Early iPhone 13 teardowns out mammoth new battery capacities

News
By Oliver Haslam
published

iPhone SE with taptic engine removed
iPhone SE with taptic engine removed (Image credit: iFixit)

What you need to know

  • Early iPhone 13 teardowns show why the new handsets have such impressive battery life.
  • All four new iPhones have larger batteries than their 2020 counterparts.

Apple's big new iPhone 13 lineup is now on sale and with the handsets having been on sale for a good few hours, it was only a matter of time before someone started taking them apart. Sure enough, that's happened and it's given us our first glimpse at the batteries that live inside these things.

Apple has been promising battery life improvements across the board when compared to the outgoing iPhone 12 models, something that early reviews have backed up. Expectations had been that the impressive A15 Bionic would be the reason behind the power drain gains, but there's more — all four iPhone 15 models have bigger batteries than last year and some by quite a margin, too.

As MacRumors reports, a number of teardowns have already appeared online and the battery numbers make for impressive reading.

  • iPhone 13 mini: 2,406 mAh
  • iPhone 13: 3,227 mAh
  • iPhone 13 Pro: 3,095 mAh
  • iPhone 13 Pro Max: 4,352 mAh

To put that into some context, these are the battery capacities of Apple's iPhone 12 lineup:

  • iPhone 12 mini: 2,227 mAh
  • iPhone 12: 2,815 mAh
  • iPhone 12 Pro: 2,815 mAh
  • iPhone 12 Pro Max: 3,687 mAh

It's easy to see why Apple's iPhone 13 Pro Max is a battery champion. Its battery has grown significantly, while the aforementioned A15 Bionic is surely helping out by using less power. Combine the two and you get impressive battery life, no matter which iPhone you buy this year. With iPhone 13 mini now able to last for around 90 minutes longer than last year's model, it could be a viable option for many. There's little doubt that the best iPhone for road warriors is the iPhone 13 Pro Max, however. It has the largest battery of all and last year's model was more than capable, too.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.