Today is the day that all the new iPhone 17 lineup officially goes on sale, and that means people are starting to see just what these phones (and accessories) are made of. In some cases, the folks at iFixit have taken the opportunity to open up the iPhone Air's new MagSafe battery to see what's inside.
Apple claims that the new battery can offer an additional 65% charge to the iPhone Air; iFixit believes the charger may use the same battery pack as the phone itself. Why? Well, it starts with the battery's weird shape.
Rather than being a straight rectangle, as is the case with most external battery packs, the MagSafe battery is a strange, asymmetrical-looking thing with very precise cutouts and lines. While iFixit hasn't yet done an iPhone Air teardown to compare, Apple showed us what the Air's battery looks like at the iPhone 17 launch event — and it's a pretty close match.
On top of that, the internal battery is 2.72mm thick, which should be small enough to fit inside the 5.65mm iPhone Air. Capacity is listed as 12.26Wh, which works out to be 3,149 mAh, according to other sources.
So why do you only get a 65% charge from this battery if it seems to be the exact same one as the Air? Well, that's a physics issue. Transferring energy isn't 100% efficient, and you do lose some energy along the way. Wireless charging is even less efficient than wired, and the lost energy is turned into heat in the process. That's why wireless charging tends to get so hot at such relatively low speeds.
Plus, utilizing the exact same battery in both makes a lot of sense. The MagSafe battery is only supposed to be compatible with the iPhone Air, so when the Air gets discontinued, logically so will the MagSafe battery. From a production standpoint, it's a lot more efficient to just double up on iPhone Air batteries instead of setting up a whole new production line for an accessory with a limited lifespan.
Does the iPhone Air need the extra battery?
Before you spend $100 on the iPhone Air MagSafe Battery, you might be wondering whether it's actually necessary. While Apple does promise "all-day battery life" with the phone, Apple's own metrics do show that it doesn't last as long as the rest of the iPhone 17 lineup.
Our own custom battery life tests confirm this. Our test involves continuously refreshing a web browser page over a 4G/LTE connection, with the display set to 1 nit of brightness. In that test, the iPhone Air lasted 12 hours and 2 minutes.
Web surfing (Hours:Mins) |
|
iPhone Air |
12:02 |
iPhone 17 |
12:47 |
iPhone 17 Pro |
15:32 |
iPhone 17 Pro Max |
17:54 |
Galaxy S25 Edge |
11:48 |
Galaxy S25 Ultra |
14:27 |
The iPhone 17 only did slightly better and managed to hit 12 hours 47 minutes before dying. Meanwhile, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max performed much better, with 15 hours 32 minutes and 17 hours 54 minutes, respectively.
That isn't a huge amount of time, and while it may be enough to get you through most of the day, your battery may start to flag before you go to bed. Especially if you end up using the Air a lot more than normal.
Performing the test with the MagSafe battery pushed that time up to 17 hours and 15 minutes. That's not quite as much as the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but it's still a marked improvement over the phone by itself.
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