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The iPhone SE has a bigger battery than the iPhone 5s

posted by Chris P. / Mar 31, 2016, 8:32 AM

The iPhone SE has a bigger battery than the iPhone 5s

While rivalry within the Android ecosystem has led to a perpetual race for the latest and greatest in hardware, Apple has held a pretty leisurely pace in comparison. And so while the likes of Samsung, LG, and HTC are cramming as many as 1440 x 2560 pixels in tiny screens, Apple is unwilling to cross the 1080 x 1920 resolution line. And while Samsung's latest Galaxy S7 features a 3,000 mAh battery, its direct rival, the iPhone 6s, makes do with a little over half that capacity.

Hardware specifications aren't everything, of course—as we've consistently tried to impress over the years—and Apple seems to agree. Which is why the company is traditionally lax when it comes to listing what it considers minutiae details about the techno stuff inside its devices. Battery capacity is a good example of that, and the iPhone SE has been the latest mystery.

As it turns out, despite it essentially being an iPhone 6s trapped in an iPhone 5s body, it adopts the cell of neither. Instead, as a teardown courtesy of ETSupply reveals, Apple went middle of the road—a slightly larger unit than the iPhone 5s', but still smaller than the iPhone 6s'. This allows us to fill in the final piece—specs wise—of our battery table that we published on the day of the SE's announcement:

	Apple iPhone SE	Apple iPhone 6s	Apple iPhone 5s
Audio*	50	50	40
Video*	13	11	10
Wi-Fi browsing*	13	11	10
LTE browsing*	13	10	10
3G browsing*	12	10	8
3G talk*	14	14	10
Battery capacity	1624 mAh	1715 mAh	1560 mAh

As you can see, on paper, the iPhone SE appears certain to deliver better battery life than even the iPhone 6s. This is due to a combination of factors, such as a smaller screen real estate and more efficient components compared to the iPhone 5s.

source: ETSupply

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PhoneArena Rating:

8.8

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User Rating:

8.5

Based on 8 Reviews

Display 4.0" 640 x 1136 pixels

Camera 12 MP / 1.2 MP front

Processor Apple A9 APL0898, Dual-core, 1840 MHz

Storage 128 GB

Battery 1624 mAh(14h 3G talk time)

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PhoneArena Rating:

9.3

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User Rating:

8.6

Based on 47 Reviews

Display 4.0" 640 x 1136 pixels

Camera 8 MP / 1.2 MP front

Processor Apple A7, Dual-core, 1300 MHz

Storage 64 GB

Battery 1570 mAh(10h 3G talk time)

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51 Comments

1. tyrionTheWise unregistered

Innovation

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 8:35 AM 51

12. Konkit

Posts: 19; Member since: Mar 23, 2016

totally mindblown. now apple will sue any company that increase battery capacity for successor of all model

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:15 AM 9

14. zeeBomb

Posts: 2318; Member since: Aug 14, 2014

Jony Ive: we have further shown our innovation by increasing the battery, to provoke longevity to the handset.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:18 AM 9

15. TechieXP1969

Posts: 14967; Member since: Sep 25, 2013

Increasing the battery by 64mah is innovative?

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:25 AM 5

17. PapaSmurf

Posts: 10457; Member since: May 14, 2012

The joke flew right over your head.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:27 AM 26

37. AlikMalix unregistered

That's exactly the point I keep making: Apple adds a bigger battery because their new SoC allowed more space - never calls it innovative or revolutionary - it wa possible to increase a battery, so they did. But.... Some troll condensentively posts "innovation" or "revolutionary", but the rest of the herd actually believes it's apples claim and then refers to that trolls comment as if Apple keeps using that term for little things like that when they never do. When was the last time Apple actually called something like this innovative or revolutionary. iPhone SE is a derivative product and it was never meant to be anything more than that. The mindset of these people is to redicule Apple always - Apple put in bigger battery = bad Apple!!! Really?

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 3:16 PM 0

48. Guaire

Posts: 855; Member since: Oct 15, 2014

Today's top range li-po batteries 20-25% denser than late 2013's. So without making more space in it they could put a battery has 20-25% more capacity. Most likely they implemented 2 and half a year old battery tech at the SE. Battery life depends on power consumption of the system too. Hence the SE has much more efficient SoC, one can safely assume that that improvement clearly hardware related despite the author's claim. There is no Apple mystery.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 4:18 PM 0

54. ibend

Posts: 6747; Member since: Sep 30, 2014

btw they use Li-ion, thats why their phone keep smoking/burning/exploding all arounf the globe. but I guess you're right about density and stuff

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:24 PM 0

50. darkkjedii

Posts: 30836; Member since: Feb 05, 2011

Post of the day.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 6:34 PM 1

63. funtikar

Posts: 25; Member since: May 05, 2012

I used to be that kind of Droid user... constantly bashing, but I have to realize that there are actually advatage with iOS or Apple devices... Yeah Its annoying to see people bashing it for being underspecced, its NOT the high end flagship iphone, It like a tribute to the old iPhone 5S users

posted on Jun 26, 2016, 1:02 PM 0

52. FriendlyFoe09

Posts: 82; Member since: Jan 09, 2012

You guys keep laughing at the battery sizes but in my experience Apple products have had either better or same battery life than an Android with 3000mAh. So somewhere Apple is doing something right that Android makers need to look into.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 8:29 PM 1

62. Forerunner7

Posts: 35; Member since: Dec 11, 2013

For Apple and Apple fanboy, that's REVOLUTIONARY!!!!

posted on Apr 01, 2016, 3:13 AM 0

26. almostdone

Posts: 426; Member since: Sep 25, 2012

Revolutionary! How do iPhone's have the biggest bezels in the world and only manage to fit approx 1600-1700 mah battery? Imagine if they had a proper battery inside like 3000 mah then it will probably be about the size of a DVD/Blue-ray case. The $hit phone.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 10:47 AM 9

61. srgonu

Posts: 511; Member since: Feb 13, 2012

breathtaking too

posted on Apr 01, 2016, 1:15 AM 0

2. xondk

Posts: 1904; Member since: Mar 25, 2014

Well if it hadn't it kinda would make no sense, given how technology progresses and everything, still Apple could easily go 2k batteries or more to give their users even longer usage times.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 8:38 AM 1

4. KyleRiemen

Posts: 170; Member since: Oct 29, 2014

But still 1136x640 is crap. Should have been at least 720p

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 8:59 AM 14

10. janis

Posts: 397; Member since: Mar 10, 2014

ask any iphone user, its perfectly sharp retina display, better than useless 1440p :d

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:10 AM 15

18. TechieXP1969

Posts: 14967; Member since: Sep 25, 2013

What is it better at? Be specific. if you can't say what it is better at then why even post? Here is why 640p sucks. HD content requires 720p, which means all the videos will look like crap being down-scaled to 640p. It should at least match HD @ 720p. The 4.7" model should be 800p/1080p while the 5.5 could be 1440p especially if Apple was using AMOLED. IPS display is nice, but that doesn't mean it should have a better resolution. It still 640p which is below HD. I can buy lots of phones for $400 that have 1080p. For $300 they will have 720p or 800p. Overpriced underspec'd piece of junk. Which is why it isn't going to sell very many. Sure it will outsell many Android phones, the really cheap ones. I am an iPhone user, and I disagree with you.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:29 AM 4

28. Rydsmith unregistered

"I am an iPhone user..." Got my laugh of the day in.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 11:31 AM 7

51. darkkjedii

Posts: 30836; Member since: Feb 05, 2011

You're a pathetic whiny liar.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 6:36 PM 1

59. insanity99

Posts: 104; Member since: Feb 28, 2015

Do iphones need to install another app for the 720p to run on a 640p phone? I'm not an iphone user.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 10:42 PM 0

39. marorun

Posts: 5029; Member since: Mar 30, 2015

All question of screen size. At 4 inch 720p would be perfect. at under 5 inch 1080p is perfect. Over 5 inch up to 5.5 inch 1080p can be enuf but 1440p is better. But again thats if for you the best possible resolution is needed. Personally i am pretty fine with 5.5 inch 1080p display.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 3:35 PM 0

16. stanislav

Posts: 136; Member since: Sep 22, 2014

The ppi is exactly the same as iPhone 6s not only fandroid phones are slow but also their brains .

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:27 AM 3

40. marorun

Posts: 5029; Member since: Mar 30, 2015

and moronic fool are even worst. downscalling HD content to a not hd screen will make the end result not very nice looking. as for slow android phone you have it wrong even 250$ moto G 2015 is as fast or fluid as the iphone 6S. but its okay be a moronic fool :)

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 3:38 PM 1

55. ibend

Posts: 6747; Member since: Sep 30, 2014

it must be nice to watch 4k vids in that tiny screen :D

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:28 PM 1

5. jove39

Posts: 2140; Member since: Oct 18, 2011

Undoubtedly iOS is well tuned to handle background tasks to reduce battery usage when idle. Google has forced doze mode in android N, that'd save plenty of battery and bring android devices on par with iOS devices. Now remains to see, if Qualcomm & Samsung would go for wide dual core cpu in future for better soc efficiency.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:01 AM 1

13. sachouba

Posts: 264; Member since: Jun 08, 2014

Samsung and Qualcomm use octo-core (or quad-core) processors precisely to improve their power efficiency. If they used dual core processors, their efficiency would be awful (as awful as on an iPhone that's actively used...).

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:17 AM 1

25. Iodine

Posts: 1471; Member since: Jun 19, 2014

As awfull as the mighty efficient 810 ? That's laughable, Apple chips are leaps more efficient than anything on the market, and if the iPhone ( not the Plus one) has its battery life a compromised under load, it's because it has a small battery and that it can run such high performance without throttiling for long periods of time. What android OEM would put the snapdragon 820 in a tiny 4" phone with a 6,21 Wh battery ? None, it would melt appart, even with "liquid cooling" and throttle down to death even if allowed to reach dangerous temeratures. And Apple with A9 ? They happilly put it there and with great battery life as a result as you can see.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 10:35 AM 2

41. marorun

Posts: 5029; Member since: Mar 30, 2015

As clueless as ever Iodine. If apple would not make phone way too thin they could put bigger battery and make the phone battery life better when its matter ( when you freaking use it lol ) its very nice for ppl thats has an iphone just to look cool and dont use it but when you use it a lots its die very fast.. even the plus should be a tad thicker with bigger battery. I had some iphone 6S thats had heating problem. Playing high end game on mostly all iphone make it warmer as well. SD820 device have yet to come out ( i dont count S7 as its too bloated and suffer a bit in battery life thanks to this ) Apple chip is not automatically the most efficient its the OS thats very well optimised ( also a bit more limited ) the only part where i would agree is its throttle less but again those are subjective like last year S6 exynos throttled easily up to 50% after 15 min but this did not stop tech website to bash the SD810 for throttling the same level lol... End result is take a M9 put it side by side with an iphone 6S and lets say open 15 third party application. On first opening both phone will be same speed. second opening and all other the M9 will destroy the iphone as its has more ram and the way they optimized ram management its the best multitasking beast but did any tech website report it? So every phone have advantage and disadvantage but the biggest disadvantage iphone have is there is no competition no other ios device from other manufacturer. Apple soc would struggle to run latest android with OEM skin on top as its need much more multi tread support wich A serie Soc are not made for it. On other hand ios would fly on any android phone even lower end one. To really test the true performance of any SOC you need to run the same OS as the OS make a BIG difference.

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 3:52 PM 1

56. ibend

Posts: 6747; Member since: Sep 30, 2014

agree with that, A9 is nowhere near efficient, its iOS that so lightweight since it have way less feature compared to something like touchwiz.. A9 is just huge dual core, their core has almost 3 time bigger footprint compared to cortex A53.. (kinda like huge dual core that AMD use to battle with i3 last decade) just wait, and apple will release quadcore for sure, each core will be smaller than current A9's core

posted on Mar 31, 2016, 9:34 PM 0

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