacrificing some qualities. That's fine, as we have options and each can choose what is important to them.
 
I don't know how you came up with "no one cares about the camera bump". It's the biggest complaint I read and hear about.
Well, reading a complaint in a forum is probably the least useful indicator of something I could imagine. People have been complaining about it since the day it first protruded on an iPhone 6 and since then it has not affected one single iPhone sale. It is a giant nothing. Something for people to complain about on the internet, but affects nothing in the real world.
 
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No one is asking for this version of the iPhone. We want long battery life, and cameras that don't stick out the back of the phone.
I would have thought the same but it turns out we're both wrong. There actually are people that really want this. Go figure!
 
No one is asking for this version of the iPhone. We want long battery life, and cameras that don't stick out the back of the phone.
Already has long enough battery and no one wants to carry around a brick. So, no. This concept of an inch thick iPhone with 3 days of battery life and no camera bump exists no where in real world, its a forum fantasy that would make for a horrible product, which is why it doesn't exist, and isn't a design priority.
 
You're super confused about what actually matters.

No one cares about the camera bump. And the battery life achieved more than good enough status years ago. Most people end the day with something like 20-50% battery left, and then put it on the charger while they sleep.

This idea that they need to have 2 or 3 days worth of battery and that all other design considerations need to be put aside for this is just ludicrous and not representative of anything in the real world. The design priority for a device that you carry around with you should be portability. Continuously making it bigger and heavier and more and more fragile and awkward is the opposite of that priority. iPhone Air is a modest but important step back toward something better. It will still need a case in order to be usable, but at least once it is put in a case it will still be net slimmer and lighter than before, contributing greatly to its comfort in the hand and portability.
I think nobody is asking for a thinner phone either though.

Smaller? Absolutely. Thinner? Not at all.

But more battery life? Absolutely.

So why not design a phone that has a larger battery, but same everything else? Or a smaller phone that has a massive battery?

I used to charge my cellphone once a week, and was happy with that arrangement. I'm not sure why we as a collective have decided that once a day (or more as the battery ages) is acceptable.
 
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I think nobody is asking for a thinner phone either though.

Smaller? Absolutely. Thinner? Not at all.

But more battery life? Absolutely.

So why not design a phone that has a larger battery, but same everything else? Or a smaller phone that has a massive battery?

I used to charge my cellphone once a week, and was happy with that arrangement. I'm not sure why we as a collective have decided that once a day (or more as the battery ages) is acceptable.
Portability, usability, and comfort of the product in the hand should be the #1 design goal for a handheld mobile device. Thinness and weight are absolutely paramount to those goals. It is something everyone wants, whether they realize it or not. Having the personal responsibility to charge your phone at night while you're sleeping isn't difficult, and isn't a problem that needs to be designed around, or impact iPhone design in general. iPhone has had all day battery life for a while. It should maintain that while pursuing other important design goals.
 
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....

I used to charge my cellphone once a week, and was happy with that arrangement. I'm not sure why we as a collective have decided that once a day (or more as the battery ages) is acceptable.
So you had a phone that you used for as much various things as you do on today's phone and only had to charge it once a week? What phone was that?
Currently, I typically use about 30% to 40% of my battery capacity each day. I mostly only charge at night though I charge when on a longer drive since I use the GPS and stream music while I drive.
 
I think nobody is asking for a thinner phone either though.

Smaller? Absolutely. Thinner? Not at all.

But more battery life? Absolutely.
So if nobody is buying the phone because nobody is asking for it then it will end up like the mini and disappear from the lineup the following year… my guess is that it will be a rather hot seller…
 
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