This Year’s iPhone 15 Models May Be Getting Much Bigger Batteries

This latest rumor comes via a posting on Chinese social media site Weibo revealed by ITHome. The originator claims to be an insider at Foxconn who is at least indirectly involved in the production of the new iPhone 15 models. While the source stopped short of being certain, they say that they’re about 80 percent convinced of the accuracy of their information.

If the numbers provided are accurate, it would represent the largest year-over-year increase in battery life in recent history for every model except the iPhone Pro Max.

According to the report, every model in the iPhone 15 lineup will get a boost of between in battery capacity ranging from 12.24% on the iPhone 15 Pro Max to 18.24% on the base iPhone 15.

More specifically, the iPhone 15 is rumoured to get a 3,877mAh cell, which works out to an 18.24% increase over the 3,279mAh battery used in the iPhone 14, while the iPhone 15 Pro will move to a 3,650mAh cell that will be 13.57% larger than the iPhone 14 Pro’s 3,200mAh battery.

The report also alleges that the iPhone 15 Plus will increase by 13.57% to 4,912mAh, slightly exceeding the 4,852mAh cell in the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which will gain only 12.24% over its predecessor.

While that last one might sound a bit odd, it’s not the first time that Apple has put a smaller battery in an iPhone Pro. This has actually been the norm for the 6.1-inch iPhones — the iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro all had smaller batteries than their non-Pro counterparts. While the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro had the same 2,815mAh cells.

While last year’s iPhone 13 to iPhone 14 increases were relatively modest — the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro only increased by 1.61% and 3.39%, respectively, while the iPhone 14 Pro Max shrunk very slightly — the iPhone 13 lineup saw battery capacities increasing by nearly as much as this rumor purports, with the iPhone 13 Pro increasing by 14.64% and the iPhone 13 Pro Max growing to 18.04% and breaking the 4,000mAh-barrier for the first time.

However, it should be noted that this may have also been a course correction from the iPhone 11 to iPhone 12 era, when Apple actually shrunk battery capacities, with the iPhone 12 dropping by 9.49% over the iPhone 11, and the iPhone 12 Pro losing 7.58% compared to the iPhone 11 Pro.

While this sound like great news on the surface, it’s important to keep in mind that higher-capacity batteries are just one part of longevity. There’s also the power efficiency of the iPhone to keep in mind.

This is why Apple was able to get away with reducing the battery capacities in the iPhone 12 lineup without affecting run times. Despite the lower milliampere-hour (mAh) ratings, the power efficiency of the A14 Bionic chip and Qualcomm’s X60 modem clearly made up the difference, allowing the phones to deliver the same battery life, even with the introduction of 5G support.

While we can hope this holds true for the iPhone 15 lineup and the A17 Bionic that’s likely coming to at least the iPhone 15 Pro models, Apple may plan to use this extra capacity to power new features on the iPhone lineup or increase the performance of its A-series chips even further.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]