Remember when Apple iPhone users were called wall huggers by Samsung because they were always positioning themselves near outlets in order to plug in their handsets? Meanwhile, several Android phones have large capacity batteries in the range of 4000-5000mAh and even higher. It wasn’t until the iPhone 11 Pro series arrived that Apple made a decent push in this area.
For the iPhone 12 series, Apple was counting on the new 5nm process node used to produce the A14 Bionic chipset to generate some longer battery life and this has panned out a little. For example, even adding the energy needed to power 5G connectivity, and taking into account the smaller battery on the iPhone 12 Pro Max compared with the 11 Pro Max (3687mAh vs. 3969mAh respectively), the newer model browsed 14 hours and six minutes in our battery test while the 2019 model browsed for 12 hours and 54 minutes before the battery pooped out.
On the other hand, while streaming YouTube videos, the 2019 iPhone 11 Pro Max topped the iPhone 12 Pro Max in viewing time by 21 minutes (8 hours and 58 minutes vs. 8 hours and 37 minutes, respectively). So the drop in power consumption seen with the 5nm A14 Bionic SoC seems to have made a difference.
But if battery life is a major issue for you and for some reason you don’t like using a power bank, the iPhone 13 series could feature a huge jump in battery size making you very happy. According to ZDNet, the next Pro Max model could sport a 4352mAh battery which would be an 18% hike from last year’s iPhone 12 Pro Max. The iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro could see their battery capacities jump 10% from 2815mAh to 3095mAh, and the iPhone 13 mini is rumored to sport a 2406mAh battery (up 8% from the 2227mAh battery used on the iPhone 12 mini).
Besides the larger batteries (which would make the 2021 models a little thicker), this year’s phones will be powered by the A15 Bionic chipset that will reportedly bring savings of 15% to 20% in power consumption. Add this together with the rumored new battery sizes, and iPhone 13 series users just might be happy with the battery life on their new iOS phones. But before we wrap things up here, we should point out that the Pro models are supposedly going to feature a 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate which will update the screen 120 times per second, and that eats away at battery life.
However, thanks to the LTPO backplane that Apple is rumored to add to the displays on the iPhone 13 Pro models, the refresh rate on these handsets will be variable so that static content on the screen, like a text or email, won’t refresh at 120Hz thus saving battery life.
As hard as it is to believe, the iPhone 13 series will be unveiled next month if tradition holds.
