The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be in the lineup of iPhones this year, and thin as this iPhone is going to be, there are many concerns about its battery life.
However, a new report from DigiTimes (link) says that Japanese battery manufacturer TDK has announced that the company is accelerating its production timelines to ship out its new silicon batteries earlier than expected.
TDK CEO, Noboru Saito reportedly added that “some handset makers might be able to use the new battery in their product one generation early.” This information, coming after a Apple analyst Ming-chi Kuo’s recent claim that the iPhone 17 Air will come with a “high-density battery”, does seem to point towards Apple using this new silicon battery for its upcoming iPhone launch.
The silicon batteries manufactured by TDK use silicon anodes, which are more energy dense and can therefore hold more energy in the same form factor as a traditional battery, making them useful for devices like smartphones where every cubic-millimeter of internal volume counts.
The use of these silicon batteries in the iPhone 17 Air can undoubtedly help Apple in squeezing out a respectable battery life from the device; something that many have been shedding doubt upon. As per claims from The Information (link), the iPhone 17 Air will have worse battery life than other iPhone models. However, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said (link) that the iPhone 17 Air’s battery performance will be “on-par with current iPhones.”
It’s noteworthy that Apple is expected to use Advanced Silicon batteries for its reportedly entirely bezel-less 20th anniversary iPhone as well. Mr. Saito also mentioned that TDK is working on their “plan to introduce fourth-generation silicon batteries sometime in the next fiscal year to widen our lead even further.”
Toasty Take
I like thin phones as much as the next guy, but having to trade-off the battery life on a smartphone just to make it 5.5mm thin instead of 7 or 8mm thin is not something I’m interested in.
However, if TDK’s new silicon batteries can actually offer similar battery life in a thinner form-factor, then that’s just a win-win. Hopefully, we will get to see these batteries in the upcoming iPhone 17 Air, and hopefully, they will perform just as well as any other battery in a thicker iPhone.
What do you think? Would you take a slimmer iPhone even if it meant worse battery life? Or would you take a thicker phone as long as the battery lasts long enough? Let us know in the comments.
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