Apple's iPhone 11 Pro batteries up to 25% larger than 2018 models, government filings show

Filings with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center (TENAA) reveal a handful of specifications relating to Apple's iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max models, including significantly more capacious batteries on the top models.

A total of three TENAA regulatory filings for iPhone 11 (A2217), iPhone 11 Pro (A2200) and iPhone 11 Pro Max (A2223) were issued in late August and include photos of the phones, physical dimensions and a few tidbits regarding internal hardware. Sections of the listings are also reproduced in an overview of recent Apple filings posted to the TENAA database.

While many of the facts and figures were revealed by Apple in its iPhone unveiling last week, TENAA lists two unannounced, and as-yet-unconfirmed, specifications in handset battery capacity and processor memory.

Of note, iPhone 11 is supposedly powered by a 3,110 mAh battery, while iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max come packed with 3,046 mAh and 3,969 mAh cells, respectively. Those numbers compare to battery specs of last year's iPhone XR at 2,942 mAh, iPhone XS at 2,658 mAh and iPhone XS Max at 3,174 mAh.

While the iPhone 11 boasts a roughly 6% improvement in battery capacity, iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max see gains of 14.6% and 25%, respectively. The boosts to Apple's high-end handsets are likely the result of additional internal space gained from the removal of 3D Touch hardware, which was replaced in 11 Pro by software-based Haptic Touch technology.

Haptic Touch was introduced with iPhone XR and remains in the handset's successor, iPhone 11.

The TENAA records were spotted by MacRumors in a search of the filing system on Tuesday.

Also reiterated by the TENAA filings are RAM allotments of 4GB for each new iPhone model. System memory details of the A13-powered devices were first discovered in Geekbench benchmark listings on Monday.

20 Comments

tnet-primary 242 comments · 13 Years

About 5 years ago

Oh, neat. The folks onstage at the keynote neglected to mention that little tidbit when describing how they were able to extend battery life that long. They gave pretty much all the credit to more efficient processor and OLED display. :)

SoundJudgment 187 comments · 7 Years

I guess this report FINALLY puts to bed the idea that the 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max actually have 4Gigs of RAM... not 6Gigs as many were hoping for.

StrangeDays 12960 comments · 8 Years

ttollerton said:

Oh, neat. The folks onstage at the keynote neglected to mention that little tidbit when describing how they were able to extend battery life that long. They gave pretty much all the credit to more efficient processor and OLED display. :)

Can you quote them?

Gruber writes in his embargoed review that he believes they leveraged the space gained from the removal of the 3D Touch layer. He was at the event and did not think it came from processor efficiencies alone:

https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/the_iphone_11_and_iphones_11_pro

So to recap, here’s my theory. Last year’s iPhone XR didn’t have 3D Touch, so it had a bigger battery than it would have if it did, and that’s why it got noticeably better battery life than the XS models. The regular iPhone 11 gained one hour of additional battery life compared to the XR via various small efficiencies in the A13 chip and other components. The iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max have bigger batteries than their XS counterparts, using the space freed up by omitting 3D Touch. They benefit from the same small efficiencies that give the regular iPhone 11 one addition hour of battery life, plus a few more hours from bigger batteries. (The new 11 Pros are also about 0.4mm thicker than the XS models, and about 10-18 grams heavier. The thickness is negligible, but they’re about 7-8 percent heavier. Good chance that’s all battery.)

...Why this matters to you I cannot say, but he was able to sort it out.

philboogie 7669 comments · 15 Years

SoundJudgment said:

I guess this report FINALLY puts to bed the idea that the 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max actually have 4Gigs of RAM... not 6Gigs as many were hoping for.

Doesn't more RAM use more power and therefore less RAM is better?

matrix077 868 comments · 9 Years

ttollerton said:

Oh, neat. The folks onstage at the keynote neglected to mention that little tidbit when describing how they were able to extend battery life that long. They gave pretty much all the credit to more efficient processor and OLED display. :)

I don't think they did. No one was sure what the increase in battery life mainly came from. Some speculate its from getting rid of 3D Touch.