Teardown Analysis Finds iPhone Xs Has Battery ‘Upgrade’ Apple Didn’t Publicize

The iPhone Xs has an “upgrade” Apple didn’t mention in its publicity materials, in the form of an L-shaped single-cell battery, said Fixit in a teardown analysis. “The new design approach for non-rectangular batteries removes material from the electrode layers before they are stacked,” said the right-to-repair advocacy firm. Apple “has been filing patents in this direction” for the past seven years, it said. “The challenge with any lithium-polymer battery cell is that each corner needs to be sealed to prevent undue stress from thermal expansion,” it said. Since the battery on the Xs has six sides compared with the conventional four, “those extra corners can be tricky,” it said. “To reduce the stress on the corners, Apple notched the internal corner of the battery,” a “dramatic shift” that “opens up a lot of design possibilities,” it said. One possible tradeoff is that the large notch brings about a 2 percent capacity decrease in the battery of the Xs compared with that of the iPhone X, it said: “Only time will tell how this new cell performs with age.”