Photo : iFixit Apple’s hyped up new iPhones hold a lot of allure. Clad in a silver, space gray, or a rich gold finish and featuring the new A12 Bionic chip inside, the recently debuted iPhone XS represents the best tech Apple can jam in a phone. So naturally, one of the first things people did after getting their hands on one was tear it apart and see what’s inside. And would you just look at that battery? Advertisement Rectangular or cylindrical batteries are pretty common, but the iPhone XS’ one-cell L-shaped battery is something else. Last year in the iPhone X, Apple simply connected two rectangular batteries together in order to cram its awkward shaped battery pack in the phone. But this time on the iPhone XS, according to iFixit, Apple used multiple layer sizes and folded electrode sheet to create a curvy power pack that neatly bends around other important iPhone internals like the logic board, Taptic engine and memory. Here’s an X-ray picture of said battery taken by iFixit and Creative Electron. Photo : iFixit Strangely, the iPhone XS’ battery capacity of 2,659 mAh is actually slightly less than the 2,716 mAh battery in the iPhone X, which sort of makes you question if all that extra effort was worth it. Meanwhile, on the larger iPhone XS Max, Apple stuck with a simpler two-cell design to deliver the largest battery in any iPhone ever, boasting a total capacity of 3,179 mAh. Photo : iFixit And while that might sound like a lot, I still can’t help but to wonder how long the XS Max would last if it had a 4,000 mAh battery like you get in a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 or a Huawei P20 Pro. Elsewhere, as you’d expect, the XS and XS Max share a lot of engineering and design traits with the iPhone X. However, there are a couple important improvements, most notably in the antenna and camera departments. Advertisement Last year’s iPhone X is on top, while the XS and XS Max are in gold below. Photo : iFixit While the asymmetry of the speaker and mic grilles on the bottom of XS and XS Max might look a little jarring, by deleting two holes on left, Apple made room for an extra antenna band, which according to test results from SpeedSmart, Tom’s Guide, and others, resulted in a serious improvement in LTE data speeds. Advertisement Photo : iFixit As for the camera, while the iPhone XS and XS Max’s rear wide-angle camera has the same 12-MP resolution as before, the actual physical size of the sensor has increased by 32 percent. This means each individual pixel on the sensor should also be larger, allowing the iPhone to gather more light and improve the quality of photos taken in poorly lit environments. Advertisement So what do all these new technological tricks mean for the new iPhones as a whole? I don’t want to spoil the verdict too early, so check back soon to Gizmodo for our full reviews on both the iPhone XS and the XS Max. [iFixit]<doc-sep>Apple ’s next-generation flagship iPhones are about to go on sale. The new iPhone XS (details) and massive iPhone XS Max (details) and will be greeted by crowds queuing outside every Apple store, and millions of online buyers. But Apple just confirmed one reason you might be better saving your money for the eye-catching iPhone XR... It all comes down to one of Apple’s most neglected features and buyer’s most important: battery life. Apple On its official specs page, Apple says the iPhone XS will last just “30 minutes longer” than the mediocre battery life of the iPhone X but look closely and you’ll notice that not only are most specs identical, but talk time on the iPhone XS has actually decreased an hour. How does this happen when Apple also claims the iPhone XS A12 chipset is 50% more efficient at low power than the iPhone X? Now we know. Thanks goes to TENAA, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, (via MyDrivers) which requires all phone makers to declare the battery capacities of their devices - something Apple chooses not to list on its site. And what Apple’s filing for the iPhone XS reveals is the company oddly decided to fit a smaller battery than it used in iPhone X. So while the iPhone X had a disappointing 2716 mAh capacity battery, the iPhone XS drops this to 2,658 mAh. The capacity drop becomes even more curious when a teardown of the iPhone XS by FixjeiPhone reveals the iPhone XS has a single continuous battery, whereas the iPhone X had to crowbar two batteries side-by-side. The single battery should be more efficient, but you can literally see Apple cuts corners and width on the top half of the iPhone XS battery. FixjeiPhone Consequently, the only conclusion I can make here is Apple deems the battery life of the original iPhone X to be “good enough”. But this isn’t an iPad where the company’s unwavering “10 hours of usage” since generation one, really is good enough. Instead, the stagnation in the iPhone XS feels like a deliberate attempt to upsell users to the much longer lasting iPhone XS Max, whose battery TENAA reveals is a significantly larger 3,174 mAh. Needless to say, Apple will claim space is too constrained for a bigger battery in the iPhone XS but Samsung managed to fit a 4,000 mAh battery in the Note 9 and that handset is lighter than the iPhone XS Max, has no notch, a virtually identical screen-to-body ratio (83.4% Vs 84.4%) and a headphone jack. And here’s the kicker: It’s not theoretical to say Apple could do better because, thanks again to TENAA, we know it already has - with its cheapest new model. Apple’s filing with TENAA for the iPhone XR reveals it has a 2,942 mAh battery. That’s 9% larger in a phone with a display that’s just 5% bigger. And predictably, the iPhone XR’s battery life beats the iPhone XS hands-down. Not bad for a device which costs $250 less. So, while there’s a lot to admire about the iPhone XS, I have my doubts about whether it is meant to be anything more than a driver to the iPhone XS Max. The irony of which is I expect most potential iPhone XS buyers will instead drop down to the aggressively priced iPhone XR… ___ Follow Gordon on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ More On Forbes Apple's New iPhones Have Expensive Hidden Costs iPhone XS Vs iPhone XS Max: What's The Difference? iPhone XS Vs iPhone X: What's The Difference? Apple iPhone XS Vs iPhone XR: What's The Difference? iPhone 8 Vs iPhone 7 Vs iPhone 6S Vs iPhone 6: What’s The Difference?<doc-sep>
If you’ve been wondering just how different the iPhone XS is from last year’s iPhone X , wonder no longer. Apple's fancy new smartphone and its bigger sibling, the iPhone XS Max , have been pried open by iFixit , and surprise, not much has changed – except for the new A12 chipset and a reshaped battery. Yes, the pair of batteries in last year’s iPhone X have been merged into a peculiar L-shaped single unit in the iPhone XS, which is fitting given Apple’s tradition of designing its own custom batteries to fill the most internal space possible. Curiously, the new model’s battery is 2,659 mAh capacity, compared to the iPhone X battery’s 2,716 mAh. Apple still claims that the iPhone XS still manages to get 30 minutes more battery life than the iPhone X. The iPhone XS Max, however, retains the dual-battery design and has more capacity to boot with a combined 3,179 mAh, which Apple claims gets an hour and a half more battery life than the iPhone X. The other glaring difference is the new A12 Bionic processor , which is Apple’s first 7nm chip. It's enough to outperform the recently-released Samsung Galaxy S9 (though the iPhone X A11 Bionic chip was faster, too – this one's just even faster than that). With eight cores in the A12’s neural processing unit (over its predecessor’s two), the iPhone XS is theoretically capable of 5 trillion operations per second compared to the iPhone X’s 600 billion operations per second, Apple claims. Another new component is the embedded SIM (eSIM), an ST Microelectronics ST33G1M2 32 bit MCU. It's the first eSIM in an iPhone, but interestingly the same as the one found in the Apple Watch 3, iFixit pointed out. No one has done an Apple Watch 4 teardown yet, but this same eSIM could be in there, too. Not much new hardware Everything else in the iPhone XS is mostly the same as the iPhone X, at least in its internals. The new model’s screen has the same dimensions and resolution (5.8-inch, 458 ppi) as last year’s model, though it’s unclear if there’s any hardware difference to achieve the oft-cited 60% greater dynamic range in HDR photos. That might be explained by the 32% larger wide-angle sensor in the rear camera suite, which has increased the housing just slightly enough to perhaps require buying an iPhone XS-specific case. Pixel size has increased, which should bring better low-light performance and help the ‘Smart HDR’ feature, according to iFixit. Otherwise, the cameras have largely remained the same, with dual-lens 12MP rear cameras at f/1.8 and f/2.4 apertures, and a 7MP TrueDepth front-facing camera with f/2.2 aperture. The other changes are less dramatic – for example, Apple switched from Intel and Qualcomm modems in the iPhone X to only Intel modems in the iPhone XS. And before you ask, the iFixit team didn’t find any greater adhesive or other waterproofing to easily explain what got the iPhone XS up to the IP68 water and dust resistance rating (up from the iPhone X’s IP67 rating). We're guessing Apple just did make testing to confidently say it would survive 2m (6.5ft) under water for 30 mins. Lead Photo Credit: iFixit