It doesn't sound fishy at all, that was the most obvious explanation right off the bat. The battery was inconsistent when Safari was running, but consistent when Chrome was used in its place. That's a massive neon sign pointing to a bug in Safari causing problems, and loads of people said this as soon as the report came out.

Six and a half years ago, Steve Jobs literally told people to hold the iPhone 4 in a better way to keep it from losing reception. Software is hard. Hardware is harder. Doesn't sound fishy at all to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/25/ipho...

Agreed. Apple's rebuttal does sound very fishy.

I'd love to hear how Consumer Report managed to get a nearly 20-hour battery life result in one of their tests, though.