A curved OLED display, augmented reality features and wireless charging all sound exciting for the iPhone 8, but they don't really address the elephant in the room. iPhones — and all smartphones — don't last long enough on a charge.
Now Apple is apparently doing something about it, as it is reportedly taking a key component of the iPhone in house.
According to Reuters, by way of a research note by Bankhaus Lampe, Apple is ditching Dialog Semiconductor as the supplier of its power management circuits as it looks to create its own battery-saving chip. As a result of this new analyst support, Dialog's stock is down more than 15 percent on the Frankfurt stock exchange, according to Bloomberg.
As 9to5 Mac notes, "power management chips manage voltage and charging across the components in the device," so Apple's move could help create iPhones with significantly longer endurance.
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On the Tom's Guide Battery Test, which involves continuous 4G web surfing, the iPhone 7 Plus lasted a very good 10 hours and 35 minutes, but it wasn't enough to crack our list of the smartphones with the longest battery life, all of which lasted more than 11 hours. The iPhone 7, which has a smaller battery, lasted 9:03.
However, Apple apparently won't be ready to make this transition until 2019, as it reportedly is still building a team that will create the new chips. That means you won't see this tech in the iPhone 8. We're talking iPhone X, if that's what Apple winds up calling it.
Apple announced a similar strategy recently for graphics, as it is leaving Imagination Technologies behind in order to create its own mobile GPU. The timing for this shift is going to be about two years as well.
So, within the next couple of years, it's very likely that you'll see iPhones where all of the key components, including CPU, GPU and battery circuits, are made by Apple. And given that Apple controls the software side of the equation, too, the company could create more distance between itself and its competitors.
We're still waiting for wireless charging at a distance, though.
