Is This the iPhone 18 Pro Max’s Massive New Battery?

Several reports over the past few months have suggested that Apple plans to give its largest iPhone Pro model another nice battery boost this year, and now a new leak appears to confirm this with a photo purported to be of the actual battery itself.

In early July, a screenshot from China’s 3C regulatory database made the rounds, courtesy of Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station, that claimed to show the battery capacities for the new models. That information suggested that the US models would get a 4,288 mAh battery for the iPhone 18 Pro and a 5,567 mAh battery for the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

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The Chinese models were listed with slightly smaller batteries — 4,056 mAh and 5,391 mAh, respectively — due to the need for a physical SIM slot. That’s a change Apple introduced in last year’s iPhone 17 lineup, using the extra space in eSIM-only models to pack in slightly larger batteries, and it looks like that trend will continue into the iPhone 18 Pro models.

Now, another photo has appeared on Korea’s Naver that shows what appears to be an iPhone battery from multiple angles, including a close-up of a regulatory label clearly listing “5391mAh” at the standard 3.907 V.

As the post notes, that number is identical to what appeared in the Chinese 3C certification database. It’s accompanied by a table that reflects this number, while repeating the higher 5,567 mAh value for the iPhone 18 Pro Max. While there are no physical photos to back that up, it seems reasonable to assume that if the SIM-equipped model matches the earlier report, the eSIM-only model is likely to follow suit.

This would represent a 10–12 percent increase for the iPhone 18 Pro Max, which would be a slightly greater bump than the 8 percent the current model got over its predecessor, the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Unfortunately, the specs leaked thus far suggest that the smaller iPhone 18 Pro may not be quite as fortunate. While the US iPhone 17 Pro saw a healthy leap of almost 19 percent over the iPhone 16 Pro, this year’s 6.3-inch model is poised to remain virtually unchanged.

Here’s the comparative rundown of capacities over the past two years and what the leaks are predicting for the eSIM-only models:

Although we don’t yet have any corroborating photos to back up that 4,288 mAh number for the smaller iPhone 18 Pro, it does match what another leaker, Fixed Focus Digital, shared in early June.

Due to the physical SIM card slot, the batteries in iPhone 17 Pro models sold in China and other countries are 265 mAh smaller than their US counterparts. If these numbers are accurate, this gap will narrow slightly with the iPhone 18 Pro models; the Chinese iPhone 18 Pro is projected to lose only 232 mAh compared to the eSIM-only version, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max difference may drop to 176 mAh.

While the initial wave of eSIM-only iPhone models were limited to the US, Apple expanded that design to other countries with last year’s iPhone 17 lineup, including Canada, Mexico, Japan, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Those countries still technically get a different pair of models (A3522/A3525), as mmWave support remains limited to the models sold in the United States and Puerto Rico.

The iPhone 18 Pro will likely continue to be eSIM-only in those countries, but there’s no word on whether any new ones will be added. Those countries all previously shared the same SIM-laden iPhone 16 and prior models, although Iraq and Jordan were also on that list, but moved to the “global” versions for the iPhone 17 Pro.

Despite these differences, battery life improvements are still anticipated across the board. Apple’s A20 Pro chips are likely to be more power efficient, and the rumored inclusion of Apple’s own C2 5G modem in the iPhone 18 Pro lineup should further reduce power consumption. However, if these leaked figures hold true, the iPhone 18 Pro Max will likely offer significantly better battery life than the standard Pro model.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]