The 2018 iPhones may have bigger batteries, but that's not necessarily good news

The innards of the iPhone X.
The innards of the iPhone X.
Image: ifixit

One of the world's leading iPhone analysts, Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, predicts the 2018 iPhones will pack bigger batteries. 

But hold on — this doesn't necessarily mean next year's iPhones will have longer battery lives. 

Kuo regularly releases investor notes about whatever he thinks Apple is brewing in R&D, and he's grown famous by often being correct. His most recent note, spotted by 9to5Mac, predicts Apple's forthcoming handsets could have 10 percent more battery capacity than the current generation.

Battery life isn't an easy thing to measure, in part because people use phones in different ways. Using Skype, for example, will drain more energy than someone checking their email. But Mashable Senior Tech Correspondent Ray Wong says iPhones generally have between four and five hours of "on-screen" battery life (as opposed to the phone just sitting around in "standby" mode) before the phone needs to be recharged.

So if an iPhone with around five hours of battery life gets enhanced by 10 percent, this means an added 30 minutes of juice. 

However, Apple might not funnel this extra power to simply extend battery life. Instead, Apple may use this added capacity to power newer features Apple plans for its next phones. An added feature this year, for instance, was the TrueDepth Camera on the iPhone X, which uses a sophisticated combination of cameras for Face ID and its extremely detailed front-facing selfie camera

Kuo thinks the next phones will adopt the novel L-shaped battery placement seen inside the iPhone X; instead of just one long battery, the iPhone X has two battery cells laid in a capital "L" shape. 

Like the iPhone X, Kuo also thinks Apple will release two phones next year with OLED displays, rather than traditional LCD displays. OLED saves a significant amount of power because it doesn't use a backlight — a major battery drain. Instead, individual pixels in an OLED panel turn on and off.


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