We Tested the Batteries on the New iPhone 14 Models
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Speaker 1: If you were a phone maker like Apple and could only upgrade one thing on a phone, what would it be? Cameras, processor, software. Ooh, durability. Look, I imagine the answer's gonna be different for all of us. For me, it's definitely the battery life. I've never met a single person who said, Wow, I get too much battery life on my phone. But I have definitely met many people who've wanted more. And that brings me to the iPhone [00:00:30] 14 series. I reviewed them all. The 14, the 14 pro, the 14 promax, and the 14 plus. There are links in the description, but one thing I was curious about was the battery life, especially since the iPhone 13 series got such a big improvement in battery life over the iPhone 12 series. So over the past few weeks I ran various drain and charging test as well as had real life experience using each phone even with the always on [00:01:00] display. And here are my findings.
Speaker 1: A phone's battery life lands at an interesting crossroads. You have the physical and chemical limits of modern lithium batteries, as well as the clever software and processing optimizations that aim to make those batteries more efficient. Now, Apple doesn't disclose the size of the batteries inside their phones, and I kind of wish they did because you'd realize that the batteries they use are [00:01:30] relatively small compared to Android phones. And thanks to I fix it for the fastidious teardowns of the iPhone for this knowledge. Now this isn't about me shaming Apple, but showing how much longevity they eek out of that battery through software optimizations and the efficiency of their Aeries processors. In fact, last year's iPhone 13, promax lasted longer on a single charge than any phone CNET has ever tested. That's more than Theuse. Rog phone five, [00:02:00] which is a gaming phone with a 6,000 milli hour battery.
Speaker 1: That's more than the motog play a very cheap phone with a 5,000 milli app hour battery. But the problem with battery testing is that it's hard to compare battery life between phones even from one iPhone to another. And those results don't always reflect how battery life will be for your particular phone in your daily life. So at CNET we run a few different tests to give us an idea [00:02:30] about the battery life and the charging speed as well as use the phones in real life. To give you an idea of what you can expect, obviously if you're a phone reviewer who lives in San Francisco and works at cnet, your results might be similar to the ones I got, but most people aren't, which is good because that would be a little creepy. The first test I ran with each phone was an endurance test for 45 minutes.
Speaker 1: I played video games. Some of them were online, others were not. As well as watching [00:03:00] videos scrolled through social media like TikTok and Instagram and made a video call During that time, the iPhone fourteens battery decreased 10%. The 14 plus dropped 5%. The 14 pro lost 8% and the 14 promax went down 7%. Four comparison. The last phones I reviewed before the new iPhones were the Galaxy Z fold four and the Z flip four. When I ran the same test on the Z flip four, it dropped 14% and the Z fold four with its giant 7.6 inch screen drain the [00:03:30] battery 18%. And keep in mind that phone has two screens though really only one of them is on during this test. Now the next test I ran is a charging test and for 30 minutes I plugged in each iPhone and used the included cable that came in the box as well as fast charging brick.
Speaker 1: And I should say that the iPhone 14 series supports 20 wat fast charging, but that's not really fast, especially compared to like one plus. What supports 65 wat fast charging. And since the iPhones don't come with a power brick in the box, I bought [00:04:00] a 20 wat plug bug from the company 12 South for this test. And here are the results in 30 minutes. The iPhone 14 gained 42%, the 14 PRO added 48%. The 14 Pro max gained 45% and the 14 plus added 43% for comparison to Galaxy Z fold four gains 53%. But I should note that that phone supports 25 wat wired charging. And that brings me to our video playback test. Now [00:04:30] I've been with CNET for six years and even before I joined to test a phone's battery, they played a video looped an airplane mode with a screen set at 50% brightness in 2022.
Speaker 1: The test is pretty irrelevant, especially with display brightness and refresh rates being all over the place. And that software and chips now optimize for video playback and for most people, well most people watch streaming video. Why run this test you say? Well, it allows us to [00:05:00] compare Apple's claims as well as the results we got with the iPhone 13 series running the same test. So here's what Apple claims. The iPhone 14 should make it 20 hours in video playback and for me it lasted 18 hours in 45 minutes. The 14 pro is rated at 23 hours video playback and lasted 20 hours. The 14 plus should last 26 hours and it lasted 25 hours. And the 14 promax is rated for 29 hours of video playback [00:05:30] and survived 26 hours and 15 minutes. These results also come up short compared to the iPhone 13 series with the regular 13 lasting 21 hours and 51 minutes, the 13 pro going 22 hours and four minutes and the 13 Promax scoring and outstanding 31 hours in 19 minutes.
Speaker 1: I should also note that the 13 mini lasted 18 hours in 19 minutes, which it's almost as long as the regular iPhone [00:06:00] 14. And when it comes to real life use, I found the results to be about the same. The 14 and 14 pro both consistently lasted through a day and I would typically need to charge it around nine o'clock at night, whereas the 13 and 13 Pro also made a day but would last till about 10, maybe even 11:00 PM And this was despite them having a longer screen on time compared to the 13 and 13 Pro. Very curious. Now, the 14 plus and 14 Pro Max easily lasted a [00:06:30] day and a half for me and both got through two full days of a single charge several times
Speaker 1: Last. There have been a lot of murmurs about the always on display on the 14 PRO and 14 promax and that these always on displays drain the battery. So I charge both phones to a hundred percent and left them on my desk with the always on display enabled. After six hours, the 14 pro dropped 4% and the 14 promax [00:07:00] lost 2%. I ran the same scenario again, but this time turned off the always on display and the 14 PRO dropped 4% and the 14 promax dropped 3%, essentially the same. Let me say this, Lynn, let me be very clear. Since the always on display is customizable, I can see where some people might get slightly more battery drained from it than others. And I think it really just depends on how you have [00:07:30] it set up and what photo is on that screen. But this doesn't dissuade me from using the always on display.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, what does all this mean? What does it mean, Patrick? Well, let me tell you, the iPhone 14 series gets good battery life, but in our test it's definitely a step behind the battery life on the iPhone 13 series. Is this something you should worry about for most people? No, I don't think it is. And let me say, if you're an early adopter and you are doing [00:08:00] a year over year upgrade, yeah, the battery life is like going from an a plus to an A minus. But if you're coming from an older iPhone, even like an iPhone 12 series, you're gonna get a phone with a better battery life along with a bunch of other improvements. And if you're rocking an old phone, let's say like an iPhone eight plus, this is gonna be night and day difference when it comes to battery life.
Speaker 1: And while pretty much everything else on the phone now, I do hope that Apple [00:08:30] does adopt faster charging speeds for the iPhone in the future. Uh, maybe it's not at the level that one Plus is doing, but I'll take what I can get and that's where my battery journey ends least for the moment. And now I want to hear from you. Do you have a new iPhone? 14. 14 plus 14 Pro 14 promax. How has the battery life been so far? Let us know the comments. Also, we do these Apple stuff videos every week. Also, let us know what you'd like to see [00:09:00] in future videos. And last, do all the YouTube things like subscribe, and thank you for watching.
