IPhone X Teardown Has More Battery Power Than IPhone 8 Plus
The iPhone X is finally here, which means it’s time to take the first iPhone X apart . As usual, iFixit goes to great lengths to open a new Apple smartphone to see what’s inside and how hard the repair will be.
The results are there, and it turns out that the iPhone X does have more battery power than the iPhone 8 Plus, despite the smaller footprint of the new phone. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the iPhone X will last longer. Here’s what you need to know about the iPhone X and its battery life if you’re buying a new smartphone.
What iFixit found on the iPhone X
Disassembling iFixit revealed several surprises, but the biggest one is that Apple actually put two batteries in the iPhone X. This is a first for the company, and it brought the device’s battery capacity to 2,716 milliamps per hour . That’s slightly more than the iPhone 8 Plus (2691mAh), but significantly less than Android phones like the Galaxy Note 8 (3300mAh) and Pixel 2 XL (3520mAh).
Apple was able to free up space for two batteries in the iPhone X by shrinking the motherboard to about 70 percent of the size of the iPhone 8. They did so by actually folding the component in half and soldering it together.
iFixit also notes that the display and battery on the iPhone X are easy to repair. As an added bonus, you can replace your screen without removing the Face ID module, which should make repairs much easier. Overall, the new phone received a 6 out of 10 repair points (as did the iPhone 8 Plus ).
Does increasing battery power mean longer battery life?
You might think that the extra battery charge on the iPhone X will allow it to last longer than the iPhone 8 Plus. But that’s not the case, at least according to a battery test conducted by Tom’s Guide .
The tech review site found that the iPhone X’s battery actually performs slightly worse than the iPhone 8 Plus, although it easily outperforms the smaller iPhone 8. It also lags slightly behind the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus and Galaxy Note 8 (not pictured in the table above). ) and was crushed by Google’s Pixel XL 2.
It’s unclear why the iPhone X performs worse than the iPhone 8 Plus, although it’s possible that the new phone’s larger 5.8-inch screen simply draws more power. It’s also possible that Apple’s new facial recognition technology could contribute to lower battery life, but we don’t know for sure.
So if you want a new iPhone with better battery life, you really do better with the iPhone 8 Plus. And if you just want the maximum battery life of any smartphone on the market, the Pixel 2 XL is the obvious choice.