We’ve got our first battery life shootout results for the new iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air lineup, courtesy of The Tech Chap. At least in this test comprising continuous streaming YouTube video playback on Wi-Fi and cellular, all the new iPhone models perform well, and are a lot closer together in terms of longevity than you might expect.

The benchmark comparison is the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which achieved 7 hours and 29 minutes. The iPhone 17 Pro Max now takes the crown, lasting 7 hours 58 minutes. But even the smaller iPhone 17 Pro beat the 16 Pro Max, showing the tangible year-over-year gains in the Pro models …

Obviously, there is much anxiety about the battery life of the iPhone Air, which has the smallest battery capacity cell of the lot due to its thin enclosure. Indeed, the Air does come last in this comparison, but not by as much as some might fear.

The iPhone Air died after 6 hours and 43 minutes. The base iPhone 17 followed suit shortly thereafter, at 6 hours and 55 minutes. The jump from the Air to the Pro was about an hour and half, or about 12% more.

Of course, battery life results will vary dramatically based on what you are doing, the signal strength in your area, display brightness, and many other factors. In daily testing, Chance Miller at 9to5Mac found the Air running out of juice by dinner time.

This particular test from The Tech Chap is centred around watching YouTube videos, which the Air’s A19 Pro chip can probably handle more efficiently than some other tasks.

I’m sure there will be an onslaught of battery showdown tests once these phones officially go on sale on Friday. We’ll need to see a few side-by-side comparisons to get a good overall picture of battery performance for the Air.

Source: 9to5mac