The latest iPhone 15 rumors may be hiding a key upgrade in plain sight
If there’s one constant among iPhone upgrades, it’s better battery life. In recent years, Apple has made battery life a priority, from the massive leap with the iPhone 13 to the long-lasting iPhone 14 Plus. But as the rumors circulate, there’s reason to believe that the iPhone 15 could further boost battery life. Here’s what the latest rumors say:
3nm A17 chip
After the somewhat disappointing A16 chip, Apple is expected to launch the first chip using the 3 nm process with the A17 in the iPhone 15 Pro. In general, chips with newer process technology are more efficient, and TSMC’s estimates for the 3nm chip say efficiency will increase by about 35 percent over its 5nm chips (like the A16). We don’t know exactly how that will impact battery life on the iPhone 15 Pro models, but we’re expecting great things.
The A17 processor will be Apple’s first chip to be manufactured using the 3nm process.
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Updated display chip and LiDAR scanner
Speaking of chips, the Economic Daily News (translation) reported this week that Apple will switch from the current 40nm chips to a new 28nm OLED display driver chip. Like the A17 chip, a smaller OLED driver chip will be more efficient and “further reduce the power consumption of the OLED driver chip and improve the performance of the iPhone 15 series models,” according to the report. Since the display is the main consumer of the battery, even a small improvement in efficiency could yield big gains.
On Friday, Ming Chi Kuo reported that Apple will use Sony as a supplier for its Time-of-Flight Vertical-Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (LiDAR) for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. As he explains, Sony’s ToF VCSEL integrates key components to reduce power consumption, which has a positive impact on battery life.
Fast storage
The iPhone 15 Pro is expected to feature 8GB of RAM for the first time, which will make multitasking much faster by storing more apps for longer. This does not necessarily have a positive effect on the battery life, but the type of working memory does. The latest rumors suggest that Apple will increase both specs and gigabytes – so the iPhone 15 would get LPDDR5 and the iPhone 15 Pro could make the jump to LPDDR5X storage, both of which are more efficient.
iOS 17
Finally, there’s iOS 17 itself, which could be the main reason for the iPhone 15’s improved battery life. Apple is said to be limiting new features this year to put a greater focus on performance and efficiency. And when iOS runs better, your phone lasts longer.
Bigger batteries
OK, that’s obvious. A bigger battery generally means better battery life, and since the Phone 14 range has indeed gotten smaller batteries, we’re hoping Apple will raise the specs for the iPhone 15 range – specifically the rumored iPhone 15 Ultra. With the Apple Watch Ultra, Apple brought a much larger battery compared to the Series 8 (542mAh vs. 308mAh) and twice the battery life (36 hours vs. 18 hours), and we’d like a nice bump with the iPhone 15 Ultra watch.