Just a day ahead of Apple’s September iPhone event, we finally have confirmed battery capacity numbers for the entire iPhone 17 lineup, thanks to Chinese regulatory filings.
All iPhone 17 models will get bigger batteries this year, compared to their 16 predecessors. But the biggest gains will come in the form of the iPhone 17 Pro, whose capacity increases 18.7% compared to the iPhone 16 Pro …
Specifically, the iPhone 16 Pro sports a battery capacity of 3582 mAH. The iPhone 16 17 Pro battery capacity will be 4252 mAH, a jump of an extra 400 mAH.
What does that mean concretely in terms of additional hours of daily battery life? We’ll have to wait for Apple’s measurements to know for sure, but if you look historically, Apple quoted 2 extra hours of battery life on its streaming video playback test, when going from the 15 Pro to the 16 Pro. The jump in capacity between those models was only about 300 mAH. So, for the 17 Pro, you could be getting another 3 hours of quoted battery life. That would mean the 17 Pro would be rated for longer battery life than what Apple claims the 16 Pro Max can achieve.
The 17 Pro Max will see an iPhone break the 5000mAH barrier for the first time, topping out at 5088 mAH. That’s compared to 4685 mAH for the 16 Pro Max, up 8.6% year-over-year. Similarly to the 17 Pro, that represents approximately a 400 mAH jump, so you can expect another 3 or 4 hours of usable daily battery life.
This 5088 number is in the ballpark of high-end Android phones, but iPhones generally run much more efficiently as well, so it’s very possibly the 17 Pro Max will become the new smartphone battery life king.
Another interesting detail is that for the first time, eSIM-equipped iPhone 17 models will get a little more battery life than those with a physical SIM card slot. Apple is expected to launch eSIM-only iPhone 17s in the US, Europe and other markets. Apple will continue to sell iPhone models featuring physical SIM trays in some regions, including China, to comply with local laws.
Using the numbers from the eSIM models, the new battery capacities will be:
- 3692 mAH iPhone 17
- 4252 mAH iPhone 17 Pro
- 5088 mAH iPhone 17 Pro Max
- 3149 mAH iPhone 17 Air
Of course, battery longevity is a combination of capacity and power efficiency of the device. But we have no reason to expect that the power efficiency of the iPhone 17 components will get worse.
In fact, it will probably get better. The A19 and A19 Pro chip are believed to be fabricated on TSMC’s latest N3P 3-nanometer process, which is said to be even more efficient than the N3E process used to make the A18 chips in the iPhone 16 series. Meanwhile, other power hungry components like the display are not expected to change much year-over-year, with Apple retaining the same screen sizes for the Pro phones.
You shouldn’t expect a big battery boost for the base model iPhone 17, though. Its battery is getting a measly 4% larger, and this year, the 17 will be getting a new display that is going from 6.1 to 6.3-inches diagonally, and will likely feature ProMotion 120FPS for the first time. Apple will probably quote real-world battery usage stats that are the same as the iPhone 16.
Similarly, much has been speculated that the super-thin new form factor iPhone 17 Air will disappoint when it comes to battery life, and you can see from these figures that the capacity is 17% less than even the base model iPhone 17. The thinness clearly comes with the trade-offs. However, 3149 mAH capacity is still better than the sub-3000 mAH numbers that were flying around the rumor mill a few months ago.
Stay tuned to 9to5Mac as we bring you all the Apple announcements as they happen, when the September event kicks off tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific Time. Expect to see the iPhone 17 lineup officially unveiled, alongside new Apple Watches and AirPods Pro 3.
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