A lot of technology press in recent weeks has been focused on a certain Korean manufacturer, and a major problem with the batteries that were packed. While all of this was happening, on the other side of the planet another manufacturer was also causing an issue with batteries, albeit with a lot less drama than explosions in customer’s pockets. 

In recent years, battery life in smartphones has become a serious issue, and for anyone reading this that has ever had a Nokia button phone in their pocket, it is the only major back step that the mobile market has made in 10 years. Granted, phones are capable of doing so much more now that they could in 2006, but that’s little comfort to user with a phone battery that won’t last an entire day. Most if not all manufacturers are taking steps to remedy this issue, and are now making a serious effort to balance design, features and battery life in phones, meaning that as the quality and capabilites of phones are improving, battery life is holding steady, if not getting slightly better.

However, Apples newest iPhone, the iPhone 7, has a serious deficiency when it comes to battery capacity; one which is borderline inexcusable. For the sake of comparison, the biggest iPhone competitor in recent years has been Samsung’s ‘S’ range of phones, and the current top range offering from them, the Galaxy S7 Edge, ships with a 3,500 mAh battery. Up against this? A 1,960mAh battery in the iPhone 7. To compare those numbers properly, the easiest way to consider it, is that the iPhone 7 battery has 57% of the capacity of the S7 Edge, and this has huge effects on how you can use it.

Which? released their testing figures for battery power for various flagship phones today, and not surprisingly the iPhone 7 battery came in last place across the board, and not by a small margin either (although the iPhone 7s loss on internet usage wasn’t quite as stark). On a standard days usage, users have been reporting that the iPhone 7 battery will last from 12 to 14 hours on a full charge, and then takes a frustratingly slow 2 and a half hours to charge.

Apple have always valued style over substance to a certain point, but the consistent weakness of the batteries that are being used are perhaps a bridge to far. On the other hand, Apple are selling phones at a rate of 160 million units per year, so you could argue that they’re customers are OK with the battery life issues with the iPhone 7, but as the gulf between Apple and it’s rivals gets wider year after year, who knows how long Apple loyal customers will keep queuing up outside Apple stores for longer than their batteries last.