A new leak has revealed the iPhone 17 Air's apparent battery size, which makes the Galaxy S25 Edge's cell seem huge by comparison.
The leak in question was disclosed by known tipster yeux1122 on their Naver blog (via Android Authority). In the blog post, citing a parts supplier source, yeux1122 states that the iPhone 17 Air will be 5.5mm thick, but will only feature a 2,800 mAh battery. That makes it thinner than the 5.8mm Galaxy S25 Edge, but that phone features a 3,900 mAh battery.
This is a concerningly small battery, although yeux1122 suggests that Apple could use a high-density silicon-carbon battery to increase the overall capacity by 15-20%. This seems to match a recent Bloomberg report that mentioned a similar 15% capacity increase if Apple does use silicon-carbon battery tech,
This could mean the iPhone 17 Air has more milliamp-hours than we expected. But it could indiciate that the iPhone 17 Air will still only have a 2,800 mAh capacity, just in a smaller space than an equivalent lithium battery would fit.
When we measured the larger battery on the S25 Edge, we found that the battery only lasted around 12 hours and 38 minutes. So, in theory the iPhone 17 Air would last an even shorter time.
However, we've heard from Mark Gurman that the battery life of the iPhone 17 Air will be “on par with current iPhones.” The iPhone 16 managed to last 13 hours and 19 minutes in our tests, which would be impressive for the iPhone 17 Air (and better than its Samsung rival) if it can manage it. If accurate, this would mean that Apple will make up the shortfall via software and hardware efficiency alone.
While the battery life might be a point of confusion and worry, there are still some unambiguous reasons to be excited for Apple’s thinner phone. For instance, rumors indicate you’ll be getting a 6.6-inch OLED display, which is tipped to feature a 120Hz refresh rate. We also expect that the phone will come with the same A19 chip expected for the rest of the iPhone 17 range.
At this point, it’s really hard to measure battery performance on capacity alone, as there are so many factors that can affect the overall result, so we can only really know for sure when the phone launches and we can test it ourselves. We expect Apple to announce the new iPhones in September as normal, but in the meantime, keep your eyes on our iPhone 17 Air rumor hub for all the news as we hear it.
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