iPhone X to pack 3GB of RAM, biggish (for Apple) 2,716 mAh battery

Apple’s iPhone battery capacities bounce around a lot between generations and models. Take the current iPhone 8 models and the upcoming iPhone X, for example. The iPhone 8 has a 1,821 mAH battery, the iPhone 8 Plus has a 2,675 mAh battery and the iPhone X has a 2,716 mAh battery, according to a filing by the Chinese certification agency TENNA. All models run the same Apple A11 Bionic SoC, but their battery life times are going to vary based on what we know so far.

According to Apple, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus models are expected to offer similar battery life to their iPhone 7 and 7 Plus predecessors. This is despite the fact that the iPhone 7 has a larger 1,960 mAh battery than the iPhone 8, while the iPhone 7 Plus also has a larger 2,900 mAh battery than the iPhone 8 Plus. This can be put down to the fact that Apple has been able to engineer exceptionally power efficient ARM-based designs, coupled with the fact that TSMC is fabricating the A11 Bionic on its latest 10 nm FinFet process. Power efficiency gains are said to be in the order of 10 to 20 percent, while performance has shot up by around 20-25 percent.

Interestingly, Apple claims that the iPhone X will have around 2 hours more battery life than the iPhone 7. Given that Apple says the battery life of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 7 are similar, we can also then presume that the iPhone X will have two hours more battery life than the iPhone 8 as well. The iPhone X, as we know, also features a large 5.8-inch AMOLED display made by Samsung. This is slightly larger than the 5.5-inch IPS LCD panel in the iPhone 8 Plus. While the iPhone X battery is slightly larger than the iPhone 8 Plus, it is expected to offer similar battery life to that model. Based on the information at hand, it suggests that the AMOLED display in the iPhone X is potentially more power efficient, but this will need to be more formally tested. AMOLED displays should, in theory, be more power efficient (as well as thinner) as they do not require a backlight.

The TENNA filing also reveals that the iPhone X gets the same 3 GB of RAM as the iPhone 8 Plus (the iPhone 8 only gets 2 GB). Although its Android competition typically have at least 4 GB of RAM, Apple’s ability to control both its SoC and iOS software continue to give it a unique advantage in optimizing its iPhones so that they provide an overall balance between battery life and performance. If you can live without the latest iPhone X design, however, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are definitely the value propositions in Apple’s current high-end line up. The iPhone 8 Plus will offer almost identical battery life and performance for hundreds of dollars less than the flagship iPhone X.

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