The abbreviation mAH also known as milliampere hour can be a confusing battery tech terminology and Apple always avoids releasing this number whenever they launch a new iPhone. But why? Let’s first understand what milliampere hour actually means. Technically, a milliampere hour is 1000th of an ampere hour ( Ah ). Both measures are commonly used to describe the energy charge that a battery will hold and how long a device will run before the battery needs recharging.
Companies like Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei always ready to throw around figures like 5,000 mAH, 4,500 mAH or 4,0000 mAH which signifies that their flagship devices can last a user throughout the day. Well, not until you use the actual phone to discover that the software implementation, screen quality, display refresh rates, and the features that come with these phones will squeeze out a lot of battery juice.
The main reason why Apple doesn’t find it necessary to announce these battery capacity figures is because most people don’t know what it means. Let take an example of the latest iPhone SE (2020) which technically has about the same capacity of the iPhone 8.–but, a bit larger at about 1,878 mAh– random number that seems plausible given it’s dimension. What would you as a consumer do knowing that detail? Honestly, NOTHING! It doesn’t tell you anything.
However, if Apple tells you the SE 2020s battery can last about the same as iPhone 8, with;
Video playback:
- Up to 13 hours
Video playback (streamed):
- Up to 8 hours
Audio playback:
- Up to 40 hours”
You know what to expect from such a device. Several companies have also doped this strategy of trying to communicate a complex term like mAH into a simple way in which a common smartphone user can comprehend and figure out how long their battery can last.
