iPhone 11 Battery Life

What is the iPhone 11’s battery life like?

• Following on from the excellent iPhone XR, the iPhone 11 retains strong battery life
• I’ve been comfortably getting a day of battery life, even with ‘heavy’ use
• The lack of an included fast charger is a pain and we’d recommend buying one separately

Over the review period the iPhone 11 has performed admirably when it comes to battery life, comfortably making it through the day and just about improving on the already excellent iPhone XR.

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While the XR might have been the longest-lasting iPhone we had ever reviewed, that award now goes to the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Saying that you’re still getting excellent endurance with the iPhone 11 and you’ll certainly notice the difference if you’re upgrading an older iPhone like the iPhone 7, iPhone 8 or iPhone SE. I would even say you’ll see suitably strong improvements if you’re coming from a Plus-sized iPhone – like the iPhone 8 Plus.

What remains disappointing is Apple’s reluctance to include a fast charge capable charger with all of its phones. In the iPhone 11’s box you’ll find a limp 5w plug which can take up to 3 hours to fully charge the phone – when competing Android phones with much larger cells inside can go from 0-100% in an hour this simply isn’t good enough. Apple has started shipping its iPhone 11 Pro models with an 18w charger and this works with iPhone 11 too. Picking up one of these chargers (£29 for the plug, £19 for USB-C to Lightning cable, though cheaper Anker ones are available for £14) will make the charging process much quicker.

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iPhone 11 battery – Video

The iPhone 11 has a 6.1-inch Liquid Retina LCD panel with a resolution that’s slightly above 720p. This is far from the highest resolution on an iPhone and it lacks the deep blacks you’d get with an OLED panel. 

What that lower resolution does help with is battery life and you’ll notice this when streaming video.

Watching an hour of Netflix at roughly 50% brightness took the battery down between 6 and 7 %. It was a similar story for a downloaded video from iTunes.

iPhone 11 battery – Games

With Apple Arcade coming alongside iOS 13 the iPhone 11 is the perfect place to play some of the impressive new titles in the Apple subscription service.

Take Oceanhorn 2 for example, The iPhone 11 went through between 6 and 9% per 30 mins in the graphically intensive game, and 5-7% in simpler titles such as Assemble with Care.

iPhone 11 battery – Charging

As I mentioned early in this section, Apple ships a paltry 5w plug with the £729 iPhone 11. Charging the phone up with that can take up to 3 hours and it doesn’t do a very good job at giving you a quick boost if you’re in a hurry and forgot to charge your phone the previous night.