iPhone speakers, battery life, and the marketing of wireless

Ryan Jones noticed an interesting change with Apple’s reported battery life specs.

First, take a look at the image in this tweet.

Note the focus on wireless with the iPhone 7, a word not found in the same iPhone 6s and 6s Plus specs.

From Ryan’s tweet:

Stereo speakers crush battery.

1 hr playback > 10%. Possibly why Apple changed the battery life specs to “wireless”.

Interesting. Clearly, onboard speakers will always chew up more iPhone battery than wireless headphones.

Why? The iPhone speakers are consuming the onboard battery, while the wireless headphones draw from their own batteries, not counting against the battery life measurement for the iPhone itself. There is a nominal drain for Bluetooth communication, but that’s not nearly as big a drain as driving the speakers.