Samsung’s "Dream" battery just convinced me that Apple is falling behind

There are a couple of reasons behind this. First, most silicon-carbon factories are not only in China but also owned by local brands, meaning further dependence on Chinese technology and potentially more expensive phones.

Another reason is the different safety regulations in those regions. Chinese phones for the local market use those huge 10,000+ mAh batteries because the aforementioned restrictions and safety regulations are much looser in China.

Bringing these batteries to the US and Europe is already proving difficult, and most of the time global models from brands such as Honor, Huawei, and Xiaomi sport much smaller batteries than their Chinese counterparts.

Apple could be the one falling behind

While Samsung has been working on solid-state batteries since 2017, and now it seems this work is about to bear fruit, Apple doesn't have an alternative. The company won't use silicon-carbon anytime soon, pushing the current tech to its limits and opting to go the optimization route.

It's a race against time, though, and also one against physics. You can optimize a system only so much, and the conventional lithium-ion batteries have a theoretical capacity ceiling (and we're very close to it).

Back in 2019, Apple filed a patent for "Interconnected Silicon Porous Structure for Anode Active Material." Basically, it's Apple's own take on the silicon-imbued battery. However, not a single news report in the past couple of years has pointed toward a production device or even a prototype using this type of technology. What are the alternatives?

Samsung-made batteries inside the future iPhone?

Samsung already supplies Apple with OLED panels for iPhones and iPads. If the company successfully launches a solid-state battery for wearables and mobile devices, it's not out of the question to sell it to Apple.

There are so many parts inside the iPhone that are intellectual property of other brands that one more shouldn't make a huge difference, right? The cameras inside the iPhones are mostly made by Sony, the displays are made by Samsung and BOE, and the 5G modems are largely Qualcomm-made as well.

What is this apocalyptic talk of Apple falling behind, then? Well, if Apple fails to catch up with the battery technology and turns to Samsung, this would pour a lot of money into the Korean company's bank account.

It would mean that when people buy an iPhone, a significant amount of money would go to Samsung — both from the display part and the battery. That's not good from a financial standpoint but also could be a hit on Apple's reputation.

Apple's been lagging behind in the past couple of years on almost all fronts, except pure chipset power, but somehow manages to keep sales high. Could the battery situation turn out to be the final nail in the coffin? Probably not, but it's certainly not good news for Apple.