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iPhone 7 leak suggests Apple will upgrade battery capacity

It still isn’t clear whether the extra battery would be used to prolong the phone’s life or to power more hungry components

Andrew Griffin
Thursday 14 July 2016 19:19 BST
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Apple employees take orders for the new iPhone 6S at the Apple Retail in Palo Alto, California September 25, 2015
Apple employees take orders for the new iPhone 6S at the Apple Retail in Palo Alto, California September 25, 2015

Apple is going to upgrade the battery in the new iPhone, responding to one of users’ biggest complaints, according to a new leak.

The company will use a slightly bigger battery in its iPhone 7, likely to be released in September, according to Twitter user OnLeaks.

The new phone will include a 1960mAh battery, according to the leak. That will be a slight upgrade from the 1715mAh one found in the iPhone 6s – which was actually a downgrade from the battery found in the previous year’s phone.

It isn’t possible to say how much of the extra battery capacity will be used to give longer battery life, or whether it will be used on more power-hungry components instead. But if nothing else changed the extra capacity would allow the phone to last about an hour longer.

That would help respond to users’ complaints about weaker battery life. Apple already did so by releasing the Smart Battery Case late last year, which brought the battery life of the smaller iPhone 6 and 6s up to that of their larger, Plus siblings.

The company has also gradually been improving the efficiency of its software to try and preserve more battery life. That has tended to be its primary way of addressing concerns, rather than adding extra battery.

The company could be adding the extra capacity into space freed up by the removal of the headphone jack and the mute switch – both rumoured to have been taken out of a phone that otherwise looks mostly the same as the iPhone 6s.

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