Ultimate Battery Test: iPhone 11 Pro Max vs. 6 Other Late Model iPhones

iPhone 11 Pro Max Battery Life Comparison Test Credit: Brandon Butch
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Apple’s iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max all have major upgrades in the battery department. But how do they stack up to previous models?

Previous real-world tests have demonstrated that the iPhone 11 Pro Max, in particular, has significantly boosted battery life. In a head-to-head comparison with the Samsung Note 10+, the iPhone 11 Pro Max dominated.

And today, we’re getting another real-world test of the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Except this time, popular YouTuber Brandon Butch compared the 6.5-inch handset to various other iPhone models. (See below.)

Like the PhoneBuff test, this clip mimics real-world smartphone usage including recording and viewing video, playing mobile games, browsing the web and other intensive tasks.

At the end of the testing, the iPhone 11 Pro Max lasted a total of 7 hours and 46 minutes of screen-on time.

The iPhone 11 Pro lasted 7 hours and 30 minutes. That’s about one full hour ahead of Apple’s next-best, non-2019 iPhone – the iPhone XR with 6 hours and 30 minutes. It’s also about an hour and 40 minutes better than the iPhone 11 Pro Max’s predecessor, the iPhone XS Max.

It’s worth noting that PhoneBuff’s previous test found that the iPhone 11 Pro Max lasted about 11 hours, 5 minutes of “screen-on” time. The discrepancy between that result and Butch’s is likely because the latter YouTuber subjected the iPhones to more battery-draining tasks for longer.

Apple estimates that the iPhone 11 Pro Max will last 5 full hours longer than the iPhone XS Max. But that is obviously not entirely “screen-on” time — it also incorporates standby time. Past reviews of the iPhone 11 Pro Max have found that Apple’s estimates were pretty spot-on.

Other Results

While the iPhone 11 Pro Max clearly won out over its other Apple counterparts, some of the other results of the test were less flattering for Apple’s newest handsets.

The iPhone 11, for example, only lasted 6 hours and 34 minutes. That’s about the same as the previous generation iPhone XR (and is actually slightly lower than that handset). There could be a few reasons for that, particularly in the camera and processor department.

While the two devices are pretty on-par when it comes to specifications, the dual-lens camera system is going to be a bigger battery drainer than the XR’s single-lens system.

The A13 Bionic is also much more powerful than the A12, but is actually less power efficient when running at peak performance.

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