There’s just one day to go until Apple unveils its new iPhones for fall 2025, and the last-minute rumors keep rolling in. The latest report appears to confirm battery specs for the entire range, and they make interesting reading, to say the least.
Well-known leaker ShrimpApplePro today posted an image to social media showing “the real battery capacity of the 17 series,” allegedly based on Chinese regulatory filings. And for the three models with direct equivalents from the 16 series, battery capacities have increased, in some cases dramatically.
The base model has reportedly grown from 3,561 mAh on the iPhone 16 to 3692 mAh on the 17, an increase of 4 percent. (That’s nothing special. Capacity went up 6 percent from the iPhone 15 to 16.) The Pro Max, by contrast, has increased by up to 9 percent: from 4,685 mAh to 4823 mAh/5088 mAh, depending on which SIM variant you get. And the Pro gets the biggest bump of all, jumping by up to 19 percent.
That iPhone 17 Pro Max is particularly noteworthy because, if true, it would be the first time any iPhone has surpassed the 5,000 mAh mark. There have been rumors before now indicating this would happen, with design tweaks necessary to help manage all the heat generated by that power.
And what of the iPhone 17 Air? As expected, that’s the lowest spec on the list, but the interesting thing is that it’s nowhere near as bad as we were expecting. Pre-launch rumors pointed to somewhere near 2,800mAh, but ShrimpApplePro’s source instead puts it at 3,149 mAh. That will still require sacrifices compared to the larger models, of course, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the iPhone 15 had a capacity of 3,349 mAh and managed just fine.
Here’s the full list. The lower capacities refer to iPhone models with a physical SIM slot in China:
- iPhone 17 Pro (S2225): 3,988 mAh, 15.534 Wh
- iPhone 17 Pro (2226A): 4,252 mAh, 16.558 Wh
- iPhone 16 Pro 3,582 mAh
- iPhone 17 Air (S2228): 3,036 mAh, 11.823 Wh
- iPhone 17 Air (108CS): 3,149 mAh, 12.263 Wh
- iPhone 17 Air (2228A): 3,149 mAh, 12.263 Wh
- iPhone 17 Pro Max (NA293): 5,088 mAh, 19.772 Wh
- iPhone 17 Pro Max (NA295): 4,823 mAh, 18.748 Wh
- iPhone 17 Pro Max (PSMU8): 4,823 mAh, 18.748 Wh
- iPhone 17 Pro Max (PSMY9): 5,088 mAh, 19.772 Wh
- iPhone 16 Pro Max 4,685 mAh
- iPhone 17 (PSMT4): 3,692 mAh, 14.351 Wh
- iPhone 16: 3,561 mAh
ShrimpApplePro hasn’t got a perfect predictive record–no leaker does–but has made some solid calls in the past. Last September, for example, they correctly predicted that the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro would get a baseline 16GB of RAM, three Thunderbolt ports, and a Space Black color finish. Their prediction that the iPhone 15 Pro’s blue titanium finish would be replaced by gold on the iPhone 16 Pro was made a full six months ahead of the launch and was largely accurate… although it was supposed to be rose gold rather than the sandier Desert Titanium.
In other words, you shouldn’t assume the claim is accurate just because it comes from this source, but they’re reputable enough that you shouldn’t discount it either. We’ll know for sure either way once Tim Cook takes to the virtual stage tomorrow at 10 a.m. PT.
Author: David Price, Editor, Macworld
David has been writing about technology for well over two decades, and got on board the Apple hype train when covering the original iPhone launch in 2007. He is an enthusiastic Apple Watch evangelist and feels that the HomePod is misunderstood.