If you’ve been expecting
Apple to outclass Samsung in terms of battery size in the newly established ultra-thin flagship phone category this year, then… you’ve probably not paid much attention to the
iPhone 17 Air rumors floating around these last few months.
The first-of-a-kind iOS handset expected to go up against the
Galaxy S25 Edge starting next month has long been tipped (by more than one source) to
pack a sub-3,000mAh cell, and now there’s cold hard evidence supporting that theory.
Just how incredibly slim is the iPhone 17 Air supposed to be?
Obviously, no one knows the answer to that question (for sure) at the moment, but the
freshly leaked images purporting to show the phone’s battery paint quite a spectacular picture. Unfortunately, they also make it virtually impossible for the
iPhone 17 Air to break the aforementioned 3,000mAh cell capacity barrier, with the exact number instead being very likely to sit at “approximately” 2,900mAh.
That’s a crazy thin battery by any standards. | Image Credit — Majin Bu
All this information comes from an insider who’s been right about some things in the past and wrong about a few others, so it’s not technically etched in stone just yet. But there’s rarely (this much) smoke without fire around an unannounced product in the rumor mill, so you can probably say that the iPhone 17 Air is essentially guaranteed now to pack a considerably smaller battery than its direct rival.
Yes, this astoundingly thin 2,900mAh cell might make the
Galaxy S25 Edge look like a battery life champion considering that Samsung’s 6.7-inch Snapdragon 8 Elite powerhouse with a 5.8mm waist stands at no less than 3,900mAh in the battery size department.
Our
Galaxy S25 Edge review, remember, was not exactly glowing with battery endurance praise, so you can imagine that the
iPhone 17 Air is likely to deliver even lower numbers between charges if the 2,900mAh capacity rumor pans out.
Of course, Apple does have a knack of squeezing the best possible times out of smaller batteries than the competition, but in this particular case, the tech giant may need a miracle to play in the same league as Samsung. And that’s before the
Galaxy S26 Edge will allegedly take things to the next level in early 2026 with a 4,400 or 4,500mAh battery.
Just how bad is 2,900mAh by Apple’s standards?
Pretty bad, I’m afraid, with last year’s “vanilla”
iPhone 16, for instance, standing at close to 3,600mAh, and this year’s base
iPhone 17 likely to more or less keep that figure unchanged.
You have to go back to something like the 2020-released
iPhone 12 to find a sub-3,000mAh battery (2,815mAh, to be specific) in a non-diminutive Apple handset, with 2021’s
iPhone 13 mini, of course, packing an even smaller 2,438mAh cell.
Believe it or not, that’s (allegedly) the iPhone 17 Air battery next to the iPhone 17 Pro battery. | Image Credit — Majin Bu
The problem with the iPhone 17 Air is that its screen size is rumored to come much closer to the 7-inch mark than 6 or 6.5 inches, so it’s really hard to be optimistic that a 2,900mAh battery will be able to keep such a gargantuan (and undoubtedly high-resolution) Super Retina display going for reasonable times between charges.
Sub-par battery life could prove especially problematic if the razor-thin device ends up costing $900 or more, as a number of sources have claimed in recent months. The
iPhone 17 Air, remember, is likely to act as a follow-up of sorts to the rather unpopular
iPhone 16 Plus, which starts at $899 in the US with a “normal” 7.8mm profile, large 6.7-inch screen, and fittingly hefty 4,700mAh or so battery.
