iPhone 11 Pro Battery Life

How is the iPhone 11 Pro’s battery life?

• The iPhone 11 Pro has better battery life than both the iPhone XS and iPhone X
• It can get you through the day, though go for the Max version if you really care about multi-day use
• Apple’s updated 18w charger finally adds out-of-the-box fast charging to an iPhone

Throughout the 10 day review period the iPhone 11 Pro has impressed me with its battery life. Of the three new Apple 2019 phones (11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max) it’s still the one you’ll have to charge the most and it has the smallest cell, but it’s still a massive improvement over the previous two 5.8-inch iPhones.

Apple has claimed you should see a four hour increase in battery life when comparing to the iPhone XS. While it’s virtually impossible to recreate the situaton this was achieved, it does feel like a generally accurate way of describing the increase. If you struggled to get through the day with the XS you’re going to have more luck here.

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iPhone 11 Pro battery – Video

The iPhone 11 Pro has a 5.8-inch Super Retina XDR panel with a 2436 x 1125 (458ppi) resolution, HDR support and can reach 1200 nits of brightness if you’re pumping out Dolby Vision content.

All that power and brightness takes it out of the battery when you’re really taking to the limit. Watching an hour of HDR Netflix at roughly 50% brightness took the battery down usually 11% – though a couple of times it was closer to 15%. It was a similar story for a downloaded video from iTunes. Lower the brightness to a still comfortably 30% and you’ll get an hour of streaming for 6-7%. 

iPhone 11 Pro battery – Games

Apple Arcade is Apple’s new subscription gaming service and it’s the perfect place to test out the gaming endurance of the 11 Pro’s battery.

Take Sonic Racing as an example, The iPhone 11 Pro went through between 8-12% per 30 mins in the graphically intensive game, and 6-9% in simpler titles such as Assemble with Care. Alter the brightness and again this varies a lot.

iPhone 11 Pro battery: Charging

The iPhone 11 Pro ships with a new 18w USB-C charging block. Of course, the port on the phone itself remains Lightning – but the cable in the box now has USB-C rather than USB-A, meaning you can plug it straight into the MacBook Air or Pro without needing a dongle. A full charge from 0% varies wildly – normally as quick as 90-100 minutes – but you can get to around 40% in 30 minutes.