How Apple Watch tech could give iPhones better battery life in 2020
The Apple Watch Series 5 championed always-on displays in 2019, now the technology could revolutionise the iPhone 11 in 2020, according to fresh reports.
The Apple Watch’s always-on display moderates its drain on the battery, that’s thanks to Apple’s innovative Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide (LTPO) technology, which first featured on the Series 4 watch. According the Korean publication, The Elec, we could soon see this technology in iPhones.
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The publication reported that, according to ‘industry sources’, LG Display is upgrading its E6 lines, which are used solely to manufacture components for Apple products. This suggests a sizeable change to the display tech used in the next generation of iPhones.
The first thing iPhone fans are likely to ask is, “will this improve the battery life?” and, if so, “how much will this improve the battery life?”
For now, there’s no definitive answer to these questions but battery life is a long-lasting bugbear for iPhone owners and an improvement would be more than welcome.
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LTPO backpane technology can result in up to 15% less power usage than low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) which is currently used in iPhones. This could be a sizeable saving and battery life is an increasingly important battleground for phone manufacturers.
We were hugely impressed with the Apple Watch Series 5 when we got our hands on one, giving the product a four and a half star rating. The display was a big part of that, offering up the ‘always-on’ feature and making the 18-hour battery life achievable.
Reviewer, Max Parker, said: “The Apple Watch 5 (or Series 5) is the best smartwatch on the market – as long as you’re an iPhone user. While the upgrades this year seem fairly modest, the addition of a screen that displays the time whether you’re looking at the watch or not should make lots of people very happy.”
The idea that the user experience of owning an iPhone, or an Apple Watch, is improved by owning the other gadget, is likely to become even more true with the next generation of these devices. Apple are always building onto their Apple eco-system, which sees products and devices interlace and improve on each others features.
Carrying over some of the tech from the Apple Watch to the latest iPhone would be a continuation of this theme. We hope it improves on the battery performance of previous iPhones, but we’ll have to sit tight and wait to find out.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.