One of the world's leading Apple product analysts, KGI Securities' Ming-Chi Kuo, predicts that the 2018 iPhones will pack larger batteries.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean that next year's iPhones will have longer battery life.
Kuo regularly releases investor notes about Apple's upcoming moves and has become famous for his predictions coming true more often than not. His most recent note, spotted by 9to5Mac, predicts that Apple's upcoming phones will have 10% more battery capacity than the current generation.
Battery life is not easy to measure, partly because people use their phones in different ways. Using Skype, for example, will use up more power than just checking your emails. In general, however, it seems that iPhones generally get four to five hours of battery life when in use (as opposed to just being on standby) before the phone needs to be recharged.
So if an iPhone with about five hours of battery life increases the capacity by 10 percent, that theoretically means 30 minutes of power is added.
However, Apple may not channel that extra power into extending battery life. Instead, the company could use that extra capacity to power newer Apple features for its upcoming phones. One added feature this year, for example, was the TrueDepth Camera on the iPhone X, which uses an advanced combination of cameras for Face ID and its highly detailed front-facing camera.
Kuo believes that the next phones will adopt the L-shaped battery layout found inside the iPhone X: instead of a single long, narrow battery, the iPhone X has two batteries arranged in an “L” shape.
Like the iPhone X, Kuo also believes Apple will release two phones next year with OLED displays rather than traditional LCDs. OLED technology saves significant power because it doesn’t use a backlight — which can drain a lot of battery life. Instead, individual pixels on an OLED panel are turned on and off.
It remains to be seen whether this prediction will ultimately come true.
