Never mind the iPhone X, battery life could soon take a great leap forward

Another suite of Apple iPhones, another media frenzy. Much has been written about the $999/£999 iPhone X, the demise of the home button, the “face ID” function, wireless charging and so on. Somewhere down the list of improvements was extra battery life, at least for the iPhone X, thanks to its new souped up A11 bionic processor.

Apple says the new device will charge for up to two hours more than the iPhone 7, suggesting 14 hours of internet use, for instance. Battery life on the iPhone 8, on the other hand, appears to be about comparable with its predecessor. Wireless charging, to which Apple is late to the party, makes no difference to the amount of power devices can store.

Improvements to batteries are usually a key part of smartphone launches, as you would expect for one of the major specifications on which consumers judge new devices. Samsung had much to say on this subject when it launched the Galaxy Note 8 last month – albeit less about extending battery life than ensuring no repeats of the flaws in Note 7s that made them prone to catch fire.

Yet several decades into the mobile computing revolution, even the best products are still relatively limited in how long they can function on a single charge. The original iPhone was good for eight hours of internet browsing, for example, so Apple’s devices have only advanced modestly in ten years.
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