iPhone 16 Battery Life Improved for Pro and Pro Max Models
posted Monday, September 9, 2024 at 2:55 PM EDT
The iPhone 16 range has finally been unveiled today at Apple’s Glowtime event. The new range, consisting of a quartet of new differently-optimized smartphones, boast a suite of improvements, among them being improvements to the battery and battery life. So if you’re starting to feel like your current iPhone is draining faster than usual, then it may be worth pre ordering a new iPhone 16.
Here, we’ve highlighted the battery lives of the iPhone 16 range, alongside those of the old-guard iPhone 15. As you can see, the base iPhone 16 clears the iPhone 15 Pro with its new 3,561mAh battery. At the top end of the spectrum, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 4,676mAh battery.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max’s battery, however, is still competitive. At 4,441mAh, it is longer-lasting than the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Pro. This is to be expected, however: the former flagship smartphone is only a year old and has what was Apple’s best offerings on board. The overall increase in battery life from equivalent models (namely: iPhone 16 from iPhone 15, iPhone 16 Pro to iPhone 15 Pro, et cetera) is between 2% and 6%. Towards the higher end of the product range, the changes are smaller.
It’s not just the physical size of the battery, but the efficiency too. With iOS18, the iPhone 16 range uses AI to dynamically optimize performance for smartphones. As such, Apple hails the iPhone 16 Pro range as definitively the “best battery life ever”. This means that in spite of the iPhone 15 Pro Max having a larger batter, the iPhone 16 Pro will
In practice, this means that the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 33-hour battery life in video playback, thanks to its optimized battery and operating system. This is only marginally downgraded in the Plus and Pro variants to up to 27 hours of playback. A more substantial 11-hour cut in lifespan can be found in the iPhone 16, however, with up to 22 hours of video playback. These are all still mightily impressive for the new iPhone 16 range, especially since they can all charge up to 50% capacity in just 30 minutes.
Battery life is a contentious topic for the iPhone, as at the start of 2024 the company settled a years-long lawsuit in the US alleging that the company deliberately throttled older iPhone models to encourage investing in newer models (Source: BBC News). Apple denied the charges - settling rather than going to court over concern for continuing legal battles - but trust in the company was certainly rattled. A similar case continues over in the UK, so it will be interesting to see Apple’s response.
Either way, the battery life of the iPhone 16 range has been improved - though it will of course vary by mileage like with any battery.