iPhone Duo has a bigger battery than Samsung and Google foldables, but will it last longer?

For years Samsung’s marketing campaigns mocked the battery life in iPhone smartphones, with a famous commercial referring to iPhone users as “wall huggers” out of a perceived need to constantly charge the handsets. Indeed Android fans have long lorded their two-day battery life over their iOS-using counterparts.

However, the shoe might now be on the other foot, with Apple new iPhone Duo offering a larger capacity battery than the most recent Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and other devices in the range. MacRumors discovered the battery side for the iPhone Duo is 4,883mAh via an EU energy label, which is handy as Apple never actually announces the battery capacity for its phones.

In its marketing Apple said the iPhone Duo should offer 31 hours of video playback using the inner display and 44 hours when the display is closed, but now we know the specific size of the cell.

Surprisingly that’s larger than the flagship Z Fold 8 Ultra (rated at 4,854mAh rounded up to 5,000mAh for marketing purposes), standard Z Fold 8 (4,660mAh) and, for good measure, the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold (4,658mAh). All four fall short of the whopping 6,600mAh battery packed inside the Honor Magic V6.

Now, a larger capacity doesn’t necessarily mean longer battery life, as we all know only too well. The true picture lies in how efficiently the rest of the hardware and software proposition uses that battery. Plus, Apple has a little more room for a larger battery. It’s 11.3mm thick when folded and 5.2mm thick when unfolded. That’s compared with 8.9mm/4.1mm on the Z Fold 8 Ultra.

In our review of the Galaxy Fold 8 Ultra our reviewer praised the improvement in battery life over the previous year’s model, which had a meagre 4,400 mAh battery.

“I found I had more than enough juice to last a typical day now, and didn’t need to charge at any point between breakfast and bedtime when pushing it to the limit either. It still needed refuelling overnight, but I was glad not to have to bring a power bank along when travelling for work,” our reviewer wrote.