An Apple analyst is saying that next year's iPhones will reportedly use bigger, newly designed batteries

Getty/Justin Sullivan

Apple CEO Tim Cook.

• KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that Apple will make three new iPhones next year.
• Two of them will be successors to this year's iPhone X: A new, equally-sized 5.8-inch model, and an additional, Plus-sized, 6.5-inch variant.
• There will also be a third, "budget" iPhone, which will keep using LCD displays and come at 6.1-inches in size.
• The iPhone X's direct successors will use an optimised version of the L-shaped batteries inside the iPhone X, which optimise internal space.
• The cheaper, LCD iPhone will stick to a less costly, traditional rectangular shape battery instead.

Famed KGI Securities analyst and Apple watcher Ming-Chi Kuo recently sent a note to investors (which we first saw via AppleInsider) in which he says he believes next year's OLED iPhones will use newly optimised, "L-shaped" designed batteries.

Batteries are among the most difficult components to manufacture because of their chemical structure, which often means that most firms stick to a traditional rectangular shape.

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However, as devices get thinner and pack increasingly complex internals, companies are looking at ways to optimise inside space by tweaking the shape of batteries, too.

iFixit

The iPhone X's battery already uses the L-shaped design.

Apple has already experimented with the L-shape (it features inside the iPhone X); with this manufacturing process, two separate lithium cells are juxtaposed with one another to form a shape that resembles the letter "L," and take advantage of all available space.

Kuo also recently suggested that Apple will debut three new iPhones next year: A successor to the current iPhone X, still at 5.8-inches, and a bigger, Plus-sized, 6.5-inch version. They will both come with organic light-emitting diode displays, and use an optimised version of the L-shaped batteries' technology.

There will also be a third, "budget" option: It will sport an all-screen design, like the iPhone X, and will even have a TrueDepth camera-wielding notch; however, to cut costs, Apple will stick to a liquid-crystal (LCD) display, and also a traditional rectangular battery.

In his note, Kuo gave an estimate of what he expects the new batteries to be like after Apple optimises the manufacturing process with its partners Unitech, Compeq, and Unimicron.

The 5.8-inch version will reportedly move from this year's 2,716mAh cell inside the iPhone X to a bigger unit between 2,900 and 3,000mAh, while the wider sibling could sport a much larger cell, ranging between 3,300 and 3,400mAh.

Ming-Chi Kuo (KGI Securities) via AppleInsider

The new iPhone lineup on the right, with the increased-capacity batteries.

The LCD, 6.1-inch option will instead carry a battery that's believed to be between 2,850 and 2,950mAh; that would make it about the size of the second-gen 5.8-inch iPhone X, despite having a larger overall footprint.

On the other hand, the similarly sized 6.5-inch iPhone X might have a battery that's 350 to 450mAh larger than the LCD iPhone's, which might make overall battery life a significant point of advantage over the cheaper option.

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