In just a few short weeks, Apple’s annual fall cavalcade of new products will kick off with the iPhone 14 event. And you’ll notice a trend among this year’s big announcements: they’re going to be, well, big.
Along with the usual spec upgrades and refreshes to existing models, two new large-screen devices will be announced: a 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Max and a 50mm Apple Watch Pro. They are respectively the largest iPhone and Apple Watch that the company has made. There are also rumors of a 14-inch iPad Pro and a 15-inch MacBook Air, although they probably won’t come this year.
For the most part, Apple has tried to buck the trend toward the big ones; it took until 2018 for the company to offer a 6.5-inch iPhone in the XS Max. But this year, all four models will be larger than six inches for the first time. And the Apple Watch Series 3’s tiny 38mm display, which will likely disappear once and for all, is a whopping 12mm smaller than the rumored Apple Watch Pro.
So whether we like it or not, Apple is going to grow in 2022. The pace of innovation is outpacing the ability to run down batteries and design smaller devices, and even Apple has to give in and accept the truth: if you want devices last longer, they’re going to have to be bigger.
Greater than (battery) life
Almost every rumor has it that the iPhone 14 Max will replace the iPhone mini, which was apparently a huge flop. Just two years ago Apple introduced the iPhone 12 mini to much anticipation and demand – the phones kept getting bigger, people had been asking for a small premium phone for years – and Apple was offering a 5.4-inch iPhone with the same screen. , camera and processor than its older brother.
But the iPhone mini had one small problem: demand was non-existent, perhaps in part due to widespread worries about battery life. Even after a boost with the iPhone 13 mini, battery life is still far behind larger models. The 13 mini lasts about half as long as the 13 Pro Max, according to Apple’s own estimates (25 hours versus 13 hours).
The same goes for the Apple Watch. Since the launch of the original model in 2015, the battery lasts 18 hours. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not good enough for all-day use once you factor in sleep and exercise tracking. And that pales in comparison to the multi-day battery life offered by watches from Samsung and Fitbit.
The iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Pro will fix both of these flaws. We don’t have the exact specs yet, but reports say the iPhone 14 Max will have a 4,325mAh battery, much larger than the 2,406mAh battery in the iPhone 13 mini. This could mean that the iPhone 14 Max lasts twice as long as the iPhone 13 mini and significantly longer than the iPhone 14.
The Apple Watch Pro might as well be Apple’s biggest leap forward in wearable battery life. The larger size will allow Apple to increase the capacity of the 308mAh battery to something that will likely last at least 24 hours and maybe even closer to 36.
And while we don’t know much about the other rumored Apple products, it’s no exaggeration to say that battery life will also be a primary factor here. The iPad, for example, has had the same 10-hour battery life for the past 12 years, but with the increased battery life offered by the Mac’s M1 processor, it’s not unreasonable to think Apple might push it to around 3 p.m. 20 hours on a 14 inch model. And a 15-inch MacBook Air could easily extend the 13-inch Air’s 18-hour battery life to over 20.
But to get those battery gains, you’ll have to adopt Apple’s bigger devices.
Original article published in English on our sister site igamesnews US.
