New iPhone 15 rumour makes Apple's next flagship sound more appealing

(Image credit: 4RMD)

published 23 February 2023

My iPhone 14 is one of the best phones I've ever owned, and I've owned a lot. But it still suffers from the same problem that has plagued every one of my iPhones since the very first generation: there's often too much day left when my battery's done.

According to a new report, that could improve with the iPhone 15. According to Taiwan's Economic Daily News (via MacRumors), the iPhone 15 will get a new, more power-efficient OLED display chip. That should reduce the display's battery drain and deliver better battery life.

Will your iPhone 15 last longer?

It's too early to say. My iPhone 14 is the iPhone 14 Pro, which has a 3,200mAh battery; the very first iPhone had 1,400mAh but I'm not convinced my current iPhone lasts much longer. I definitely haven't noticed a significant difference compared to my previous Pro, which had a 3,095mAh battery.

Of course, that's because battery life is about balancing multiple things. My previous Pro didn't have an always-on display, for example, and my earlier iPhones had smaller, slower, dimmer displays. And my older iPhones did a lot less, especially in the background: today my iPhone isn't just a phone but a weather station and a smart home controller and a social media notifier and about a hundred other things.

There's always going to be an element of one step forward, one step back when it comes to energy efficiency: more efficiency means you can do more things, but doing more things means you demand more from the battery.

However, the display is only part of the equation: I'd expect to see energy efficiency improvements in the next A-series Apple Silicon, which will make its debut in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max / iPhone 15 Ultra. So maybe the iPhone 15 will have more stamina after all.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).