Everyone Complains About Thinner iPhones, but They’re Actually Getting Thicker

Thinner and thinner smartphones seem to be the trend lately, and one that many people complain about. But iPhones have actually gotten thicker over the last few years, mostly thanks to beefier hardware and added technology.

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I’m sure you’ve heard the complaints before:

“I want Apple to make a thicker iPhone with a bigger battery!”
“I would gladly accept a thicker iPhone if it meant better battery life!”
“I’m sick of manufacturers making phones thinner and sacrificing battery capacity.”

Those complaints certainly had some merit several years ago—from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 6, overall device thickness decreased by 44%, from 12.3mm all the way down to 6.9mm.

Phone thinness used to be a bragging point for manufacturers—and it still somewhat is—but in this day and age, a super-thin phone isn’t something to boast about unless it can also deliver good-enough battery life. And therein lies the true challenge when creating a thin smartphone: battery capacity and battery life.

Thin Phones Are Great, but So Is Awesome Battery Life

The thinner you make a smartphone, the less room you have for the battery and other components. Sure, you can try to make all of the circuitry smaller to fit in more battery, but the battery already takes up a majority of the space inside a phone, and the circuitry can only get so small.

Surprisingly, though, while iPhones were getting thinner and thinner between 2008 and 2014, battery capacity was steadily increasing, and it still is to this day.

The iPhone 3G had a 1,150 mAh battery, and through the years that increased to a 1,810 mAh battery in the iPhone 6, even though the phone itself was much thinner. This doesn’t necessarily mean that physical battery size increased by that much, but the more milliamp hours (mAh) in a battery, the better battery life, theoretically.