Autonomy of iPhone 13 Mini and 13 Pro Max: better and a beast

I wanted to spend more time with the iPhone 13 Mini and iPhone 13 Pro Max before deciding on their respective batteries. I’ve updated my full reviews of each to reflect my impressions after using them for a few weeks, but thought it might be helpful to present what I see separately.

The long and the short is that, in both cases, the batteries exceeded my expectations. Apple has really improved on the feature that matters most to most people – these phones last longer than their predecessors.

It’s easy to talk about the battery life of the iPhone 13 Pro Max. It’s ridiculous. It comes and goes, lasting so long that I had to actively work to kill the thing in less than a full day by simply shooting a bunch of 4K videos to gut it. I think the majority of people will be able to get into their second day of use before the battery warnings appear. And I’m talking about foolish use, doing whatever you want without worrying about use. It is, as the title suggests, a beast of drums.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The iPhone 13 Mini is a more complicated story. I think if you’re the type of person who isn’t completely glued to their screen for much of the day, you’ll find that by the end of that day the 13 Mini will still have juice. It’s a big improvement over last year’s iPhone 12 Mini, but it still doesn’t last as long as the bigger phones, including the iPhone 13 or even the year’s iPhone 12. last.

In my initial review of the iPhone 13 Mini, here’s what I had to say: “The iPhone 12 and 13 Mini are supposed to be minimalist in both size and amount of use. The difference this year is that instead of having to make major changes in my phone habits, I only had to make modest ones.

You may have seen this excellent battery drain test by Arun Maini (aka Mrwhosetheboss). Maini’s video is great because throughout the timelapse you can see exactly what activities the phones are doing as they burn out, and that’s a wide range of things. Its result is that the iPhone 13 Mini outlasts the iPhone 12. I don’t have the two to directly compare myself, but in my daily use of the Mini this year, my battery life didn’t. not been so good.

It’s all very fuzzy, but that’s the nature of real-world battery testing. We all use our phones differently, so predictions are necessarily vague. But the fact that we use our phones differently is the bottom line: the iPhone 13 Mini is a phone I believe should be used differently.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

As with the iPad Mini, the small screen here subtly influences your behavior in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Even though it runs the exact same software as the 13 Pro Max, the iPhone 13 Mini encourages more sporadic use for shorter periods of time simply because it’s smaller and less immersive. If you can adapt the use of your phone, that’s great – and definitely better than last year.

The same idea applies to the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Its gigantic screen also encourages another kind of use – especially more. But because it can just have such a huge battery inside (and maybe because it can vary the refresh rate of the screen), these behaviors don’t affect its lifespan as much. Physics is physics, and the 13 Pro Max’s battery is physically huge.