iPhone 12 battery size revealed, and it's smaller than the iPhone 11's

iPhone 12
The iPhone 12 (above) seemingly has a very small battery (Image credit: Future)

Apple has never been known for packing massive batteries into its phones, but with the iPhone 12 range it looks like the power packs could be even smaller than usual, with the standard iPhone 12 seemingly having a smaller battery than the iPhone 11.

That’s based on filings with Anatel (Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency), spotted by Tecnoblog, which state that the iPhone 12 has a 2,815mAh battery – that’s down from 3,110mAh in the iPhone 11.

The filings also state that the iPhone 12 mini has a 2,227mAh battery, which is a very small indeed for a smartphone.

Not a problem

While we’d take these claims with a pinch of salt, as they come via an official telecommunications agency they’re likely accurate; however, the small battery sizes aren’t necessarily a big problem.

In fact, Apple claims that the iPhone 12 will last for up to 11 hours of streamed video playback, which is one hour more than the iPhone 11, despite it seemingly having a smaller battery. The other listed battery stats are the same for both phones, so it probably won’t last much longer, but at the very least you should expect similar life from from the iPhone 12.

The iPhone 12 mini, meanwhile, will apparently last for up to 10 hours of streamed video – that's the same as the iPhone 11, although it won’t hold out for as long for local video playback (at 15 hours compared to the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12’s 17 hours) or audio playback (at 50 hours, while the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 can manage 65 hours).

Still, those stats don’t sound too bad, and they’re believable too, as while these batteries might be small, they’re paired with a more efficient A14 Bionic chipset than the A13 Bionic found in the iPhone 11 range.

In our review we found that the iPhone 11 had good but not great battery life, and based on the above it looks like we can expect the same to be true of the iPhone 12, with the mini model falling just slightly behind.

Via Tom's Guide

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.