Thanks to the EU, which makes every phone sold there carry an energy label, today we can share iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max battery figures with you all. Apple does not hand these numbers out otherwise, of course, and the endurance results on the labels turn out to be far more interesting than the capacities.
The EU energy labels for the iPhone 18 Pro, left, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max, right. | Image by Apple
Both Pro models gained exactly nine hours over their predecessors, and that is where it gets strange, because they did not get there the same way at all. The Pro Max earned its nine hours with a cell that is 568 mAh larger, a real 11.8 percent jump that you can point at.
The smaller iPhone 18 Pro got the same nine hours out of 68 mAh, or roughly 1.7 percent, which is close enough to nothing. That improvement is almost entirely silicon and software rather than chemistry, and it likely comes down to the more efficient chip Apple has been promising all year.
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How it compares to the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Pixel 11 Pro XL
So the 18 Pro Max is seven hours clear of the S26 Ultra and nearly 12 hours clear of the Pixel. More telling, the smaller iPhone 18 Pro beats the Pixel 11 Pro XL by almost two hours on a battery that is around 950 mAh smaller.
Apple does lose one column here, of course. Its batteries are rated for 1,000 cycles before dropping below 80 percent of their original capacity, while Samsung's are rated for 1,200, so the iPhone is the one that will show its age first.
One catch with these numbers
The labels cover the EU units, which still ship with a physical SIM tray. Apple sells eSIM-only models elsewhere, and those get slightly larger batteries because the tray space is free, so the endurance figures above are the lowest you should expect.
What I take from all of this
If you were leaning away from the smaller iPhone 18 Pro because it looked like it got nothing this year, this is your reason to look at it again. It now sits within an hour of what last year's Pro Max managed, in a phone you can still hold in one hand, and that is the kind of quiet upgrade I would take over another 200 mAh any day.
Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
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