David Pogue: Larger iPhone More About Battery Life Than Screen Size

David Pogue: Larger iPhone More About Battery Life Than Screen Size

The rumors certainly seem to be stacking up in favor of a sixth-generation iPhone with a larger display this year, but while analysts pontificate about Apple fending off big-screen Android handsets, the real reason may be something far more practical.

The New York Times technology columnist David Pogue has published an interesting look at why the rumored bigger display on the next iPhone could be much ado about nothing. Rather than playing “Keep Up with the Android Joneses” (as Pogue calls it), Apple may be slightly increasing the size of the device in order to balance out the extra battery life needed for its adoption of 4G LTE.

“Somewhere along the line, I remember somebody at Apple telling me why there wasn’t a 4G LTE iPhone -- a phone capable of getting onto the superfast cellular networks sprouting up in major cities,” Pogue writes. “And the reason was battery life.

“The 4G circuitry of the time (a couple of years ago) drew so much power, the battery would be depleted unacceptably quickly,” he continues. “For proof, all you have to do is look at 4G Android phones, whose batteries generally don’t last even a full day.”

Much in the same way that Apple made the new iPad ever so slightly thicker and ever so slightly heavier in an effort to keep the same battery life even after adding a 4G LTE radio, Pogue believes that Apple will use the exact same parlor trick for this year’s iPhone as well.

“So I’m guessing that the iPhone’s upsizing will be equally necessary to accommodate a bigger battery, so that Apple can solve the 4G/dead battery issue,” Pogue concludes. “I’ll bet you that when the new iPhone appears, Apple will point out that the battery life is no worse than the iPhone 4S’s, even though it’s got 4G LTE.”

Makes perfect sense to us, and a slightly larger display would be a nice bonus on top of the same battery life under 4G LTE.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

(Image courtesy of Macotakara.jp)

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