I'm sure the modem contributes, but IMO the battery life is probably mostly from just having a bigger battery due to the new internal design (and maybe chemistry changes). The new design moves the frame's structure into the middle of the sandwich, making it more rigid and allowing them to make the frame thinner to pack in more battery.

Lots of people are mad about losing magsafe but in magsafe phones the magnets sit flush with the frame in a huge circular cutout just below the back glass. The hole weakens the frame so the frame has to be thicker because of it.

I don't think there is really a world where this phone gets 6 more hours of battery life while still having magsafe and fitting into the existing shape of the iPhone 14.

https://youtu.be/mFuyX1XgJFg?t=227

Its been a long slog for Apple, they have been working on this since 2018, and they had to keep extending its supply agreements with Qualcomm...

"Inside Apple’s Spectacular Failure to Build a Key Part for Its New iPhones"

>The 2018 marching orders from Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook to design and build a modem chip—a part that connects iPhones to wireless carriers—led to the hiring of thousands of engineers. The goal was to sever Apple’s grudging dependence on Qualcomm, a longtime chip supplier that dominates the modem market. The obstacles to finishing the chip were largely of Apple’s own making, according to former company engineers and executives familiar with the project. Apple had planned to have its modem chip ready to use in the new iPhone models. But tests late last year found the chip was too slow and prone to overheating. Its circuit board was so big it would take up half an iPhone, making it unusable.

https://kanebridgenews.com/inside-apples-spectacular-failure... [2023]

Partly due to being able to fit a bigger battery with the smaller modem size https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFuyX1XgJFg

It's possible the battery chemistry has also changed. In the last 12-18 months, a bunch of Android phones have gotten large battery capacity upgrades, apparently thanks to silicon-carbon anodes being mature enough for mass production. Presumably Apple is now doing the sam thing.

Modem has always been a pain point since it's an entire SoC that had to be shielded from the rest of the system. Apple producing their own modem is a giant undertaking.

So the video test is done with the video streaming over cellular data?

Otherwise what would a video playback time spec have to do with the efficiency of the cellular radio?

In the video, they did say that the C1 is the "most power-efficient modem ever in an iPhone." They also said that they have an "all new internal design for iPhone 16e that has been optimized for a larger battery."

Part of it is certainly the modem, but part of it is also likely to be the larger battery.

I'm really curious to see both how the Apple C1 performs and also how they changed up the internals for a larger battery and how much larger that battery is.

My Nokia 3310 lasted for over a week before recharge in 2000.

There's maybe other simplicity things that make it more battery efficient, like no dynamic island, only one camera, no magsafe, maybe stuff like that. But I am not an expert or anything

Not sure how much modem is contributing here. My guess is it is primarily due to the lack of ProMotion. 16e has a 60Hz display.

Fairly misleading, since according to the comparison on their site (https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-16,ip...) the slightly-bigger 6.3 inch iPhone 16 Pro gets 27 hours of video playback vs the 16e's 26 hours. (Regular iPhone 16 is 22 though.)

Wow. This is fantastic. This is the first time in nearly fifteen years they've had a feature I've actually wanted to purchase.

26 hours of battery life but you still have to charge it with a cable (they didn't add MagSafe). This might be a deal breaker for me…