Apple has done something different with this year’s iPhone 17 series, and it’s not just a bold redesign or a Cosmic Orange colorway. The eSIM-only variants of the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max got larger batteries than the models with physical nano SIM trays. This is the first time that Apple is selling the same device with different battery capacities depending on the region.
Nano SIM vs eSIM iPhone 17 Pro Battery Size
iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max sold out Bahrain, Canada, Guam, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States and US Virgin Islands Get bigger batteries. During its September keynote, Apple showed how it actually used the space taken up by the Nano SIM tray to fit a larger battery on the eSIM variant.
apple iphone 17 pro
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According to Apple, the eSIM 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max should deliver 2 additional hours of video playback compared to their physical SIM counterparts. But what about web browsing, calls and gaming?
We recently got our hands on an eSIM iPhone 17 Pro and went straight for the battery test, following our usual method.
With a 6.35% larger capacity battery, we were expecting some modest benefits and sure enough, the eSIM iPhone 17 Pro delivered. Without further ado, here’s what our battery life test revealed.
The eSIM iPhone 17 Pro (A3256) is equipped with a 4,252mAh battery and has earned an active usage score of 16:12 hours. That’s 49 minutes longer than its nano-SIM counterpart (A3523), which packs a 3,998 mAh cell.
Breaking down the ranges, we achieved 24:01 hours in our call testing, which is a 3% improvement. iPhones have traditionally struggled in this part of our testing, so the added 47 minutes of talk time is a welcome improvement.
We saw the biggest gains during our web testing, where the eSIM iPhone 17 Pro lasted an impressive 13:41 hours – more than an hour longer than its nano SIM counterpart.
Interestingly, we didn’t see any improvement in the video streaming department, where the eSIM model scored 22:40 hours compared to 22:47 hours for the nano SIM version. We made sure to repeat the test several times, but we never got Apple’s claimed two additional hours of playback.
The larger battery capacity on the eSIM model was visible in the gaming test, where it achieved an endurance of 10:58 hours – 44 minutes more running time than the physical SIM model.
In short, the eSIM iPhone 17 Pro has improved its active usage score by 5.3% compared to the nano SIM variant. The gains were most prominent in the web and game portions of our battery life test, with call test scores slightly better and no improvement on the video streaming front.
Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see when Apple decides to abandon physical SIMs altogether and bring the same battery capacity to its iPhones across all regions. Implementing silicon-carbon technology would be a more logical step, but there aren’t much signs that this will happen in iPhone territory any time soon.
