Back in the LTE days, you only had one transmitter. With ENDC in 5G, you have two transmitters, one LTE as an anchor and another for 5G.
The sooner we get to SA, we can drop the LTE anchor and go back to a single 5G TX with however many DLCA bands you want for UEs.
Twice the transmitters, twice the current = worse battery life.
It is tiring. May be we should just let the media keep spinning whatever they want the public to believe. But at least the mmWave fad is finally dying, the truth will always arrive, no matter how hard media tries to hide it.
That said, battery life is still pretty fine for general use.
Thankfully iOS devices also have the ability to only switch on 5G when deemed necessary, which is sometimes a little wonky but generally works okay and will turn off 5G when the display is off.
Putting your phone in airplane mode, and generally restricting it's radio usage reduces battery life? Shocker!
And UMTS 3G before that ("it's just for video calls, who wants that anyway")
