As the iPhone 11 family settles into the festive season, Apple’s engineers will be hard at work on the follow up device. Due to launch in September 2020, the iPhone 12 is expected to advance Cupertino’s smartphone far more than the evolutionary jump the iPhone 11 made over the iPhone XS and XR.

And it looks like the battery is going to receive a lot of attention to ensure the iPhone 12 can call on a lot more power than any comparable iPhone.

Details on a new ‘battery protection model’ for the iPhone 12 have been noted by The Elec in South Korea. This would be a smaller model than the one suppled to the iPhone 11 range, which would free up internal volume. The expectation is that this would be used for a larger power cell. Joe Rossignol reports:

"The report claims the smaller module would be supplied by Korea's ITM Semiconductor. A battery protection circuit helps to prevent over-charging and over-discharging. The new module from ITM Semiconductor combines the protection circuit with a MOSFET and PCB, eliminating the need for a holder case.”

The iPhone 11 shipped with a 3110 mAh battery. In comparison the Galaxy S10 ships with a 3400 mAh battery and the OnePlus 7T ships with a 3800 mAh battery. The iPhone 11 is packing less power than the competition.

While iOS 13 is frugal on power, the 2020 iPhones are all going to have a significant drain on the battery, because all of the iPhone 12 handsets are going to come with 5G capabilities. That on its own is going to increase the demand on the battery.

Apple may be left with little choice but to up the battery size purely to maintain the current battery endurance of the iPhone so the captive customers do not feel a sense of loss when they upgrade. For all the talk of Cupertino’s excellence in engineering and the new features that the iPhone 12 will bring to Apple’s geekerati, it looks like Apple is doing little more than trying to catch up to the Android-powered opposition.

Now read why Apple may bundle a pair of AirPods with every new iPhone 12…