Photos of purported next-gen iPhone’s thinner, higher capacity battery: 3.8V, 1440 mAh

As the launch of the next iPhone approaches, lots of  parts have been leaking out  and we’ve been able to put the pieces together almost like a reverse iFixit teardown. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen internal components and LCD parts making their way into the hands of iOS device parts suppliers. The most notable part leaks this year were the back plates of the new iPhone. We posted the first photos of these in May. Those new parts revealed an all-new thinner enclosure, metal design, smaller dock connector, and various other next-generation iPhone attributes.

Today, a reliable parts source (via 9to5Mac contributor Sonny Dickson) sent us images of new iPhone battery packs that they received. Notably, these new battery packs sport a higher capacity than the packs in previous generations of Apple’s smartphone. This new battery features a capacity of 1440 mAh. That is up from the capacity of 1430 mAh on the iPhone 4S and up from 1420 mAh on the iPhone 4, according to iPhone repair shop iFixYouri, whom examined the battery photos.

More details after the break:

Along with the increase in battery capacity, the new battery also features a new voltage of 3.8. This is up slightly from 3.7 on both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. The new battery also has an increased watts-per-hour measurement (wHr), 5.45 wHr, which is an increase from 5.25 and 5.3 on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, respectively. This is a proportional increase due to the increase from 1430 to 1440 mAh.

According to the battery’s labeling, it appears that it was produced in June, 2012. That’s right on schedule for next-generation iPhone component manufacturing.

While Apple has increased or tweaked the iPhone battery year-after-year, this new iPhone’s battery has long been deemed significant due to the rumors of LTE network connectivity. LTE, infamously, requires bigger batteries because of the power that the faster network takes. However, it seems like the jump in battery capacity from the previous iPhones to this new iPhone is not all that huge.

Besides the possibility that this battery component is not for the LTE iPhone (last year, there was much confusion between iPhone 4S parts and the updated 8GB iPhone 4 parts), or it is a part that Apple scrapped all together, we speculate that perhaps Apple’s tweaked dual-core system on a chip for this new iPhone is efficient enough to run LTE with the need for a much larger battery. We also speculate that Apple may indeed be moving ahead with latest version of the Qualcomm Gobi chips that has a smaller battery draw than previous versions.

The next iPhone is expected to be announced and go on sale in September.