The iPhone XS Max has the largest battery capacity of any Apple smartphone ever. That’s according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which released regulatory findings that show the 6.5-inch $1,099 behemoth comes with a 3,174 mAh capacity. It’s a sizeable improvement over the previous record holder, last year’s iPhone X with a 2,716 mAh capacity.
The filings, spotted by MyDrivers and MacRumors, show Apple has made full advantage of the larger device size compared to the 5.8-inch iPhone X and XS. The filings also revealed that the XS will ship with a 2,658 mAh battery, while the XR has a 2,942 mAh battery. The sizes pale in comparison, however, to the 3,520 mAh cell in the Google Pixel 2 XL and the 4,000 mAh cell found in the Samsung Galaxy Note9. Apple tends to avoid advertising battery capacity, preferring to focus on total expected usage time, a figure that factors in efficiency improvements: the iPhone XS Max is billed as lasting “up to 1.5 hours longer than iPhone X.”
iPhone XS and XS Max battery life compared.
See more: iPhone XS: What’s in the Box?
While the XS Max is the same approximate size overall as last year’s iPhone 8 Plus, the latter phone only offers a 2,691 mAh battery. With the XS Max and other devices, Apple switched to a more expensive stacked logic board design, which takes up less internal space. The company arranges two cells in an “L” shape to fill the gap left behind by the reduced logic board size.
While the XS Max has a larger battery, the XR is expected to win the day in terms of actual battery life. Apple advertises the phone as offering 25 hours of talk time, 15 hours of internet time, 16 hours of wireless video playback time, and 65 hours of audio playback time. The 6.1-inch XR has the same face recognition and A12 Bionic chip as the other two phones, but Apple may have squeezed out more performance by offering a screen with 326 pixels per inch compared to the 458 pixels per inch on the other two phones.
In a USA Today survey in September, prior to the iPhone XS launch, 75 percent of respondents say they wanted better battery life from Apple’s next launch. When the new iPhones reach consumers on Friday, they may get their wish.
