Apple may have made battery capacity numbers meaningless with the iPhone Air

For years, we have been using capacity as the most revealing metric of how long a phone would last us. Thanks to Apple, we may need to start using different measures and rethink what numbers mean in the context of smartphone batteries.

What are the hard numbers saying?

While the battery of the iPhone Air isn’t as small as rumored, it is still very small. Putting its capacity in context makes the iPhone Air look just like we expected it to.


As you can see, the iPhone Air is behind all recent Apple phones and even further away from any Android flagship, including the Galaxy S25 Edge. The closest comparison in recent history might be the iPhone 13 battery, which had a 3,227 mAh capacity. However, that’s only a small part of the story.

The iPhone Air battery may last surprisingly long

Despite the gloomy numbers, Apple claims the iPhone Air should last up to 27 hours of video playback. That number doesn’t mean anything on its own, but when put in context with other iPhone models, it starts to look quite impressive. 

Here’s how it compares to some other iPhone models. An important caveat is that those are Apple’s estimations, so comparing them with other brands would be irrelevant.


While it’s definitely shorter than the rest of the new models, the iPhone Air battery life is as good as the iPhone 16 Pro, which is impressive. Considering how small is the battery capacity, its longevity should be based on the A19 Pro’s improved efficiency when decoding videos.

And that’s where a major issue may be hidden. Outside of playing video, Apple doesn’t give much information about the battery life of the Air. Instead, the company mentioned iOS 26’s new Adaptive Power Mode during the iPhone Air segment of its keynote, suggesting that it is the model that may need it the most.

Even more damning is the brand-new MagSafe Battery Pack. It is designed specifically for the Air, and it won’t fit on any other iPhone. Keep in mind that those are just speculations based on Apple’s estimates and marketing choices.

Battery capacity is officially meaningless

If all that feels like a déjà vu, it’s because something similar happened with the Galaxy S25 Edge. Samsung’s ultra-slim flagship has a 3,900 mAh battery, which lasts longer than expected. In a similar vein, Samsung is rumored to go in a similar direction with the Galaxy S26 Ultra and once again use a 5,000 mAh battery for it. That would be the seventh consecutive Galaxy S Ultra with the same battery capacity.

Meanwhile, the leading Chinese manufacturers have continued to boast with giant numbers for their phone’s batteries. The OnePlus 13 already has a 6,000 mAh battery, and the OnePlus 15 is rumored to have 7,000 mAh. The vivo X300 Ultra may get a 6,000 mAh battery, the vanilla Xiaomi 16 is rumored to pack a 6,800 mAh one.

The real question is whether any of those devices will last significantly longer than the leading Galaxy, iPhone, or Pixel? So far, that has never happened, and most leading smartphones on the market have had similar battery life, regardless of the capacity, which doesn’t mean that Android phones will stop boasting with impressive numbers.

It is too early to make any conclusions about the battery life of the iPhone Air. Once we get our hands on it, we’ll run our battery tests and get real-life data about its performance. 

In any case, we are on the cusp of a new era of smartphone batteries. Numbers are no longer that important, and the balance between efficiency and performance will prove much more consequential than before. And who knows, we may even stop criticizing Apple and Samsung for falling behind the competition.