My wife and I just came back from a trip, and thanks to a few days that truly felt like they resulted from a sitcom writers’ room brainstorming session, we haven’t fully unpacked yet. One of the things still unpacked is the USB-C cable I use to charge my phone overnight on my nightstand, and I can’t be bothered to move another one, so for the past two nights I haven’t been doing so. I have an iPhone 16 Pro and it hasn’t felt particularly power hungry to me, so I gambled and it’s been totally fine to just charge it on my desk during the day.
Earlier today I was thinking how great it is that the phone can survive the whole night without charging. I forget what the actual overnight drain’s been, maybe 10%? or 30%? I genuinely don’t know, but I feel like my past iPhone minis definitely weren’t as long-lasting, which would make sense with their relatively smaller batteries. But then it hit me how different things used to be Back in My Day™.
Remember when phones would last days, or maybe even weeks? When charging was a ritual one might actually forget, because it wasn’t something that had to be done frequently?
Yes, I’m well aware of how much more the current iPhone does compared to the Nokia 2260 I took to college, or the Samsung E317 I replaced it with, or even the LG CU400 I had as my last non-iPhone. That the iPhone does what it does with merely 4x the battery capacity is the real miracle here. But as a consumer, a human having to expend mental cycles on keeping all my devices charged, I do miss those days a bit.
Oh, how expectations have changed.
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