Honey, I shrunk the battery: Something's gotta give as iPhone 12's logic board swells to accommodate 5G chippery The iPhone 12 series is Apple's debut foray into producing 5G-capable devices and the first major redesign since the launch of the iPhone X. But what lurks underneath? A new teardown from iFixit shows off the innards of the entry-level iPhone 12, as well as its Pro sibling. With these new mobes, Apple makes few advancements in …
Buying the latest shiny shiny, or any other smartphone, for the 5G is probably a little but premature, by at least 18 months.. And what with Huawei having been taken out of the market 5G is likely to come later rather than sooner...
Apple however, with the fortune that they now have amassed, could actually help by installing some antenae whilst simultaneously providing some of their lawyers to help fight the green anti-5G crowd...
Anandtech aren't sure yet. They note Apple aren't boasting about the new chip being more power efficient, but it's possible that it is (along with OLED display and other components) to offset slightly smaller battery - and retain battery life comparable to last model.
They'll likely have a test soon, now the phone is shipping.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16088/apple-announces-5nm-a14-soc-meagre-upgrades-or-less-power-hungry
Smaller battery equals shorter runtime?
Tomsguide says yes for the 12, no for the 12 Pro.
iPhone 12 has a 2815mAh battery, which is 90.5% of the 3110mAh battery in the iPhone 11.
Setting aside 5G power-hoggery, the 12 gave 10.38 hrs of 4G runtime on their battery test, which is 92% of the 11.27 hrs for the 11. So, pretty close to a direct correlation.
Oddly, despite a similar difference in battery size, the results were flipped for the Pro versions: 12 Pro gave 11.4 hrs of 4G runtime on their battery test -- 109.6% of the 10.4 hrs for the 11 Pro. They offered no explanation for the difference.
5G battery life absolutely sucks on both models.
Not sure you can put any meaningful figure on "runtime" because people use phones in so many different ways that affect consumption. Using a phone mainly to check emails and make & receive a few calls and SMS messages is completely different to using it to watch Netflix, YouTube and be on social media for half the day. If you use the cellular connection significantly, then how close you are to the cell tower makes a huge difference to the power consumption.
I put my phone on charge when I go to bed and unplug it when I get up. I do not want to have to charge it in between. Therefore I want a phone that has a runtime of 16 hours at least with the way I use my phone 99% of the time.
Few if any reviewers are recommending buying a phone just because it has 5G modems. However, if you're on the market for a new phone anyway, and expect to use it for several years (iPhones tend to get updates for around five years, Apple are touting a tougher screen and easier to use cases, so that's not an unrealistic expectation - with a new battery half way through) then having 5G can't do any harm.
After a couple of years, Apple will charge you £70 for a new battery. Not super cheap, but not unaffordable for someone with a pricey phone. Apple won't offer a similar service to add 5G to a phone that never had it.
It doesn't seem that customer-unfriendly to future proof a phone. If you don't want 5G, the iPhone 11 is still available. Most of the differences between the 11 and 12 besides 5G are an OLED screen, a supposedly more resilient screen or else cosmetic.
That was widely reported when the two kissed and made up, resulting in a "multiyear chip supply agreement". Apple is working on their own modem, but given that Intel was not going to be ready with theirs in time for the 2020 iPhone and Apple will need additional time to combine their pre-existing efforts with the Intel team they bought, that is probably a couple years out yet.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
