Apple's iPhone 17 series has really mixed things up this year, but it is not about the audacious redesign or the new Cosmic Orange colorway. The most significant difference lies in the eSIM-only versions of the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, which boast bigger batteries than their physical Nano SIM counterparts.
This is the first time that the iPhone maker has introduced different battery capacities for the same device depending on geographical areas, a radical change in the design strategy of iPhones.
Which Regions Get the eSIM Advantage?
The eSIM-only iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max models will go on sale in Bahrain, Canada, Guam, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the U.S., and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to MacRumors. On stage during Apple's September keynote, the company said that removing the Nano SIM tray freed up room inside for a larger battery.
While Apple claims the eSIM models provide up to 2 extra hours of video playback, what about other real-world uses like web browsing, calls, and gaming? To find out, we ran our own suite of battery life tests.
Battery Life Performance
The eSIM iPhone 17 Pro (A3256) packs a 4,252mAh battery, a 6.35% increase compared to the 3,998mAh Nano SIM model (A3523). Our Active Use Score for the eSIM model was 16 hours and 12 minutes, which is 49 minutes longer than the Nano SIM counterpart.
When it comes to call performance, the eSIM model reached 24 hours and 1 minute, a 3% gain, which is an additional 47 minutes of talking. In the past, iPhones performed worse in calls than other brands, so this is a noticeable increase.
For web browsers, the biggest gain came in web usage, where the eSIM iPhone 17 Pro lasted 13 hours and 41 minutes, over an hour longer than the Nano SIM version.
Meanwhile, the video streaming video playback proved somewhat of a surprise, as there was no gain to speak of - 22hrs and 40mins versus 22hrs and 47mins - and repeated tests couldn't better that, far short of the two extra hours that Apple had quoted.
For gaming, the bigger battery returned 10 hours and 58 minutes, up 44 minutes from the Nano SIM model.
Overall Battery Gains
All in all, the eSIM iPhone 17 Pro showed a 5.3% increase in its Active Use Score compared to the Nano SIM model. The biggest improvement came with web browsing and gaming, while smaller gains were observed in calling, with no boost evident when video streaming.
In other news, Apple will indefinitely delay iPhone Air 2 development.
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