So much for Apple packing in the biggest battery ever in a foldable phone history. The latest leak about Apple’s first folding iPhone — supposedly dubbed the iPhone Ultra — claims the company might be playing it safer on battery capacity than most early rumors let on.
If you were banking on a foldable with an all-day battery life, this is worth pausing on.
The numbers, according to the leak
Battery life is the single biggest question mark hanging over any foldable phone, including the one Apple is expected to unveil this September. Previous reports hinted Apple was going to use the larger chassis of its upcoming device to pack in a super-size battery, but a new leak says otherwise.
The claim comes from Digital Chat Station, who has a pretty strong track record on Apple’s supply chain. The leaker says Apple’s battery supplier registered two cells for the foldable – one rated at 1,921mAh and the other at 2,962mAh.
Add them together, and you get a 4,883mAh battery split across the two halves, which is standard for a foldable. The leaker adds that the supply chain is expecting somewhere between 4,800mAh and 5,000mAh, so the numbers add up.
That’s a huge comedown from earlier reports, which hinted at figures between 5,400mAh and 5,800mAh. That older figure was reportedly tied to an engineering test unit, not Apple’s final design. Apple may have changed its plans since then, or that early number was never accurate to start with.
How it stacks up against the competition
Even with a 4,900mAh battery, Apple’s foldable won’t be the runt of the litter. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold7 still has a measly 4,400mAh battery, which means the foldable iPhone could out-muscle Samsung’s flagship fold. Still, it would lose out to the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, which has a 5,015mAh battery.
But that’s just on paper. Apple devices usually squeeze out more real-world battery life out of smaller cells than raw numbers suggest. The iPhone 17 Pro Max managed 28 hours of continuous web browsing from a 4,823mAh battery in third-party testing. in other words, a big mAh number looks impressive, but it’s not the whole story.
What we know so far
Apart from the battery, the leaks paint a consistent picture. The foldable iPhone is said to have a 7.8-inch inner display paired with a 5.5-inch cover screen, Touch ID instead of Face ID, A20 chip and C2 modem in select markets.
Reports have also floated the name “iPhone Ultra” for the product, and IDC expects it to be priced somewhere around the $2,500 mark.
Apple’s first foldable iphone is shaping up to be a flagship experiment, not just a proof of concept. We’ll soon know how Apple balanced thinness against battery life — the device is expected to debut alongside the iPhone 18 Pro lineup this September.
Anurag Chawake is a tech-focused writer specializing in smartphones, apps and consumer technology. His interest in computers began during the Windows 98 era, eventually leading him to explore everything from operating systems to mobile devices and PC hardware. Anurag previously contributed to The Indian Express, covering Apple, Android, gaming and the broader technology landscape.
