Your next Android phone could get a big battery upgrade thanks to the iPhone 18 Pro

Hate the company or love it, there’s no denying that where Apple walks, others often follow. There is no shortage of examples. The company didn’t invent smartphones, but the iPhone fundamentally changed the course of the entire mobile industry seemingly overnight. Tablets? The iPad wasn’t the first tablet on the market either. Yet, in true Apple fashion, he popularized the technology. It’s not just about massive changes. Think about how almost all phones started incorporating fingerprint sensors after the iPhone 5S made Touch ID cool. It looks like the next big thing will be batteries. Specifically, Android phones could start copying Apple’s method of packing batteries inside the device, which could lead to massive increases in overall capacity.

According to reputable leaks, at least one of China’s major manufacturers is working to copy Apple’s steel-cased battery design that adorns the new iPhone 18 Pro Max. Why is this so important? Well, the company is combining the steel shell with stacked cells, which could allow it to deliver batteries with a capacity of up to 10,000 mAh. Apple’s approach addresses a major problem with standard soft-pouch batteries that require additional space for heat dissipation and to minimize damage if the cells swell. Thanks to its rigid design, Apple was able to package the cells tightly without worrying too much about thermal temperatures in a significantly thinner package. This is probably why the iPhone 18 Pro Max, with its 5,391 mAh battery, delivers around 21.06 Wh (watt hours) and can run for over 19 hours. For comparison, the Galaxy S26 Ultra (5,000 mAh battery with 19.4 Wh) tops out at just over 16.

It remains to be seen whether the next generation of these supercharged devices will be available in the United States. True, the longest-lasting Android phone, the OnePlus 15 with its 7,300 mAh battery, was initially available in the United States, but OnePlus has since pulled out of the North American market. Elsewhere, the Xiaomi 17 Max with an 8,000mAh battery was never officially released in the US. The main problem on this front is that phone manufacturers must meet strict criteria under federal regulations for transporting lithium cells and batteries. The current limit is 20 Wh, which doesn’t leave much headroom, and is why most companies selling in the US limit their batteries to around 5,000 mAh.

Wait a minute: doesn’t the OnePlus 15 technically exceed this limit? After all, doesn’t 7,300 mAh far exceed the 20 Wh ceiling? That’s correct. However, OnePlus found a clever solution: it switched to a two-cell battery, and neither exceeded the required figures. There is another way to stay legal with batteries, which is what Apple did with the iPhone 18 Max. New iPhones come with firmware that reduces capacity below its full watt-hour rating during transport. The moment users activate the phone, the maximum capacity is unlocked, which technically helps the company stay under the limit. As long as manufacturers implement something similar, Android phones with massive batteries could make it to the US market – fingers crossed they do.