Just also wanted to say: great short analysis, can't wait for y'all to go even deeper in the review (or even a separate article). Lucky you guys got the winning lottery TSMC chip. I'm expecting the 6s review very soon!
For a lot of time, apple was making good products, and it struggled to make a profit, or even make the news. It wasn't until apple targeted the vanity, insecurity and foolishness of people with toys that they became a successful company.
Their products are not bad, but given their resources, their corporate standing and the cost of their production, this is not really an achievement. Anyone can make a decent product with that amount of resources. If you look at it objectively, it is just a big meh.
Anyway "can" make a decent product, but do they choose to? Honestly, I value the fact that Apple has re-proven the profitability of non-boutique quality products. I love that they advertise much more realistic battery life than most, and just generally try to make a brand out of actual quality rather than spec sheet BS. That's not to say they're perfect or that no one else makes great products, but Apple is clearly the biggest, most iconic company doing it, making it corporate "cool" to not just race for the cheapest way to check the boxes.
They'd still sell well if their production was complete garbage. At least for a while, until the cult wears out and people are no longer capable of considering themselves superior for purchasing it ;)
I find it a bit tiresome reading about this ”Apple customers being a cult” everywhere when there's an article about Apple stuff. There are people with brand affections everywhere. Maybe there's something extraordinary about Apple, but I guess that's for a reason then. I don't buy that it's all about marketing. If that's the case people would stop being happy about the brand when they actually use their products. So is the argument that Apple products are objectively mediocre, but people get ”hypnotised” by Apples marketing into thinking they are great when actually using the products? :-|
When asked why they purchase apple products, most of them answer "because it is just better" - they can't answer in what way or provide any sort of argumentation. That's the same kind of behavior religious nuts display when asked about things they take for granted.
It is about marketing, just because you don't see it doesn't mean it is not there. It became obvious back in the days of the "PC is for squares, mac is for cool guys" ad campaign. But it was there sort of from the start. But take the logo choice to begin with - the bitten apple, the forbidden fruit, picked from the tree of knowledge against god's command. What a "coincidence" indeed - a company enjoying a fanatical and overzealous consumer base employing a logo, referencing to a biblical story, which itself enjoys a fanatical and overzealous "fan base".
Oddly enough, this is actually quite hilarious, because it is just a marketing trick, since apple consumers don't seem to be particularly knowledgeable. I mean, come on, if you were that smart for buying apple products, you wouldn't need the help of a "genius" to figure how to use a device, designed for mass use. You are most likely below average, as is most likely that so called "genius", but hey, if that's a guy employed by apple to help out its consumers with their trivial problems, we have to keep up the hype and call them "geniuses".
I could go on and on about similar examples. Basically, everything about apple is designed to awe dum-dums, and it works. And the dum-dums, being dum-dums, are entirely oblivious to it. But it actually doesn't take a lot to see through the marketing, all you need is about 2 working brain cells and basic knowledge in symbology and its effect on the conscious and subconscious.
Oh, and one simply has to appreciate the irony, the same company which shamelessly exploits the "forbidden fruit" concept has a product base, which is more "walled garden" than any other company, apple products are exactly the full opposite of the symbolism of their logo.
So you don't know what the Apple symbolizes? There was this guy, called Isaac Newton. And the story goes that one day he was sitting under an apple tree. Guess he was hungry.
In this ultra religious country we live in, I understand your mistake. But if you were to see Apple's original logo, you would understand why they couldn't use it.
Yet here you are on a highly technical site that shows in great detail how the 6S SoC for example is an astounding technical achievement with the first desktop class storage controller and far superior single thread performance than anything in any other mobile device and the best reason you can come up with for Apple's popularity is "consumers are dumb."
I never said "all" but "most". Of course apple cares about throwing a bone or two to the tech crowd as well, even if the tangible improvement is slim to none.
Steven, he's been here forever, in every Apple article and policing all of us 'dumdums'. Best to ignore him Especially now that he's stopped to 'forbidden fruit' biblical BS bashing for success lol
The problem with marketing premium-priced products to 'dum-dums' is that 'dum-dums' statistically have limited disposable income. It also seems strange how overrun Silicon Valley is with dum-dum software and hardware developers who use Apple products. It's probably most reasonable to conclude that the tech boom is also just a fashionable fad and the whole San Francisco Bay Area will implode any minute now, taking all the flashes in the pan tech companies that use Apple products with it.
Well, even thou there have been cases of people selling or trying to sell organs to get apple toys, I'd say even below average people in the developed world can afford to buy an iphone every other year or so.
I am from eastern Europe, where wages are like 10 times lower, and yet there are many dum-dums who buy apple products. Many even go for credit, ending up paying even more. And hey, believe it or not, but hardware prices here are marginally higher here...
And hey, just because some people are into say graphics design or video editing doesn't mean they are smart enough to know what's best for them. I know many people in content creation who buy apple products, because they genuinely believe the marketing hype that apple products are better for suck workloads. They could easily get a 100% better performance for the same price, which really does matter in most aspects of content creation, but somehow having a custom built system is just not "artsy fartsy" enough, it is better to get a pretty looking imac. I mean, even if you are a graphics designer or a video editor, which may seem like not-so-dum-dum thing to be working with, paying premium price for an inferior system because of your vanity is quite dum-dum indeed.
I think many of you underestimate the trick Apple plays: deliver a consistent level of quality and only cater to the high end. You can make products expensive as much as you want, just don't sell bad ones. Every other brand will happily sell customers cheap crap if they can make a proffit on it. remember the 'laptops' with a Brazos CPU? Over 75% of those must have been a disappointment, getting replaced within the year if money allowed... Apple just doesn't play that game. Yes, there is advertising and yes, I will always refuse to buy their products because of the walled garden (Linux user and advocate here) but be honest: they just do NOT sell mediocre products. They make great products and ask an insane amount of money for them. Sure not great value for your $ but that is indeed the one thing they will never claim to give you...
It might not reach every niche, have exactly what YOU want (i will not buy a phone without front facing speakers, for example) but fact is that you will rarely if ever have to feel bad about your Apple product choice.
Add in some cognitive dissonance about the insane price you pay for their stuff (it better be good and if it isn't you tell yourself it is) and we have a great and extremely profitable business model.
It amazes me nobody has really tried to copy it - it really isn't that complicated.
Jospoortvliet, I think you won this round of the comments because you've hit the nail on the head.
Plenty of companies *have* attempted to follow the Apple model or whatever you want to call it, with varying levels of success. That expensive Chromebook (Pixel, IIRC); that was a head scratcher for me. Microsoft's Surface line. HP and other PC manufacturers have had premium notebooks (and I'm sure they still do.
I use Apple stuff. I prefer my MacBook Pro. Best trackpad, best construction, best support. I paid extra for an iPhone. Being an experienced tech user, I know the competition. I've owned a few Dells, Palm, Moto. I have the Google. Still prefer Apple.
I suppose I buy them to prove I'm better than the rest of you, though I'm a tech novice and don't know there are better products out there. Besides, it makes shopping easier; all I have to do is look for the big Apple, right? ;) /s
Samsung have ruined the note line in ill conceived attempts to lure in the dum dums. And it actually worked, but ruined a great product.
I am a power user. I don't use my phone to take selfies, I rarely use it to make calls too. I bought a galaxy note 3, because it was vastly superior to iphones at the time in every productive centered way. I run my own custom software, I run an actual C++ compiler on the phone, I deploy my own custom binaries. I made my own "smart cover", hosting a microcontroller I can program with the phone on the go, and a number of analog and digital IO, allowing such great things as data acquisition and analysis, rapid prototyping and interfacing with different devices. You cannot even hope to get that amount of productivity on an iphone. Also
- 3 gigs of ram - to most people it doesn't matter, to me it does, I actually use it - quad core - to most people it is just a number, but I use them, getting better overall performance despite of the lower single core compared to a8 - large screen, which is a huge plus for the software I use, which none of the iphones had at the time, because it was "stupid" according to apple zealots who now line up to buy large screen iphones - pressure sensitive pen - great for taking notes quickly, annotating stuff, drawing sketches, charts and diagrams - a OS which is not a walled garden and allowed me to run my own software, not just limited to installing what apple deems fit - removable battery - I bought 3 right away, can use the phone for days without charging, can use the phone for years after the original battery gives out - SD card slot - had several in the phone back cover, giving me access to tons of data and the ability to easily change those data sets, without having to connect to a computer, delete the old data and upload new data
I'd say when it comes to phone use (and not just that), I am as "poweruser" as it gets, I make more use of a phone than most people make of desktop systems. And yet, the "impeccable" apple phone products are vastly inferior in practically every aspect and any way you look at it. And sure, you could use a ladder in apple's walled garden, but then you will simply void your warranty. And even then, it won't be on par.
And LOL, gotta love the distorted view of apple fanboys. Microsoft copied apple with the surface? LOL, it is actually apple which is currently attempting to copy the surface, and the result will still be a useless toy compared to it. It sure did take M$ a long time to come with a tablet that was actually useful to power users, but apple sure is still struggling to do that, they suck even following in others' footsteps.
I don't think their products are ridiculously overpriced - most comparable hardware in the Android space (or Windows for laptops/AIO) price out in the same neighborhood. Also, 2/3 of their profit comes from iPhone, and given the insane amount of time that people spend on their phone daily, the extra 20 or 30 cents a day, over the lifetime of the phone, that the iPhone will cost vs a lower cost android is a worthwhile trade off for most people.
Anecedotally, I've owned two Android high end phones over the last 4 years - a Samsung Galaxy 2 and a Samsung Note 3. I liked both of them a lot in the start, but both have had their camera's fail on me out of warranty and, after a few updates, both have cropped up glitches, crashes, random reboots and periods of super high battery usage that fluctuate in and out for no apparent reason. In a nut shell, they start out great, but by the end of year two (where I currently am with my Note 3) they both have aged very poorly.
In contrast, I've had an iPad 3 since it came out, and my wife as had a couple of iPhones (4, 5c). All of those devices have run flawlessly, and while progressive iOS releases may not run as quickly on older hardware as newer, we have never experienced any "slow degradation" issues surrounding the performance of the devices. I'll happily pay an extra couple hundred dollars every few years for a device I use multiple times an hour, every day, for that type of reliability.
I'm talking about developers. I work as a developer in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and basically every developer's laptop is a Mac, though most are also running Linux boxes via VirtualBox or in the cloud. Well over half these people carry iPhones. The people I see with Windows laptops are almost never engineers; mostly they're sales or marketing.
Really, engineers almost never use windows hardware?
Last time I checked, the only bit of engineering software that was running on mac was plain old AutoCad. And in engineering, AutoCad is like MS Paint in graphics design...
None of the serious engineering software even runs on a Mac. Not Catia, not SolidWorks, not Inventor, not Creo. I guess engineers simply love not being able to run any engineering software on their machines.
Programmers prefer apple? This doesn't seem like this is true either, at least according to programmers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/65381/19289... Plenty of good reasons to NOT use a Mac for programming. The only exception is if you target apple devices. Then you don't have a choice, thanks to good old apple's politics.
You obviously live in a place and keep acquaintances with people who care little about productivity and efficiency and prefer to waste money on product fads instead. With apple you simply pay more for less, unless your N1 priority is the apple fad.
Oddly enough, the best thing you can do in order to boost your productivity on a mac is... to install windows on it LOL. Get rid of the apple OS and it gets a tad better, but is still really poor value for the money.
Dude, I was talking about developers, AKA software engineers. My department is called engineering and the developers are generally called engineers. I was not suddenly switching topics from software development to mechanical engineering.
Anyway, I'm not sure what "Windows hardware" would be. Plenty of people use Linux boxes, of course, though the big barrier I've seen to getting non-Apple hardware in most shops is that some devs really don't want to deal with the management overhead of Linux (drivers, filesystem mounting, AD support, etc). I mostly use my work Mac as a BSD box with Homebrew package management, though I'm gradually warming up to the Mac app Store. When I was doing docker development support for boot2docker was pretty far ahead of where it was on Windows, but with Docker Toolbox things seem to have reached a level playing field. In any case, I have never even seen a Silicon Valley software developer who develops primarily on Windows, though I know they exist especially amongst the companies founded in the mid-90s. Mac and Linux is essentially all I see. I definitely don't see people with Windows phones very often, and iPhones are at least as common as Macs. Does that mean that Mac/iPhone is better? Of course not. It does make assertions that Macs and iPhones are just for non-technical dum-dums sound uninformed and silly.
And now we understand the hate, he's europoor and can only afford counterfeit gear or cheap as dirt abacus with an antenna style phones. It's ok man you can immigrate somewhere where you don't have to use smoke signals to communicate with the other villages. I hear in Romania they're up to carrier pidgeons maybe check them out?
You speak in absolutes like apple doesn't make anything good. It appears you aren't an owner but seems to be a complete expert in their products. I'm an expert on how terrible Lambos are, I mean I don't own one but anyone with two brain cells to rub together can realize that there are the worst cars ever. /s
Huh?! I have a 22nm Haswell cpu in my iMac, with 32GB DDR3L ram, PCI-E SSD, 780M GTX graphics with 4GB, and a sRGB 27" screen. Yes, some of us Apple fanboys do know exactly what is in the computer. Some of use have actually tried building imitation Macs using PC hardware. It turns out there is a very good reason why Apple charges what they do. They don't use the mediocre crap that other companies do, and which people are constantly comparing to Apple. Turns out if you do build a PC with the same specs, it costs a lot! In fact if you are going 5K, there is nothing in the PC space even close in price, Dell sells a monitor for almost as much as the entire computer.
I use FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, and OS X! OS X is easily the nicest OS to use, and the one I prefer. And after 3 years I finally bought the real thing, a 27" iMac with all of the goodies. And it sits on my desk, with my previous PC tower on the floor on the other side of me. And it is remarkable how silent, beautiful, fast, and tiny the iMac is in comparison. Both i7s, PC is Ivy, iMac is Haswell. Both have lots of ram, SSDs.
You see, it is the enjoyment of the anticipation of having a date with a model, and then not finding out she is a vegetarian. That is the secret to Apple's fan base. Satisfaction, or lack of the disappointment PCs bestow as a reward for going cheap.
I had to wait forever, for my Build to Order to arrive. Yes, most of the stock configurations are terrible. The longest wait was apparently for the NSA to install back doors in California for about a week. Never seen anything take that long to ship from California to Oregon. But then the day arrived, adults rarely get that kid on Christmas morning feeling. I singed for it, brought the odd shaped box in, and started the unboxing. Apple's attention to detail is amazing, I still use the box to transport the computer. In 5 minutes I had the machine booted, and already logged in to iCloud. My contacts, notes, and documents already available. Even my gmail account was configured automatically for me! My network shares were already available, no BS configuration needed like Windows. I could just click on them in Finder! And then Apple asks ME if I want to ACCEPT the software licenses included with the computer! Ten minutes in to the very pleasant ordeal, I am bragging up the computer to one of my friends by making a phone call from the new iMac, being relayed through my iPhone. You'll notice I did not mention reinstalling the OS to get rid of garbage software, no restarts to install updates, it was already updated at the factory.
Let's contrast that with the best PC i ever bought, a 3K dollar laptop in 2007. I opened the box, connected the power adapter, started the machine. And up came Windows Vista desktop. And what did I do? Stared at the screen, checked control panel, surfed the internet, and then restarted to install updates. The thing is that Windows doesn't do much out of the box, and that is if you are fortunate enough for there to not be any garbage installed. Yes, I've used Win8.1, it is a technological wonder in all the places you can't see, but the user experience hasn't changes. I don't know about Windows 10 since Microsoft refuses the update to Win8.1 No errors, just doesn't work. And I'm used to that. That is how Microsoft rolls. I tried forcing with the ISO, no joy.
Imagine, you are working on several things at once, and the power goes out. Why do people love Apple? Because when you restart, all of the apps open back up, and I am back where I was like nothing happened. This ability has been part of OS X for a long time. In fact, Microsoft even added key support this in NTFS and SMB! Leveraging this technology, my iMac installed updates at night and I only know because of a notification when I sit down in the morning. Thus, updates are much better on Mac. Drivers? Yes, OS X has them, I don't do anything with them. Microsoft could curate drivers from the less than 2 dozen chip manufacturers, but why bother right? WPA, I've never typed in a serial, or called Apple to install the OS. Even when I have done so on a PC. In fact reinstalling OS X on a PC is so much easier than a installing Windows. Microsoft really needs to do better, they are doing terrible. App store, there is not a lot of stuff in the Mac App store like there is in the iOS store, but when you do buy something from the store, it works on ALL of your computers. Not just 1. The myth that Apple is more expensive is false. It is only expensive for the first desktop, but you save more the more Macs you have. You also save money over time, since updates and newer versions of the OS are included in the initial buy in. There is a lot of savings in tech support and hardware issues as well. Reinstalling is so much easier if necessary, and TimeMachine backups are far, far, far ahead of Microsoft's backup solution.
To sum it up, yes Apple is expensive. But I believe life should be made better with technology, instead of life being wasted making technology work.
They're good devices, they're just too expensive for what you get. Especially considering the 16GB model is still the base model. Only Apple can get away with that. It would be OK if it had mSD... but it doesn't.
There are many, including experts who work for Anandtech, Ars Technica, and other reputable computer technology-focused organizations, who would argue otherwise. Many even consistently review new iOS devices and Mac computers as being among the best in their class.
Viewed objectively, the fact that the Apple-designed A9 is a power-sipping dual-core, nearly desktop class 64-bit SOC that can elegantly keep pace and even outperform Samsung's Galaxy 8 core, battery-chugging chip, while managing memory with double the efficiency is nothing short of amazing.
Have you seen the benchmarks? Nobody would have guessed Apple would be on the cusp of rivaling Intel for mobile processors in CPU and power performance, much less doing it inside a PHONE or tablet.
But let's just go back to the Apple of pre-profit times, like before their first sell-out vanity product, the iPod, and also iMacs... MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, etc...?
Yes, I've seen the benchmarks, good single threaded performance, overall chip performance is nothing to brag about.
But let me tell you this - you should definitely trust people, getting paid to praise apple and measure performance using JS benchmarks which do not even use the same JS implementation, because that's such an expert and objective comparison. Because it is not like the IT media is sucking up to apple, it is not like the US "justice" system fighting the competition for them. Nothing like that whatsoever.
But so what? I don't argue apple arm chips have very good single threaded performance, but so what? What good does it do for you? Is there a tangible benefit from it? Does it improve your life, or your productivity? If so, how exactly? What are you doing with this CPU horsepower? I mean people went into space with megahertz CPUs with kilobytes of memory, today we have multi core gigahertz CPUs with gigabytes of memory in our pockets, and what do we do with it?
That's the Worst part - today the actual product is not what the consumer purchases, but the consumer himself. Sure, this applies to all device manufacturers, but it is apple who began that terrible trend, where people use less and less of the technology and are used more and more through it, turning powerful technology in toys which actually make people stupider and wasting their lives in pointless, vanity feeding activities.
They have integrity, it is just in the wrong place ;) It is really not a problem when that's the norm. It doesn't seem to matter if you are bad if you are not "relatively bad" and everyone is just as bad. It doesn't take a genius to notice AT's heavy yet careful bias when it comes to certain corporations, and apple is one of those. AT is not in position to be objective, because it will fall out of grace and become the Charlie Sheen of the IT media.
If AT had integrity, there wouldn't be a mouth gaping ape on a hoodie staring me from the top of the site, urging me to "Buy Awesome Hoodies! Buy NOW!" if I disable my ad blocker.
According to uBlock, the average blocked ad content for my internet usage is 12%. On this particular AT page it is 22%. Ads take up 5/8 of the screen space. You can definitely tell this is a case of objective IT media, interesting in nothing else than bringing you objective IT information.
As for "Why are you even here?" - well, If I had to avoid every place absent of integrity, I'd have to leave the planet ;) And since I still lack the resources to start my own colony on another planet, and what's more - since I don't think that the lack of integrity is something good or something one has to conform to and settle for - I logically act in opposition to it, as any person with integrity would do. People with integrity don't run away from the lack of integrity, they do the best in their power to establish integrity.
Apple makes good products, which you admit, but you still claim that people are dumb for buying them. You attribute it all to marketing, which is a bold claim to make without ANY supporting evidence.
Yes. There are a couple of different programs. Though I believe the only one in the App Store has been pulled.
I can't vouch for the following method since it requires installing a custom developer certificate, but this would appear to be the next best way: http://demo.hiraku.tw/CPUIdentifier/
Chipworks mentioned they would benchmark and test for the differences, but they have yet to come through.. Hell, they haven't even given us a Floor Plan Die shot of the A9 yet, something they always do.
I'm thinking they are starting to get greedy and holding out on the die shot, so they can charge companies all that money. But if they hold out any longer, they risk having a competitor steal the spotlight.
TLDR: Still no die shot from chipworks, still no TSMC vs Samsung A9 Comparison, just a very rudimentary metal shot.
Anandtech, Just get your hands on a couple of iphone 6 models from each Fab (samsung and TSMC) then set brightness to the minimum setting on each phone, and then run geekbench's battery test.
This will give us a vauge idea of the validity of these claims.
The roadblock is that even if you give users specific instructions and they follow those instructions, you still need to control for brightness. That is more involved than just turning the brightness all the way up or down. To do it properly you need to measure & calibrate to a specific brightness (typically 200 nits).
If you have a large enough sample size that sort of random setting issue should cancel out. For example if you get a sample of a thousand phones, then those from both manufacturers should converge around an average group of setting. If you even got the results of a hundred phones it might be enough.
For a smaller sample size of only a couple dozen, equalizing settings becomes more important.
I disagree with you. The variances could be enough to make the actual difference you want to measure disappear in noise, if it's on average small enough.
But sure, exactly what's going to happen is threads all over the social networks where people talk about SOT, the holy grail, while being completely ignorant about proper testing.
Variance is important, but skew is far more important in real life. Average income in the USofA is quite high, but the skew means that the median is far lower, i.e. a few rich folks pull up the average. Same for chip analysis: a few goods (or bad ones) pull the average up (or down). Median is the better measure, but more difficult to figure.
you'd need thousands of parts across phones that cover months of wafer outs before you can make any call. Wafer lots have lots of variability, and processes usually shift around slowly (unless there is an excursion at the fab), so to say definitely which fab (Samsung or TSMC) has a better process for power is not easily done.
This whole methodology (and the thinking behind it) is totally retarded. Sorry to be harsh guys, but the thinking here is non-existent.
Do you KNOW what the variance is the batteries Apple uses is? Hell, do you know if they even come from the same manufacturer? Do you know what the variance is in the power usage of the flash that is used? In the DRAM? In the screens?
And you can't just say that it will all average out because you don't know what the correlations are: For all we know, Foxconn Factory Number 3 gets all TSMC chips AND all Toshiba batteries; while Foxconn Factory number 7 gets all Samsung chips AND all Samsung batteries. Maybe the ENTIRE variance you are seeing here is in the batteries? And for all we know, in a month Factory Number 3 will be given a ship full of Samsung batteries and suddenly it will be the TSMC iPhones that all appear to have slightly shorter battery life.
"Do you KNOW what the variance is the batteries Apple uses is? Hell, do you know if they even come from the same manufacturer? Do you know what the variance is in the power usage of the flash that is used? In the DRAM? In the screens?"
You are being harsh (as usual), but I happen to agree here.
The thing is, just like I said in my other reply, is that Apple chose the WRONG PART to double source and then shuffle around. The Ax SoC is the hallmark of the iPhone in each review, and the part that causes all sorts of educated AND non-educated controversies.
If double sourcing was unavoidable, they should have released different parts to different regions where consumers have but one choice if they wanted the latest iPhone, eliminating lots of headache.
IF the issue is real and quantified, some customers won't care in the US, but lots of others will, especially in developing countries and China... Gray market and independent store sales make a HUGE chunk of overall iPhone sales. Customers WILL demand a certain chip, causing inventory problems. Resale values WILL vary, and customers dependent on the iPhone's resale value will suffer.
I think you are really going out of your way to exaggerate the potential problems. If the difference between the chips is so small it gets overwhelmed by all of the other factors in the phone, then that is the answer in itself. If there is a more noticeable difference then only at that point do you need to worry about whether it is the result of the chip itself or whether something else like the battery is actually responsible.
You guys are acting like only an absolutely perfect testing method can provide ANY information, when a less rigorous test can still provide valuable information, there's just a greater margin for error and uncertainty. A quick and dirty test can be used to help determine whether there is likely anything there that warrants further investigation. It can't do that with complete certainty, but it can still potentially provide some idea.
nah... I said "IF" in capital letters. I also think it's virtually impossible to quantify correctly. But people are paranoid. One publication is enough to affect their buying judgements (with a scientific method or not). IF there's a significant difference posted on a website with some sort of analysis (real OR fake), it has the potential problems I mentioned above.
nah just set it to the minimum setting.. There is always going to be variance ryan. Some displays will use more power at 200nits than other displays (just like the soc's), even with the same part. you get variance either way..
The simplest and most streamlined way to do it is set it to the minimum brightness setting. Even a noob can follow those instructions.
comparison of 1 tsmc based iphone vs 1 samsung based iphone still gives some insight. All the charts on your websites which are so popular are afterall benchmarks run on 'one' unit of each phone and not averaged across lots of units of each phone.
Cant you take the Geekbench scores and plot them out? If you see two normal curves with displaced peaks doesn't it indicate an overall variance? As more and more people put up Geekbench scores, the assumption that the fraction of users with, say, 100% screen brightness or with airplane mode ON is the same becomes truer.
This articles makes me wonder about something. We are often told that Apple will dump Intel because they can make A series processors for much less by fabbing them at TSMC/Samsung for $25. But if they are binning (literally) for performance, we don't really have any idea of how bad the yield is and hence what the actual cost per chip is.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I guarantee you that only the best chips, batteries, etc are sent to reviewers. This is nothing more than deception and fraud, and every company seems to do it. I haven't seen a review yet with the Samsung chip. That isn't an accident. That alone tells you this issue has merit. I do kind of wonder if this was meant to get out. What better way for Apple to give Samsung a bad name.
I still remember buying a Samsung lcd that got reviewed awesome. They sent reviewers a premium ips panel, and most all customers received cheap tn panels.
It's perfectly valid and admirably ethical to analyze the problem and, seeing the variables involved, conclude that there is simply not enough information to make a judgement yet (and that anyone making such judgements are likely wrong at this time). It's still informative, hones in on a solution, and is absolutely useful and not a waste of time.
I think the problem is that they CAN'T know. Which is a far more interesting conclusion. Stating this now essentially informs the consumer that there isn't any way to draw meaningful conclusions at this time, and that it is extremely unlikely that, given the necessary controlled tests required to make a meaningful analysis, it is exceptionally unlikely that anyone will ever be able to make any kind of reasonable conclusion.
I would rather win the actual lottery rather than the silicon lottery...
In all seriousness. Apple's decision to use 2 different foundries for the same chip will definitely result in 2 different power/performance profile curves. Given the premium pricing of these phones a potential customer should be able to at least be informed of what to expect…
They are, though. They get a fully supported product that does perform to specification. That a specification contains dual sourcing is not new, but people who believe are experts in CPU manufacturing (they aren't) get all up in arms while a regular user just wants to use their phone.
The same thing happened when Samsung dual sourced their camera image sensor. Some phones have SONY chips, some have Samsung chips. Both produce great results.
It'll take a fairly large sample of chips to prove anything one way or another. I'm sure it'll be done but it has to be done in a controlled environment instead of people shooting their mouths off about SOT.
I did think my battery life had gone down significantly compared to my regular 6. I went ahead and swapped it out because I was within my 14 days and to see if I could ditch the Samsung chip, I got lucky and got a tsmc chip and honestly there is a significant and noticeable difference. The first phone would lost 5-6% in 5 minutes of typical browsing through Facebook. So until they optimize for the other chip, it's bigger than they admitted too
In other words, you didn't read the article. Or if you did, you don't understand it. A sample size of two is totally meaningless. There is enough natural variation within the SoCs from a single manufacturer to account for any difference you have seen. Your personal experience is nothing more than an irrelevant anecdote.
I agree. I also upgraded from 6 to 6S and noticed a significant reduction in battery life. With the 6, I was regularly getting two days between charges, and now with the 6S I'm getting the 20% warning in the evening of day 1. 6S chip is Samsung N71AP.
If you guys have access to a number of TSMC A9 iPhones, can't you do a quick test with those and see how they differ? That would be interesting to know. If they differ in the same order of magnitude as the test between TSMC and Samsung, then we can assume that the difference in the test was just bad luck. But if a number of TSMC show very similar performance, then there might actually be a difference between Samsung and TSMC.
I have a test result of 6s comparing tsmc and samsung using several benchmark tools. I have posted it on Iphone users' community website in Korea, I will kindly provide my data with photos if you consider that as a relevant reference .
Maybe it doesn't matter as much within typical usage, but what if you're someone who likes to play a game like Hearthstone on your phone that's continuously taxing the device? Are you going to then be seeing a significantly different level of battery life?
If I were Apple, I would sell the same SoC in a specific region... I wonder how they end up mixed this way, like a random distribution. Samsung dual sourced their camera sensor for S6 (Samsung and Sony) and there were also visible differences, especially in low light (but there is no "good" or "bad" sensor per se). But this is way big...
All in all, it's good to know that TSMC 16 process is better than Samsung's 14... I hope Global Foundry's 14 (Samsung based, I think) will be good - of course it's not LP like these SoCs, but...
"All in all, it's good to know that TSMC 16 process is better than Samsung's 14"
You can't build conclusions as such. These two processes are compelling different with different properties and chemistry. Apple can optimize the A9 further on Samsung's process to perform better and consume less power. We don't know binning info note revisions on these chips (from either source), nor do we know if even all Samsung A9s are equal.
A comparison, by consumers, is virtually impossible.
This is Apple's fault and their responsibility alone. They should have made their design team focus on one process node and work out the paperwork to ensure sufficient supply.
Having two separate sources of the same chip sounded ridiculous since it was first rumored. Bad decision.
What is their fault? Have they sold a phone that does not match the specs they promised?
What's next? Someone's going to report that they have a Toshiba-made battery in their phone and it lasts (apparently) five minutes longer than the Samsung-made battery in their friends's phone? I got a Pegatron-made phone and it's only waterproof to a depth of 120cm, unlike the Foxconn-made one which is waterproof to a depth of 130cm?
Apple has lived through these moronic scandal-wannabes before. Every year --- antenna-gate, then fingerprint-gate, then bend-gate. Every freaking one of them is utterly content-free.
You want to know why Apple releases NOTHING about the tech specs of their devices? This is why --- because an idiot population aided and abetted by an idiot media insists on blowing the most pathetic and minuscule issues into the second holocaust. Why doesn't Apple give us CPU frequencies? Because some idiot web site will report the "scandal" that under certain conditions when the CPU gets hotter enough it runs at a lower frequency. Why doesn't Apple tell us technical innovations in the CPU? Because if they report that it can now decode 8 instructions/cycle instead of 6, some moron will complain to Congress that his phone only decodes 8 instructions on some cycles, not on every cycle.
The only safe behavior in the face of such rampant-ani-intellectualism is to not say a damn thing except to concentrate on vague meangingless words. "It's prettier than before. It's faster. It has a better camera."
Looks like I always step on a landmine when it comes to you. Long time no see big guy. But lets not turn this into a fan war. Let's not be overly defensive either.
Every popular product faces criticism, and sometimes rightfully so. Samsung, for example, releases the same flagship with completely difference SoCs (in different regions) and always get slaughtered for it. They also get slaughtered because they release top-binned Exynos SoCs only in Korean variants. They got called out for their non-functional interconnect in the Exynos 5410, and I was among thousands of extremely pissed customers, and rightfully so.
I'm not a fan of the "gate" thing, and I'm totally aware that some of them are blown out of proportion so that some monkey youtuber can get a "scoop". But that doesn't mean that some aren't on point. Apple, for example, DID have antenna and bending issues. These are facts because they got "fixed" in later iterations and the fix was touted as a feature (the iPhone 4 even had a "fixed" batch for the antenna problem for the same generation). You dismiss some, but you can't dismiss all (as you've done).
I'm not sure of the extent this current SoC "issue". It MIGHT be a non-issue, but it's a fact that some users are reporting differences of way over the alleged 3% mark, even under normal use. Like I said, it's virtually impossible to test since the same process node can yield different results (as we all know). Not all chips are created equal, even on the same process. I was simply replying to someone who ignorantly believes that one process is better than the other, based solely on assumptions comparing NON-identical SoCs (further extending the scope of variance).
Had all these SoCs been manufactured by the same fab on the same process, then Apple's statement would have sufficed. Case closed. Mouths would've been shut. However, with entirely different process (and two different design teams), these are NOT identical chips even when the functions/architectures are identical. One design team might have done a better job than the other, or there might not have been enough time for further revisions on Samsung's process. Alas, Samsung's process might indeed be inferior! Apple should have accounted for that variance, and therefore the potential headache it might cause.
Apple is at fault because they could have mitigated this (potential) problem simply by releasing different SoCs in different regions instead of shuffling the parts and distributing them randomly (when the part numbers can be easily traced by software). Other manufacturers have done so in the past on normal basis, therefore it wouldn't have made such a huge stir...
They should know better than leaving such OBVIOUS holes for potential criticism. Especially for a part that gets lots of attention, thorough analysis and deep dive articles with extensive testing and benchmarking. They were simply asking for it.
I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that TSMC 16nm is better than Samsung's 14nm. There is just not enough information out there right now, unless of course you have your hands on more than thousands of parts worth of data. (You do know that wafer lots vary from lot to lot regarding process, and that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of dies in a lot, right?)
I agree, it's not a very good statistical conclusion since the sample is not big enough, but I couldn't find any benchmark that stated that Samsung SoC is better WRT the battery life. More or less, every measurement shows TSMC has lower power figures. Of course, I don't think that it's a bigger deal in day to day usage (unless Apple is stupid), but nonetheless the difference exists, even if it's hard to quantify it.
In an article they acknowledge to be meaningless AnandTech manages to create yet another chart where Apple products are at the top. Their results also do not agree with Geekbench's own. I am sure there is a reason for it just as there has always been. But really, you guys are pathetic.
That chart was generated solely to show the difference between light and heavy battery lifetimes. It doesn't even include the 6s (since we're still reviewing it).
It's your comment that's pathetic. It's not like the numbers were made up. iPhones have better battery life and perf than the Samsung versions. Don't read Anandtech if you think the apple bias is so strong that a single chart in an article discussing iPhone issues is there to propagate some general feeling of iPhone superiority.
But is a meaningless statement from Apple. Even if every iPhone 6s did have the same exact SoC, their statement would also apply just the same. 3% is not a lot.
If the focus is on the real world, then in the real world there is no reason to buy the 6s instead of a 6 for performance reasons, or pixel density etc, because in the real world I'd be surprised if anyone can notice any difference whatsoever.
So when it comes to cpu differences, Apple are adament that the focus is on the real world, but when it comes to marketing and spec sheets they do everything they can to step as far away from the real world as possible and convince you that is magically superior and you won't be able to live unless you upgrade :p
My wife and I got IPHONE 6S PLUS phones this week. My wife was complaining because she hardly uses hers and is at 30% at the end of the day. I use mine a lot more, and was at 30% after 2 full days. Out of curiousity, I ran the app to find out which chip we have. Mine is made by TSMC and hers is made by Samsung. There might be something to this, and apple might have really screwed up.
So back up both phones and then restore to the other phone (i.e. swap phones with your wife, it'd be the chivalrous thing to do in this case anyway). Then you'd at least know if the battery life trend correlates more strongly with the phone or the user.
For every model of iPhone that Apple has released, there have been users that complain about experiencing lower battery life than their peers. There has always been variance, both in terms of usage and actual performance. As long as the 6s and 6s Plus perform at least as well as advertised, then Apple didn't screw up at all. The performance gap created by the Mac SSD lottery (when you could get either Toshiba, SanDisk or Samsung SSDs) was a way bigger deal for the end user than this.
I did something similar, albeit 6 vs 6S with Samsung chip. New 6S for me, gave my wife the 6. I noticed the reduction in battery life on the 6S so switched back. After two days she asked to switch back as she noticed the battery was running down in less than one day. Hardly scientific I know, but she knew nothing of the situation.
Do you really think one chip drains twice as fast? LOL.
If Apple screwed up, it would be like saying Intel screwed up because my 4 Ghz i7 won't overclock past 4.1 and your 4 Ghz i7 overclocks to 4.2. As long as the advertised specs are reached, they have nothing to worry about.
Patiently waiting for Anandtech to do this testing...I'm happy with the real world battery performance of my Samsung A9 iPhone 6S, but these initial reports are a little concerning. If there really is a 20% efficiency difference, my phone is going back to Apple for an exchange.
My last post didn't show up. Short story of it is that my wife's iPhone 6s plus lasts half as long as mine and I show way more usage. I used an app and found out that my chip is TSMC and hers is from Samsung so there might be some major battery life differences. I think we might go find an apple store to see if we can return hers because of its battery life. We just got these phones 4 days ago so they are both very new.
I'm curious as to what they say.. got my dad one through verizon, it's a Samsung.. he thinks battery life stinks compared to his old iphone 5s, he barely uses a phone anyhow.
Now both of my posts showed up, lol. I can't back up both phones and change phones because I need my cell phone number. It is what we use for business. I do realized that every 2 phones can have drastically different battery life for many reasons. I just know that my wife complained after the first day that her old HTC did just as good and it was 2.5 years old. We could have just gotten a bad phone, but I found it interesting that it just happened to line up with the Samsung chip being way worse on battery life. Ill let you guys know what I find out after some more testing.
I was thinking you'd swap SIMs as well, but obviously that doesn't work for some wireless service providers. (Or if they're carrier locked to different service providers.)
All this pain just for the sake of figuring out a few min differences in battery life? For all practical purposes your battery cell would probably degrade faster within a few months of use than differences in SOC yield binning could ever matter. With non-user replaceable battery having the so called "golden SOC" inside your phone does not mean sh1t when it's 3 years from now and your battery is less than half its original capacity anyway.
I think you are missing the point. We are not talking about a few min differences, and I am not sure it its the chip or not, but we are talking huge differences. My phone showed 18 hours of usage and 28 hours of standby before I needed a charge. My wifes phone showed 3 hours of usage, and 20 hours of standby before she needed a charge. Our phones are iPhone 6s plus phones, but I also got my dad an iPhone 6s. He was down to 12% battery life, and he showed 5 minutes of usage and 26 hours of standby. That is ridiculous considering his 2.5 year old iPhone 5 lasted him for half a week. He barely uses his phone. Guess what, I used the app and found out his brand new iPhone 6s that drains the battery is a Samsung chip. So I have 3 brand new iphones, 2 have terrible battery life and they are Samsung chips. 1 is exceptional battery life and it is TSMC.
That sounds more like she goes places with poor cellular reception and the radio spends too much time trying to connect, draining the battery.
My phone (LG G2) does something similar. Sometime in the past year, Rogers changed their tower config near work, and I can't get a solid LTE connection at work anymore.
If I have LTE enabled while at work, the battery will be almost dead by the end of the work day, even if it's just sitting on my desk. If I manually switch it to 3G/HSPA while at work, the battery sits above 80% at the end of the work day.
I've taken to disabling cellular data when the screen is off (via LeanDroid), which makes a huge difference at work.
There are a lot more amateurish comparisons from China and they look at temps and pef too. There was one a few days ago, they ran Antutu 12 times, TSMC was some 3C cooler over a few measurements during the test, slightly faster and battery left 77% vs 71%. Point is that heavy users will see a big impact, soccer moms with 2 days battery life will get that 2-3% difference. Given Apple's more than 30mm2 GPU , would really like to see a comparison in gaming.
Have you just been taking them back everytime? Is your battery life really crappy. That would make me extremely upset. I kind of feel like I won the lottery at this point.
Still getting the best SoC and best architecture available regardless.
How is this more of an issue than Samsung and other vendors sourcing their processors from multiple companies?
Galaxy S2, S3, S4, S5 all used Snapdragon AND Exynos. Exynos (Pure ARM Core) and Krait (Full Custom Core) couldn't be much farther apart in their architecture and performance. The Galaxy S3 had a dual core and quad core variant for heavens sake.
It's no wonder software update speed has only improved in the S6 generation.
All the tests I've seen in written websites and youtube videos show the Samsung chip warmer and shorter battery life. It would be much innocence find that this is coincidence.
Every time the manufacturer of a product say something along the lines of "in the real world.." or "in real life..." you can be certain that you are about to be lied to.
In fact, the tests that have been done show a significant difference in both power consumption and thermals. Apple even took down the app that lets owners see which CPU they have so obviously they are extremely concerned.
If i were going to run a compeletly controlled test.. here is how i would do it.
Get 5 phones each with TSMC and Samsung A9's Run Battery Test one of Each Fab Then take apart the phone, and replace the logic board from the other 4 phones. Using the same Battery, Screen etc... and then run your battery test with the same exact settings each time.
This way, you eliminate all variances in screen, and battery.
Just swap out the mainboards and collect results, then average. Presto
The only concern i have is if the Touch ID Sensor is Paired to the SOC somehow for security, if so, you would have to swap the sensor each time, but that probably has 0 variance anyway.
"However since Apple currently only uses at most two bins of chips (those suitable for 6s and those suitable for 6s Plus)"
This is not exactly true. There are probably at least four bins being taken, though only two are currently being used. The other two bins are probably - future iPad Mini (runs at say 2GHz rather than 1.85, while still at low power --- so the "best" chips) - future Apple TV (runs at god knows what, maybe 2GHz, but power is mostly a non-issue, so the "worst" chips)
Besides the battery power consumption, many people in the world already think 14nm is better 16nm and Samsung won the game and beat TSMC in this 14/16nm competition. However, ideally 14nm square is almost 23.4% smaller than 16nm square, and finally the chip difference is around 9% smaller only, and Apple says that the overall difference is 2-3%. I think TSMC did a great job!! Well done.
Isn't this simply due to the fact the 14nm process means the chip runs cooler so stays at full speed for longer (during tests), whereas TSMC's 16nm process is larger, hotter and probably throttles more quickly, resulting in clock speed coming down and using less power?
In theory, within a certain thermal envelop, when a cpu throttles more, it also sips more current (that's the whole reason for higher temps and throttling is the consequence of higher temps) and by throttling the performance will be affected. From the few tests I've spotted on the 'net the TSMC chip is the one with a bit higher performance (just barely), probably due to the fact that it throttles less...
Don't forget Apple worked hard and helped TSMC a lot to make this chips while Samsung had to learn by itself. When the next stepping is out Samsung chips will be the ones everybody wants.
The reason why it is worth discussing is because it looks like you are wrong. Apple probably wouldn't have even responded if they didn't know this was an issue. They screwed up, simple as that.
I hope anandtech really looks into this. I think Apple is lying badly. I took both of our phones today and did the same amount of every single thing on them. Also, she has a privacy screen protector which makes her screen think its darker outside so her auto brightness levels are way lower. My tsmc was at 60% battery life after 3 hours and 39 minutes of usage, and 28 hours and 4 min. standby. Her battery was at 28% after 3 hours and 37 minutes of usage and 20 hours of standby. Her phone has the Samsung chip. My dads Samsung based chip is lasting exactly a day until its at 10% and it only has 5 minutes of usage time. It is also Samsung based and all he does is receive a call or 2. I have gone through all of the phones to eliminate any apps from running in the background. My dad doesn't even have any other apps so that isn't an issue on his phone. I also did a hard reset and restore on all phones. I am not a happy camper.
Obviously there could be many other differences between each phone's display brightness and other settings, but looking at the current Geekbench results the trend is showing all of the front runners to be TSMC chips. Right now, the first 6S Plus with a Samsung chip is in 7th place and is anywhere from 25 minutes to 4 hours behind each TSMC 6S Plus in front of it. The first Samsung 6S is in 15th place and is anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour behind each TSMC 6S in front of it. This is still a small sample, but the starting trend is a bit disturbing. If there was just 1 Samsung 6S or 6S Plus that broke into the top 3 positions it would make me feel better about all of this. The results might get muddier as time goes on. Maybe in a few days we'll see a Samsung fabbed iPhone break into the top ranks, but I'm not holding my breath.
Isat is different among those A9 and it will cause different power consumption. Samsung' A9 14n process yield isn't reach to its production level of 80%, it means Samsung' A9 is unstable and shouldn't put into mass production.
"The short answer is that all we know is that we don't know."
And you felt compelled to write an article about it? With "Completely Fictitious Charts?" I just might delete my bookmark to this site. My, oh my, have things fallen since Anand's departure.
Sometimes it's more important to state that we don't know - that we can't know - rather than acting as if we do know or staying silent. Several readers had asked us for our thoughts, and in light of so many people extrapolating from 1-on-1 comparisons, Josh and I wanted to take the time to point out that while these are a good starting point, there are many variables in play that make the task of comparing TSMC and Samsung harder than it first appears.
Similarly, the fictitious chart is meant to demonstrate the basic properties of chip quality distribution in a manner more accessible to a wider audience.
Ryan, I really appreciate what you guys are doing. It is very important to someone like me who just bought 3 new iphones and am only having problems with the Samsung based ones. I am seeing a huge discrepancy that correlates very closely to the testing. I have been a reader for a very long time, and think you guys are the best in the industry. Almost all of the pc's I have built were completed strictly from the recommendations you guys have made. Don't be discouraged or even aknowledge people that are being mean as they don't have to read the articles they aren't interested in. They usually have agendas. Also, I have always held apple to greater standards because they have always had more consistency in their products. When we see something like this, there is reason for concern since this is the kind of thing Apple was known not to do. This is the kind of thing that has always separated apple, and why you never had to be concerned about the consistency and quality of their products.
PrimateLabs say that their battery benchmark runs at 30%. The report at the end of the test also claims this.
During some analysis of the test using the Xcode "Instruments" tool, I have found the true CPU utilisation to be closer to 60%.
If they their suppositions about how much CPU they are using are out by almost 100% perhaps we should also take their claims of emulating "real life usage" with a pinch of salt.
A short video of the first few seconds of the test for anyone who might be curious:
what you are saying may be true, but I would tend to believe them since I am seeing it with my own eyes. I am seeing more of a discrepancy with battery life with real world use than their tests are even showing. You shouldn't have to struggle with battery life when a phone is new. My wife and Dad told me that they really don't care what phone I get them as long as it works and has decent battery life. This is a big enough issue that they said just get them a galaxy or whatever as long as the battery life is more reasonable. I almost think there is something else differently being packaged with these Samsung processors because I can't believe a processor is making this much difference.
"My sources tell me that Samsung's 14nm is 3-6 months ahead of TSMC’s 16FF+. My sources also tell me that TSMC 16nm FF+ is today the most competitive FinFET offering, meaning power, performance, area, AND cost. This is based on information from the associated PDKs and not from PowerPoint slides or press releases."
What's interesting is that this conversation is even happening. It's relatively easy to differentiate a product when you can make significant and obvious improvements between iterations (dimensions, mass, screen resolution, gamut etc). Doing this by securing preferential agreements with the supply chain and making sure leading edge tech in the products is part a key part of this.
Products mature, marginal improvements force a conversation around specs and then the "magic" is harder to sell. Yes this SoC is technically impressive, but the points about real-life impact and wow factor are on the money. Apple's success in the last 10 years was driven by the whole package - design + specs. This iteration and those of other product lines are not following that "recipe". So what is Apple going to do next?
The form factor of phones is no longer up for grabs, as an integrator, Apple has the challenge that most of the components are comoditised and available in competing products. If the only edge they have is on the SoC, and the SoC is not driving differentiation in an obvious way, they are up the creek.
Now they have to compete on level playing field unless, the conversation around value becomes harder and so they need to do SOMETHING to make a difference. This will drive the need to innovate, and if they don't they will be in the wilderness. My prediction is that they are going to stall for a few years, and Microsoft is going to seem to be more innovative over the next few product cycles. Take it or leave it as an opinion, but I think Apple are struggling...
I don't know if anyone is still looking at this thread, but looking at the current Geekbench scores gives this rumored issue some credibility. I am only referring to tests that went from 100% to 0% battery here:
iPhone 6s Plus - 10 TSMC before first Samsung. None after. TSMC anywhere from 7.5 to 8.5 hours (one crazy 11 hour outlier). Samsung anywhere from 5.5 to 7 hours.
iPhone 6s - 16 TSMC before first Samsung. None after. TSMC anywhere from 5.5 to 5.75 hours. Samsung anywhere from 2.5 to 4.75 hours.
There are literally no TSMC iPhones with a lower score than any Samsung iPhones and unfortunately it appears there are significantly more phones with Samsung chips.
I understand that this still isn't conclusive evidence, but these trends are certainly pointing towards this being a real issue. There's no way that all of the TSMC phone owners had their screen brightness all the way down and all of the Samsung phone owners had theirs all the way up (or anything else that could contribute to the scores being lower/higher). This is pretty damning IMO and I'm guessing the more phones get tested the more this will keep showing the same trends.
Hi guys, take a look at this this article from tom'shardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iphone-6s-a9-sams... they conclude that both versions of Apple's A9 SoC deliver the same level of performance, but Samsung's 14nm FinFET process appears to offer slightly better power efficiency....
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SunnyNW - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Trying to wait patiently for the the iphone 6s review and A9 deep-dive :)dsumanik - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Your gonna be waiting patiently in line to get a tsmc chip over and over lol.ToastyFlake - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Dat ain't funny.Der2 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
2nd mofuka.Now Apple Customers gonna need a checklist when they're buying their new device. "Does it come in the TSMC N66MAP or N71MAP?"
Der2 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Just also wanted to say: great short analysis, can't wait for y'all to go even deeper in the review (or even a separate article). Lucky you guys got the winning lottery TSMC chip. I'm expecting the 6s review very soon!maximumGPU - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Can't wait for customers to start asking in stores whether it's the "Samsung iphone or the other one"?ddriver - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
That would imply the apple consumer base cares about something else than the brand, which is not true for the bulk of it.nathanddrews - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
They don't even know what they don't know.https://youtu.be/dhBdPx53pfQ
blackcrayon - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Reputation builds brands.ddriver - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
For a lot of time, apple was making good products, and it struggled to make a profit, or even make the news. It wasn't until apple targeted the vanity, insecurity and foolishness of people with toys that they became a successful company.Their products are not bad, but given their resources, their corporate standing and the cost of their production, this is not really an achievement. Anyone can make a decent product with that amount of resources. If you look at it objectively, it is just a big meh.
artificialintel - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Anyway "can" make a decent product, but do they choose to? Honestly, I value the fact that Apple has re-proven the profitability of non-boutique quality products. I love that they advertise much more realistic battery life than most, and just generally try to make a brand out of actual quality rather than spec sheet BS. That's not to say they're perfect or that no one else makes great products, but Apple is clearly the biggest, most iconic company doing it, making it corporate "cool" to not just race for the cheapest way to check the boxes.ddriver - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
They'd still sell well if their production was complete garbage. At least for a while, until the cult wears out and people are no longer capable of considering themselves superior for purchasing it ;)star-affinity - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
I find it a bit tiresome reading about this ”Apple customers being a cult” everywhere when there's an article about Apple stuff. There are people with brand affections everywhere. Maybe there's something extraordinary about Apple, but I guess that's for a reason then. I don't buy that it's all about marketing. If that's the case people would stop being happy about the brand when they actually use their products. So is the argument that Apple products are objectively mediocre, but people get ”hypnotised” by Apples marketing into thinking they are great when actually using the products? :-|ddriver - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
When asked why they purchase apple products, most of them answer "because it is just better" - they can't answer in what way or provide any sort of argumentation. That's the same kind of behavior religious nuts display when asked about things they take for granted.It is about marketing, just because you don't see it doesn't mean it is not there. It became obvious back in the days of the "PC is for squares, mac is for cool guys" ad campaign. But it was there sort of from the start. But take the logo choice to begin with - the bitten apple, the forbidden fruit, picked from the tree of knowledge against god's command. What a "coincidence" indeed - a company enjoying a fanatical and overzealous consumer base employing a logo, referencing to a biblical story, which itself enjoys a fanatical and overzealous "fan base".
Oddly enough, this is actually quite hilarious, because it is just a marketing trick, since apple consumers don't seem to be particularly knowledgeable. I mean, come on, if you were that smart for buying apple products, you wouldn't need the help of a "genius" to figure how to use a device, designed for mass use. You are most likely below average, as is most likely that so called "genius", but hey, if that's a guy employed by apple to help out its consumers with their trivial problems, we have to keep up the hype and call them "geniuses".
I could go on and on about similar examples. Basically, everything about apple is designed to awe dum-dums, and it works. And the dum-dums, being dum-dums, are entirely oblivious to it. But it actually doesn't take a lot to see through the marketing, all you need is about 2 working brain cells and basic knowledge in symbology and its effect on the conscious and subconscious.
ddriver - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Oh, and one simply has to appreciate the irony, the same company which shamelessly exploits the "forbidden fruit" concept has a product base, which is more "walled garden" than any other company, apple products are exactly the full opposite of the symbolism of their logo.Shiitaki - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
So you don't know what the Apple symbolizes? There was this guy, called Isaac Newton. And the story goes that one day he was sitting under an apple tree. Guess he was hungry.In this ultra religious country we live in, I understand your mistake. But if you were to see Apple's original logo, you would understand why they couldn't use it.
steven75 - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Yet here you are on a highly technical site that shows in great detail how the 6S SoC for example is an astounding technical achievement with the first desktop class storage controller and far superior single thread performance than anything in any other mobile device and the best reason you can come up with for Apple's popularity is "consumers are dumb."That cognitive dissonance is really something!
ddriver - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
I never said "all" but "most". Of course apple cares about throwing a bone or two to the tech crowd as well, even if the tangible improvement is slim to none.akdj - Tuesday, October 13, 2015 - link
Steven, he's been here forever, in every Apple article and policing all of us 'dumdums'. Best to ignore himEspecially now that he's stopped to 'forbidden fruit' biblical BS bashing for success lol
artificialintel - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
The problem with marketing premium-priced products to 'dum-dums' is that 'dum-dums' statistically have limited disposable income. It also seems strange how overrun Silicon Valley is with dum-dum software and hardware developers who use Apple products. It's probably most reasonable to conclude that the tech boom is also just a fashionable fad and the whole San Francisco Bay Area will implode any minute now, taking all the flashes in the pan tech companies that use Apple products with it.ddriver - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Well, even thou there have been cases of people selling or trying to sell organs to get apple toys, I'd say even below average people in the developed world can afford to buy an iphone every other year or so.I am from eastern Europe, where wages are like 10 times lower, and yet there are many dum-dums who buy apple products. Many even go for credit, ending up paying even more. And hey, believe it or not, but hardware prices here are marginally higher here...
And hey, just because some people are into say graphics design or video editing doesn't mean they are smart enough to know what's best for them. I know many people in content creation who buy apple products, because they genuinely believe the marketing hype that apple products are better for suck workloads. They could easily get a 100% better performance for the same price, which really does matter in most aspects of content creation, but somehow having a custom built system is just not "artsy fartsy" enough, it is better to get a pretty looking imac. I mean, even if you are a graphics designer or a video editor, which may seem like not-so-dum-dum thing to be working with, paying premium price for an inferior system because of your vanity is quite dum-dum indeed.
jospoortvliet - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
I think many of you underestimate the trick Apple plays: deliver a consistent level of quality and only cater to the high end. You can make products expensive as much as you want, just don't sell bad ones. Every other brand will happily sell customers cheap crap if they can make a proffit on it. remember the 'laptops' with a Brazos CPU? Over 75% of those must have been a disappointment, getting replaced within the year if money allowed... Apple just doesn't play that game. Yes, there is advertising and yes, I will always refuse to buy their products because of the walled garden (Linux user and advocate here) but be honest: they just do NOT sell mediocre products. They make great products and ask an insane amount of money for them. Sure not great value for your $ but that is indeed the one thing they will never claim to give you...It might not reach every niche, have exactly what YOU want (i will not buy a phone without front facing speakers, for example) but fact is that you will rarely if ever have to feel bad about your Apple product choice.
Add in some cognitive dissonance about the insane price you pay for their stuff (it better be good and if it isn't you tell yourself it is) and we have a great and extremely profitable business model.
It amazes me nobody has really tried to copy it - it really isn't that complicated.
ddriver - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Apple has plenty of products that are NOT high end.ex2bot - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Jospoortvliet, I think you won this round of the comments because you've hit the nail on the head.Plenty of companies *have* attempted to follow the Apple model or whatever you want to call it, with varying levels of success. That expensive Chromebook (Pixel, IIRC); that was a head scratcher for me. Microsoft's Surface line. HP and other PC manufacturers have had premium notebooks (and I'm sure they still do.
I use Apple stuff. I prefer my MacBook Pro. Best trackpad, best construction, best support. I paid extra for an iPhone. Being an experienced tech user, I know the competition. I've owned a few Dells, Palm, Moto. I have the Google. Still prefer Apple.
I suppose I buy them to prove I'm better than the rest of you, though I'm a tech novice and don't know there are better products out there. Besides, it makes shopping easier; all I have to do is look for the big Apple, right? ;) /s
Oh, no! Walled garden. Where did I put my ladder?
ddriver - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
Samsung have ruined the note line in ill conceived attempts to lure in the dum dums. And it actually worked, but ruined a great product.I am a power user. I don't use my phone to take selfies, I rarely use it to make calls too. I bought a galaxy note 3, because it was vastly superior to iphones at the time in every productive centered way. I run my own custom software, I run an actual C++ compiler on the phone, I deploy my own custom binaries. I made my own "smart cover", hosting a microcontroller I can program with the phone on the go, and a number of analog and digital IO, allowing such great things as data acquisition and analysis, rapid prototyping and interfacing with different devices. You cannot even hope to get that amount of productivity on an iphone. Also
- 3 gigs of ram - to most people it doesn't matter, to me it does, I actually use it
- quad core - to most people it is just a number, but I use them, getting better overall performance despite of the lower single core compared to a8
- large screen, which is a huge plus for the software I use, which none of the iphones had at the time, because it was "stupid" according to apple zealots who now line up to buy large screen iphones
- pressure sensitive pen - great for taking notes quickly, annotating stuff, drawing sketches, charts and diagrams
- a OS which is not a walled garden and allowed me to run my own software, not just limited to installing what apple deems fit
- removable battery - I bought 3 right away, can use the phone for days without charging, can use the phone for years after the original battery gives out
- SD card slot - had several in the phone back cover, giving me access to tons of data and the ability to easily change those data sets, without having to connect to a computer, delete the old data and upload new data
I'd say when it comes to phone use (and not just that), I am as "poweruser" as it gets, I make more use of a phone than most people make of desktop systems. And yet, the "impeccable" apple phone products are vastly inferior in practically every aspect and any way you look at it. And sure, you could use a ladder in apple's walled garden, but then you will simply void your warranty. And even then, it won't be on par.
And LOL, gotta love the distorted view of apple fanboys. Microsoft copied apple with the surface? LOL, it is actually apple which is currently attempting to copy the surface, and the result will still be a useless toy compared to it. It sure did take M$ a long time to come with a tablet that was actually useful to power users, but apple sure is still struggling to do that, they suck even following in others' footsteps.
HammerStrike - Tuesday, October 13, 2015 - link
I don't think their products are ridiculously overpriced - most comparable hardware in the Android space (or Windows for laptops/AIO) price out in the same neighborhood. Also, 2/3 of their profit comes from iPhone, and given the insane amount of time that people spend on their phone daily, the extra 20 or 30 cents a day, over the lifetime of the phone, that the iPhone will cost vs a lower cost android is a worthwhile trade off for most people.Anecedotally, I've owned two Android high end phones over the last 4 years - a Samsung Galaxy 2 and a Samsung Note 3. I liked both of them a lot in the start, but both have had their camera's fail on me out of warranty and, after a few updates, both have cropped up glitches, crashes, random reboots and periods of super high battery usage that fluctuate in and out for no apparent reason. In a nut shell, they start out great, but by the end of year two (where I currently am with my Note 3) they both have aged very poorly.
In contrast, I've had an iPad 3 since it came out, and my wife as had a couple of iPhones (4, 5c). All of those devices have run flawlessly, and while progressive iOS releases may not run as quickly on older hardware as newer, we have never experienced any "slow degradation" issues surrounding the performance of the devices. I'll happily pay an extra couple hundred dollars every few years for a device I use multiple times an hour, every day, for that type of reliability.
[email protected] - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Apple is not "high-end". It's trying and some people believes it, but in actuality it is never high-end.It's always 1 step behind in everything.artificialintel - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
I'm talking about developers. I work as a developer in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and basically every developer's laptop is a Mac, though most are also running Linux boxes via VirtualBox or in the cloud. Well over half these people carry iPhones. The people I see with Windows laptops are almost never engineers; mostly they're sales or marketing.ddriver - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
Really, engineers almost never use windows hardware?Last time I checked, the only bit of engineering software that was running on mac was plain old AutoCad. And in engineering, AutoCad is like MS Paint in graphics design...
None of the serious engineering software even runs on a Mac. Not Catia, not SolidWorks, not Inventor, not Creo. I guess engineers simply love not being able to run any engineering software on their machines.
Programmers prefer apple? This doesn't seem like this is true either, at least according to programmers:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/65381/19289...
Plenty of good reasons to NOT use a Mac for programming. The only exception is if you target apple devices. Then you don't have a choice, thanks to good old apple's politics.
You obviously live in a place and keep acquaintances with people who care little about productivity and efficiency and prefer to waste money on product fads instead. With apple you simply pay more for less, unless your N1 priority is the apple fad.
Oddly enough, the best thing you can do in order to boost your productivity on a mac is... to install windows on it LOL. Get rid of the apple OS and it gets a tad better, but is still really poor value for the money.
artificialintel - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
Dude, I was talking about developers, AKA software engineers. My department is called engineering and the developers are generally called engineers. I was not suddenly switching topics from software development to mechanical engineering.Anyway, I'm not sure what "Windows hardware" would be. Plenty of people use Linux boxes, of course, though the big barrier I've seen to getting non-Apple hardware in most shops is that some devs really don't want to deal with the management overhead of Linux (drivers, filesystem mounting, AD support, etc). I mostly use my work Mac as a BSD box with Homebrew package management, though I'm gradually warming up to the Mac app Store. When I was doing docker development support for boot2docker was pretty far ahead of where it was on Windows, but with Docker Toolbox things seem to have reached a level playing field. In any case, I have never even seen a Silicon Valley software developer who develops primarily on Windows, though I know they exist especially amongst the companies founded in the mid-90s. Mac and Linux is essentially all I see. I definitely don't see people with Windows phones very often, and iPhones are at least as common as Macs. Does that mean that Mac/iPhone is better? Of course not. It does make assertions that Macs and iPhones are just for non-technical dum-dums sound uninformed and silly.
pablo906 - Sunday, October 18, 2015 - link
And now we understand the hate, he's europoor and can only afford counterfeit gear or cheap as dirt abacus with an antenna style phones. It's ok man you can immigrate somewhere where you don't have to use smoke signals to communicate with the other villages. I hear in Romania they're up to carrier pidgeons maybe check them out?Hembreeder - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Given your exceedingly dumb comments, I assume you use Apple products. And if you don't, how do you know they are so bad?dmacfour - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
"Given your exceedingly dumb comments, I assume you use Apple products."You speak just like the unhygienic and socially inept people we employ as developers.
pablo906 - Sunday, October 18, 2015 - link
You speak in absolutes like apple doesn't make anything good. It appears you aren't an owner but seems to be a complete expert in their products. I'm an expert on how terrible Lambos are, I mean I don't own one but anyone with two brain cells to rub together can realize that there are the worst cars ever. /sShiitaki - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
Huh?! I have a 22nm Haswell cpu in my iMac, with 32GB DDR3L ram, PCI-E SSD, 780M GTX graphics with 4GB, and a sRGB 27" screen. Yes, some of us Apple fanboys do know exactly what is in the computer. Some of use have actually tried building imitation Macs using PC hardware. It turns out there is a very good reason why Apple charges what they do. They don't use the mediocre crap that other companies do, and which people are constantly comparing to Apple. Turns out if you do build a PC with the same specs, it costs a lot! In fact if you are going 5K, there is nothing in the PC space even close in price, Dell sells a monitor for almost as much as the entire computer.I use FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, and OS X! OS X is easily the nicest OS to use, and the one I prefer. And after 3 years I finally bought the real thing, a 27" iMac with all of the goodies. And it sits on my desk, with my previous PC tower on the floor on the other side of me. And it is remarkable how silent, beautiful, fast, and tiny the iMac is in comparison. Both i7s, PC is Ivy, iMac is Haswell. Both have lots of ram, SSDs.
You see, it is the enjoyment of the anticipation of having a date with a model, and then not finding out she is a vegetarian. That is the secret to Apple's fan base. Satisfaction, or lack of the disappointment PCs bestow as a reward for going cheap.
I had to wait forever, for my Build to Order to arrive. Yes, most of the stock configurations are terrible. The longest wait was apparently for the NSA to install back doors in California for about a week. Never seen anything take that long to ship from California to Oregon. But then the day arrived, adults rarely get that kid on Christmas morning feeling. I singed for it, brought the odd shaped box in, and started the unboxing. Apple's attention to detail is amazing, I still use the box to transport the computer. In 5 minutes I had the machine booted, and already logged in to iCloud. My contacts, notes, and documents already available. Even my gmail account was configured automatically for me! My network shares were already available, no BS configuration needed like Windows. I could just click on them in Finder! And then Apple asks ME if I want to ACCEPT the software licenses included with the computer! Ten minutes in to the very pleasant ordeal, I am bragging up the computer to one of my friends by making a phone call from the new iMac, being relayed through my iPhone. You'll notice I did not mention reinstalling the OS to get rid of garbage software, no restarts to install updates, it was already updated at the factory.
Let's contrast that with the best PC i ever bought, a 3K dollar laptop in 2007. I opened the box, connected the power adapter, started the machine. And up came Windows Vista desktop. And what did I do? Stared at the screen, checked control panel, surfed the internet, and then restarted to install updates. The thing is that Windows doesn't do much out of the box, and that is if you are fortunate enough for there to not be any garbage installed. Yes, I've used Win8.1, it is a technological wonder in all the places you can't see, but the user experience hasn't changes. I don't know about Windows 10 since Microsoft refuses the update to Win8.1 No errors, just doesn't work. And I'm used to that. That is how Microsoft rolls. I tried forcing with the ISO, no joy.
Imagine, you are working on several things at once, and the power goes out. Why do people love Apple? Because when you restart, all of the apps open back up, and I am back where I was like nothing happened. This ability has been part of OS X for a long time. In fact, Microsoft even added key support this in NTFS and SMB! Leveraging this technology, my iMac installed updates at night and I only know because of a notification when I sit down in the morning. Thus, updates are much better on Mac. Drivers? Yes, OS X has them, I don't do anything with them. Microsoft could curate drivers from the less than 2 dozen chip manufacturers, but why bother right? WPA, I've never typed in a serial, or called Apple to install the OS. Even when I have done so on a PC. In fact reinstalling OS X on a PC is so much easier than a installing Windows. Microsoft really needs to do better, they are doing terrible. App store, there is not a lot of stuff in the Mac App store like there is in the iOS store, but when you do buy something from the store, it works on ALL of your computers. Not just 1. The myth that Apple is more expensive is false. It is only expensive for the first desktop, but you save more the more Macs you have. You also save money over time, since updates and newer versions of the OS are included in the initial buy in. There is a lot of savings in tech support and hardware issues as well. Reinstalling is so much easier if necessary, and TimeMachine backups are far, far, far ahead of Microsoft's backup solution.
To sum it up, yes Apple is expensive. But I believe life should be made better with technology, instead of life being wasted making technology work.
Alexvrb - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
They're good devices, they're just too expensive for what you get. Especially considering the 16GB model is still the base model. Only Apple can get away with that. It would be OK if it had mSD... but it doesn't.ex2bot - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Wait, what?? Did you just …(Scratches head. Shakes head bemusedly. Taps "Submit Comment
marmalito - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
"it is just a big meh."There are many, including experts who work for Anandtech, Ars Technica, and other reputable computer technology-focused organizations, who would argue otherwise. Many even consistently review new iOS devices and Mac computers as being among the best in their class.
Viewed objectively, the fact that the Apple-designed A9 is a power-sipping dual-core, nearly desktop class 64-bit SOC that can elegantly keep pace and even outperform Samsung's Galaxy 8 core, battery-chugging chip, while managing memory with double the efficiency is nothing short of amazing.
Have you seen the benchmarks? Nobody would have guessed Apple would be on the cusp of rivaling Intel for mobile processors in CPU and power performance, much less doing it inside a PHONE or tablet.
But let's just go back to the Apple of pre-profit times, like before their first sell-out vanity product, the iPod, and also iMacs... MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, etc...?
ddriver - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
Yes, I've seen the benchmarks, good single threaded performance, overall chip performance is nothing to brag about.But let me tell you this - you should definitely trust people, getting paid to praise apple and measure performance using JS benchmarks which do not even use the same JS implementation, because that's such an expert and objective comparison. Because it is not like the IT media is sucking up to apple, it is not like the US "justice" system fighting the competition for them. Nothing like that whatsoever.
But so what? I don't argue apple arm chips have very good single threaded performance, but so what? What good does it do for you? Is there a tangible benefit from it? Does it improve your life, or your productivity? If so, how exactly? What are you doing with this CPU horsepower? I mean people went into space with megahertz CPUs with kilobytes of memory, today we have multi core gigahertz CPUs with gigabytes of memory in our pockets, and what do we do with it?
That's the Worst part - today the actual product is not what the consumer purchases, but the consumer himself. Sure, this applies to all device manufacturers, but it is apple who began that terrible trend, where people use less and less of the technology and are used more and more through it, turning powerful technology in toys which actually make people stupider and wasting their lives in pointless, vanity feeding activities.
artificialintel - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
So you're basically saying Anandtech has no integrity. Super. Why are you even here?ddriver - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
They have integrity, it is just in the wrong place ;) It is really not a problem when that's the norm. It doesn't seem to matter if you are bad if you are not "relatively bad" and everyone is just as bad. It doesn't take a genius to notice AT's heavy yet careful bias when it comes to certain corporations, and apple is one of those. AT is not in position to be objective, because it will fall out of grace and become the Charlie Sheen of the IT media.If AT had integrity, there wouldn't be a mouth gaping ape on a hoodie staring me from the top of the site, urging me to "Buy Awesome Hoodies! Buy NOW!" if I disable my ad blocker.
According to uBlock, the average blocked ad content for my internet usage is 12%. On this particular AT page it is 22%. Ads take up 5/8 of the screen space. You can definitely tell this is a case of objective IT media, interesting in nothing else than bringing you objective IT information.
ddriver - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
As for "Why are you even here?" - well, If I had to avoid every place absent of integrity, I'd have to leave the planet ;) And since I still lack the resources to start my own colony on another planet, and what's more - since I don't think that the lack of integrity is something good or something one has to conform to and settle for - I logically act in opposition to it, as any person with integrity would do. People with integrity don't run away from the lack of integrity, they do the best in their power to establish integrity.Baffling, isn't it ;)
dmacfour - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
"If you look at it objectively"I think you're struggling with this aspect of it.
Apple makes good products, which you admit, but you still claim that people are dumb for buying them. You attribute it all to marketing, which is a bold claim to make without ANY supporting evidence.
ex2bot - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
No, that's why there's a big Apple on all boxes and devices. Otherwise we Apple users would be lost. (Sad trombone).SunnyNW - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Sorry forgot to ask... Have you guys been able to determine if there actually is a software solution to determine which A9 is being utilized?Ryan Smith - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Yes. There are a couple of different programs. Though I believe the only one in the App Store has been pulled.I can't vouch for the following method since it requires installing a custom developer certificate, but this would appear to be the next best way: http://demo.hiraku.tw/CPUIdentifier/
colinstalter - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Ryan,The developer of that app recently came out with an OSX method to identify the CPU, no app install on the phone required.
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/3o3as8/de...
Der2 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
#chipgateMrSpadge - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Sure, a 2-3% claimed difference in battery life of a phone is as relevant as Watergate..smorebuds - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Because other *-gate's are as "relevant" as Watergate?mkozakewich - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Maybe we should just redefine the word 'gate' to mean 'problem', so these descriptions could look as banal as they are.Morawka - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Chipworks mentioned they would benchmark and test for the differences, but they have yet to come through.. Hell, they haven't even given us a Floor Plan Die shot of the A9 yet, something they always do.I'm thinking they are starting to get greedy and holding out on the die shot, so they can charge companies all that money. But if they hold out any longer, they risk having a competitor steal the spotlight.
TLDR: Still no die shot from chipworks, still no TSMC vs Samsung A9 Comparison, just a very rudimentary metal shot.
Anandtech, Just get your hands on a couple of iphone 6 models from each Fab (samsung and TSMC) then set brightness to the minimum setting on each phone, and then run geekbench's battery test.
This will give us a vauge idea of the validity of these claims.
Morawka - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
and make sure its the same carrier, and same storage size.Pissedoffyouth - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Or use airplane mode as its a SoC comparison not a cell comparisonhans_ober - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Someone needs to setup aa Google docs page where people can add results ..Sorta crowdsource the results.. Might be on some forums?
Ryan Smith - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
The roadblock is that even if you give users specific instructions and they follow those instructions, you still need to control for brightness. That is more involved than just turning the brightness all the way up or down. To do it properly you need to measure & calibrate to a specific brightness (typically 200 nits).Nagorak - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
If you have a large enough sample size that sort of random setting issue should cancel out. For example if you get a sample of a thousand phones, then those from both manufacturers should converge around an average group of setting. If you even got the results of a hundred phones it might be enough.For a smaller sample size of only a couple dozen, equalizing settings becomes more important.
hansmuff - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I disagree with you. The variances could be enough to make the actual difference you want to measure disappear in noise, if it's on average small enough.But sure, exactly what's going to happen is threads all over the social networks where people talk about SOT, the holy grail, while being completely ignorant about proper testing.
FunBunny2 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Variance is important, but skew is far more important in real life. Average income in the USofA is quite high, but the skew means that the median is far lower, i.e. a few rich folks pull up the average. Same for chip analysis: a few goods (or bad ones) pull the average up (or down). Median is the better measure, but more difficult to figure.menting - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
you'd need thousands of parts across phones that cover months of wafer outs before you can make any call. Wafer lots have lots of variability, and processes usually shift around slowly (unless there is an excursion at the fab), so to say definitely which fab (Samsung or TSMC) has a better process for power is not easily done.name99 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
This whole methodology (and the thinking behind it) is totally retarded.Sorry to be harsh guys, but the thinking here is non-existent.
Do you KNOW what the variance is the batteries Apple uses is? Hell, do you know if they even come from the same manufacturer? Do you know what the variance is in the power usage of the flash that is used? In the DRAM? In the screens?
And you can't just say that it will all average out because you don't know what the correlations are:
For all we know, Foxconn Factory Number 3 gets all TSMC chips AND all Toshiba batteries; while Foxconn Factory number 7 gets all Samsung chips AND all Samsung batteries. Maybe the ENTIRE variance you are seeing here is in the batteries?
And for all we know, in a month Factory Number 3 will be given a ship full of Samsung batteries and suddenly it will be the TSMC iPhones that all appear to have slightly shorter battery life.
lilmoe - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
@name99"Do you KNOW what the variance is the batteries Apple uses is? Hell, do you know if they even come from the same manufacturer? Do you know what the variance is in the power usage of the flash that is used? In the DRAM? In the screens?"
You are being harsh (as usual), but I happen to agree here.
The thing is, just like I said in my other reply, is that Apple chose the WRONG PART to double source and then shuffle around. The Ax SoC is the hallmark of the iPhone in each review, and the part that causes all sorts of educated AND non-educated controversies.
If double sourcing was unavoidable, they should have released different parts to different regions where consumers have but one choice if they wanted the latest iPhone, eliminating lots of headache.
IF the issue is real and quantified, some customers won't care in the US, but lots of others will, especially in developing countries and China... Gray market and independent store sales make a HUGE chunk of overall iPhone sales. Customers WILL demand a certain chip, causing inventory problems. Resale values WILL vary, and customers dependent on the iPhone's resale value will suffer.
Nagorak - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
I think you are really going out of your way to exaggerate the potential problems. If the difference between the chips is so small it gets overwhelmed by all of the other factors in the phone, then that is the answer in itself. If there is a more noticeable difference then only at that point do you need to worry about whether it is the result of the chip itself or whether something else like the battery is actually responsible.You guys are acting like only an absolutely perfect testing method can provide ANY information, when a less rigorous test can still provide valuable information, there's just a greater margin for error and uncertainty. A quick and dirty test can be used to help determine whether there is likely anything there that warrants further investigation. It can't do that with complete certainty, but it can still potentially provide some idea.
lilmoe - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
nah... I said "IF" in capital letters. I also think it's virtually impossible to quantify correctly.But people are paranoid. One publication is enough to affect their buying judgements (with a scientific method or not). IF there's a significant difference posted on a website with some sort of analysis (real OR fake), it has the potential problems I mentioned above.
Morawka - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
nah just set it to the minimum setting.. There is always going to be variance ryan. Some displays will use more power at 200nits than other displays (just like the soc's), even with the same part. you get variance either way..The simplest and most streamlined way to do it is set it to the minimum brightness setting. Even a noob can follow those instructions.
vishal_ec - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
comparison of 1 tsmc based iphone vs 1 samsung based iphone still gives some insight. All the charts on your websites which are so popular are afterall benchmarks run on 'one' unit of each phone and not averaged across lots of units of each phone.jablonsky27 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Cant you take the Geekbench scores and plot them out? If you see two normal curves with displaced peaks doesn't it indicate an overall variance?As more and more people put up Geekbench scores, the assumption that the fraction of users with, say, 100% screen brightness or with airplane mode ON is the same becomes truer.
Speedfriend - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
This articles makes me wonder about something. We are often told that Apple will dump Intel because they can make A series processors for much less by fabbing them at TSMC/Samsung for $25. But if they are binning (literally) for performance, we don't really have any idea of how bad the yield is and hence what the actual cost per chip is.iwod - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
" Unfortunately all of the iPhones we've received and purchased so far have used TSMC A9s "Well I would say for a consumer that would be rather fortunate.
PeterMorgan573 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Perhaps you already intended this by your comment, but it also raises the question whether only TSMC A9s are being sent to reviewers.steve1616 - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
This is exactly what I was thinking. I guarantee you that only the best chips, batteries, etc are sent to reviewers. This is nothing more than deception and fraud, and every company seems to do it. I haven't seen a review yet with the Samsung chip. That isn't an accident. That alone tells you this issue has merit. I do kind of wonder if this was meant to get out. What better way for Apple to give Samsung a bad name.I still remember buying a Samsung lcd that got reviewed awesome. They sent reviewers a premium ips panel, and most all customers received cheap tn panels.
ThreeDee912 - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
"Unfortunately all of the iPhones we've received and purchased so far have used TSMC A9s""iPhones we've received and purchased"
"and purchased"
They've purchased some too, and they also happened to be TSMC. Don't think there's any "deception and fraud" going on.
darkich - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
TL, DR - "all we know is that we don't know".Don't waste your time with this
LordConrad - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
So the entire purpose of this article was to say that you don't know? What a waste of time.Ryan Smith - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
It's more that we can't know. At least not with current uncontrolled tests and 1-on-1 comparisons.dakishimesan - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
It's perfectly valid and admirably ethical to analyze the problem and, seeing the variables involved, conclude that there is simply not enough information to make a judgement yet (and that anyone making such judgements are likely wrong at this time). It's still informative, hones in on a solution, and is absolutely useful and not a waste of time.LordConrad - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
It would be more productive to just wait until they have all the facts and information, and then write the article.erple2 - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
I think the problem is that they CAN'T know. Which is a far more interesting conclusion. Stating this now essentially informs the consumer that there isn't any way to draw meaningful conclusions at this time, and that it is extremely unlikely that, given the necessary controlled tests required to make a meaningful analysis, it is exceptionally unlikely that anyone will ever be able to make any kind of reasonable conclusion.Metroid64 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I would rather win the actual lottery rather than the silicon lottery...In all seriousness. Apple's decision to use 2 different foundries for the same chip will definitely result in 2 different power/performance profile curves. Given the premium pricing of these phones a potential customer should be able to at least be informed of what to expect…
hansmuff - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
They are, though. They get a fully supported product that does perform to specification. That a specification contains dual sourcing is not new, but people who believe are experts in CPU manufacturing (they aren't) get all up in arms while a regular user just wants to use their phone.The same thing happened when Samsung dual sourced their camera image sensor. Some phones have SONY chips, some have Samsung chips. Both produce great results.
It'll take a fairly large sample of chips to prove anything one way or another. I'm sure it'll be done but it has to be done in a controlled environment instead of people shooting their mouths off about SOT.
Joshnola - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I did think my battery life had gone down significantly compared to my regular 6. I went ahead and swapped it out because I was within my 14 days and to see if I could ditch the Samsung chip, I got lucky and got a tsmc chip and honestly there is a significant and noticeable difference. The first phone would lost 5-6% in 5 minutes of typical browsing through Facebook. So until they optimize for the other chip, it's bigger than they admitted toows3 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
In other words, you didn't read the article. Or if you did, you don't understand it.A sample size of two is totally meaningless. There is enough natural variation within the SoCs from a single manufacturer to account for any difference you have seen. Your personal experience is nothing more than an irrelevant anecdote.
sillysally - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I agree. I also upgraded from 6 to 6S and noticed a significant reduction in battery life. With the 6, I was regularly getting two days between charges, and now with the 6S I'm getting the 20% warning in the evening of day 1. 6S chip is Samsung N71AP.Zotamedu - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
If you guys have access to a number of TSMC A9 iPhones, can't you do a quick test with those and see how they differ? That would be interesting to know. If they differ in the same order of magnitude as the test between TSMC and Samsung, then we can assume that the difference in the test was just bad luck. But if a number of TSMC show very similar performance, then there might actually be a difference between Samsung and TSMC.delslove - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I have a test result of 6s comparing tsmc and samsung using several benchmark tools. I have posted it on Iphone users' community website in Korea, I will kindly provide my data with photos if you consider that as a relevant reference .klagermkii - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Maybe it doesn't matter as much within typical usage, but what if you're someone who likes to play a game like Hearthstone on your phone that's continuously taxing the device? Are you going to then be seeing a significantly different level of battery life?Mugur - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
If I were Apple, I would sell the same SoC in a specific region... I wonder how they end up mixed this way, like a random distribution. Samsung dual sourced their camera sensor for S6 (Samsung and Sony) and there were also visible differences, especially in low light (but there is no "good" or "bad" sensor per se). But this is way big...All in all, it's good to know that TSMC 16 process is better than Samsung's 14... I hope Global Foundry's 14 (Samsung based, I think) will be good - of course it's not LP like these SoCs, but...
lilmoe - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
"All in all, it's good to know that TSMC 16 process is better than Samsung's 14"You can't build conclusions as such. These two processes are compelling different with different properties and chemistry. Apple can optimize the A9 further on Samsung's process to perform better and consume less power. We don't know binning info note revisions on these chips (from either source), nor do we know if even all Samsung A9s are equal.
A comparison, by consumers, is virtually impossible.
This is Apple's fault and their responsibility alone. They should have made their design team focus on one process node and work out the paperwork to ensure sufficient supply.
Having two separate sources of the same chip sounded ridiculous since it was first rumored. Bad decision.
lilmoe - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
***completely different***we don't know binning info or revision numbers
for lack of edit button, Anandtech...
FunBunny2 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
-- This is Apple's fault and their responsibility alone.Well, they could have built a factory to build them, with their own QA!!!! But that would be a waste of shareholder capex, dontcha know??
name99 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
What is their fault? Have they sold a phone that does not match the specs they promised?What's next? Someone's going to report that they have a Toshiba-made battery in their phone and it lasts (apparently) five minutes longer than the Samsung-made battery in their friends's phone?
I got a Pegatron-made phone and it's only waterproof to a depth of 120cm, unlike the Foxconn-made one which is waterproof to a depth of 130cm?
Apple has lived through these moronic scandal-wannabes before. Every year --- antenna-gate, then fingerprint-gate, then bend-gate. Every freaking one of them is utterly content-free.
You want to know why Apple releases NOTHING about the tech specs of their devices? This is why --- because an idiot population aided and abetted by an idiot media insists on blowing the most pathetic and minuscule issues into the second holocaust.
Why doesn't Apple give us CPU frequencies? Because some idiot web site will report the "scandal" that under certain conditions when the CPU gets hotter enough it runs at a lower frequency.
Why doesn't Apple tell us technical innovations in the CPU? Because if they report that it can now decode 8 instructions/cycle instead of 6, some moron will complain to Congress that his phone only decodes 8 instructions on some cycles, not on every cycle.
The only safe behavior in the face of such rampant-ani-intellectualism is to not say a damn thing except to concentrate on vague meangingless words. "It's prettier than before. It's faster. It has a better camera."
lilmoe - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Looks like I always step on a landmine when it comes to you. Long time no see big guy. But lets not turn this into a fan war. Let's not be overly defensive either.Every popular product faces criticism, and sometimes rightfully so. Samsung, for example, releases the same flagship with completely difference SoCs (in different regions) and always get slaughtered for it. They also get slaughtered because they release top-binned Exynos SoCs only in Korean variants. They got called out for their non-functional interconnect in the Exynos 5410, and I was among thousands of extremely pissed customers, and rightfully so.
I'm not a fan of the "gate" thing, and I'm totally aware that some of them are blown out of proportion so that some monkey youtuber can get a "scoop". But that doesn't mean that some aren't on point. Apple, for example, DID have antenna and bending issues. These are facts because they got "fixed" in later iterations and the fix was touted as a feature (the iPhone 4 even had a "fixed" batch for the antenna problem for the same generation). You dismiss some, but you can't dismiss all (as you've done).
I'm not sure of the extent this current SoC "issue". It MIGHT be a non-issue, but it's a fact that some users are reporting differences of way over the alleged 3% mark, even under normal use. Like I said, it's virtually impossible to test since the same process node can yield different results (as we all know). Not all chips are created equal, even on the same process. I was simply replying to someone who ignorantly believes that one process is better than the other, based solely on assumptions comparing NON-identical SoCs (further extending the scope of variance).
Had all these SoCs been manufactured by the same fab on the same process, then Apple's statement would have sufficed. Case closed. Mouths would've been shut. However, with entirely different process (and two different design teams), these are NOT identical chips even when the functions/architectures are identical. One design team might have done a better job than the other, or there might not have been enough time for further revisions on Samsung's process. Alas, Samsung's process might indeed be inferior! Apple should have accounted for that variance, and therefore the potential headache it might cause.
Apple is at fault because they could have mitigated this (potential) problem simply by releasing different SoCs in different regions instead of shuffling the parts and distributing them randomly (when the part numbers can be easily traced by software). Other manufacturers have done so in the past on normal basis, therefore it wouldn't have made such a huge stir...
They should know better than leaving such OBVIOUS holes for potential criticism. Especially for a part that gets lots of attention, thorough analysis and deep dive articles with extensive testing and benchmarking. They were simply asking for it.
menting - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that TSMC 16nm is better than Samsung's 14nm. There is just not enough information out there right now, unless of course you have your hands on more than thousands of parts worth of data. (You do know that wafer lots vary from lot to lot regarding process, and that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of dies in a lot, right?)Mugur - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I agree, it's not a very good statistical conclusion since the sample is not big enough, but I couldn't find any benchmark that stated that Samsung SoC is better WRT the battery life. More or less, every measurement shows TSMC has lower power figures. Of course, I don't think that it's a bigger deal in day to day usage (unless Apple is stupid), but nonetheless the difference exists, even if it's hard to quantify it.PC Perv - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
In an article they acknowledge to be meaningless AnandTech manages to create yet another chart where Apple products are at the top. Their results also do not agree with Geekbench's own. I am sure there is a reason for it just as there has always been. But really, you guys are pathetic.Ryan Smith - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
That chart was generated solely to show the difference between light and heavy battery lifetimes. It doesn't even include the 6s (since we're still reviewing it).lefenzy - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
It's your comment that's pathetic. It's not like the numbers were made up. iPhones have better battery life and perf than the Samsung versions. Don't read Anandtech if you think the apple bias is so strong that a single chart in an article discussing iPhone issues is there to propagate some general feeling of iPhone superiority.Shadowmaster625 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
But is a meaningless statement from Apple. Even if every iPhone 6s did have the same exact SoC, their statement would also apply just the same. 3% is not a lot.hughlle - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
If the focus is on the real world, then in the real world there is no reason to buy the 6s instead of a 6 for performance reasons, or pixel density etc, because in the real world I'd be surprised if anyone can notice any difference whatsoever.So when it comes to cpu differences, Apple are adament that the focus is on the real world, but when it comes to marketing and spec sheets they do everything they can to step as far away from the real world as possible and convince you that is magically superior and you won't be able to live unless you upgrade :p
steve1616 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
My wife and I got IPHONE 6S PLUS phones this week. My wife was complaining because she hardly uses hers and is at 30% at the end of the day. I use mine a lot more, and was at 30% after 2 full days. Out of curiousity, I ran the app to find out which chip we have. Mine is made by TSMC and hers is made by Samsung. There might be something to this, and apple might have really screwed up.repoman27 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
So back up both phones and then restore to the other phone (i.e. swap phones with your wife, it'd be the chivalrous thing to do in this case anyway). Then you'd at least know if the battery life trend correlates more strongly with the phone or the user.For every model of iPhone that Apple has released, there have been users that complain about experiencing lower battery life than their peers. There has always been variance, both in terms of usage and actual performance. As long as the 6s and 6s Plus perform at least as well as advertised, then Apple didn't screw up at all. The performance gap created by the Mac SSD lottery (when you could get either Toshiba, SanDisk or Samsung SSDs) was a way bigger deal for the end user than this.
sillysally - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I did something similar, albeit 6 vs 6S with Samsung chip. New 6S for me, gave my wife the 6. I noticed the reduction in battery life on the 6S so switched back. After two days she asked to switch back as she noticed the battery was running down in less than one day. Hardly scientific I know, but she knew nothing of the situation.blackcrayon - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Do you really think one chip drains twice as fast? LOL.If Apple screwed up, it would be like saying Intel screwed up because my 4 Ghz i7 won't overclock past 4.1 and your 4 Ghz i7 overclocks to 4.2. As long as the advertised specs are reached, they have nothing to worry about.
Taronga - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Patiently waiting for Anandtech to do this testing...I'm happy with the real world battery performance of my Samsung A9 iPhone 6S, but these initial reports are a little concerning. If there really is a 20% efficiency difference, my phone is going back to Apple for an exchange.steve1616 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
My last post didn't show up. Short story of it is that my wife's iPhone 6s plus lasts half as long as mine and I show way more usage. I used an app and found out that my chip is TSMC and hers is from Samsung so there might be some major battery life differences. I think we might go find an apple store to see if we can return hers because of its battery life. We just got these phones 4 days ago so they are both very new.izdlang - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I'm curious as to what they say.. got my dad one through verizon, it's a Samsung.. he thinks battery life stinks compared to his old iphone 5s, he barely uses a phone anyhow.steve1616 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Now both of my posts showed up, lol. I can't back up both phones and change phones because I need my cell phone number. It is what we use for business. I do realized that every 2 phones can have drastically different battery life for many reasons. I just know that my wife complained after the first day that her old HTC did just as good and it was 2.5 years old. We could have just gotten a bad phone, but I found it interesting that it just happened to line up with the Samsung chip being way worse on battery life. Ill let you guys know what I find out after some more testing.repoman27 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I was thinking you'd swap SIMs as well, but obviously that doesn't work for some wireless service providers. (Or if they're carrier locked to different service providers.)Hannibal80 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I'd say that battery production too can have different effective capacity and internal resistance, affecting this sort of testing.SteelRing - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
All this pain just for the sake of figuring out a few min differences in battery life? For all practical purposes your battery cell would probably degrade faster within a few months of use than differences in SOC yield binning could ever matter. With non-user replaceable battery having the so called "golden SOC" inside your phone does not mean sh1t when it's 3 years from now and your battery is less than half its original capacity anyway.steve1616 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I think you are missing the point. We are not talking about a few min differences, and I am not sure it its the chip or not, but we are talking huge differences. My phone showed 18 hours of usage and 28 hours of standby before I needed a charge. My wifes phone showed 3 hours of usage, and 20 hours of standby before she needed a charge. Our phones are iPhone 6s plus phones, but I also got my dad an iPhone 6s. He was down to 12% battery life, and he showed 5 minutes of usage and 26 hours of standby. That is ridiculous considering his 2.5 year old iPhone 5 lasted him for half a week. He barely uses his phone. Guess what, I used the app and found out his brand new iPhone 6s that drains the battery is a Samsung chip. So I have 3 brand new iphones, 2 have terrible battery life and they are Samsung chips. 1 is exceptional battery life and it is TSMC.phoenix_rizzen - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
That sounds more like she goes places with poor cellular reception and the radio spends too much time trying to connect, draining the battery.My phone (LG G2) does something similar. Sometime in the past year, Rogers changed their tower config near work, and I can't get a solid LTE connection at work anymore.
If I have LTE enabled while at work, the battery will be almost dead by the end of the work day, even if it's just sitting on my desk. If I manually switch it to 3G/HSPA while at work, the battery sits above 80% at the end of the work day.
I've taken to disabling cellular data when the screen is off (via LeanDroid), which makes a huge difference at work.
jjj - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
There are a lot more amateurish comparisons from China and they look at temps and pef too.There was one a few days ago, they ran Antutu 12 times, TSMC was some 3C cooler over a few measurements during the test, slightly faster and battery left 77% vs 71%.
Point is that heavy users will see a big impact, soccer moms with 2 days battery life will get that 2-3% difference. Given Apple's more than 30mm2 GPU , would really like to see a comparison in gaming.
DanDan415 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I got my 6th iPhone with Samsung chip.... Can I trade with you? (Feel so frustrated...)steve1616 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Have you just been taking them back everytime? Is your battery life really crappy. That would make me extremely upset. I kind of feel like I won the lottery at this point.izdlang - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
If you have a TSMC iPhone 6s 16gb on Verizon, I know someone who would probably trade you a Samsung version for testing.bigstrudel - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Still getting the best SoC and best architecture available regardless.How is this more of an issue than Samsung and other vendors sourcing their processors from multiple companies?
Galaxy S2, S3, S4, S5 all used Snapdragon AND Exynos. Exynos (Pure ARM Core) and Krait (Full Custom Core) couldn't be much farther apart in their architecture and performance. The Galaxy S3 had a dual core and quad core variant for heavens sake.
It's no wonder software update speed has only improved in the S6 generation.
Rapha.194 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
All the tests I've seen in written websites and youtube videos show the Samsung chip warmer and shorter battery life.It would be much innocence find that this is coincidence.
harrydevlin - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Every time the manufacturer of a product say something along the lines of "in the real world.." or "in real life..." you can be certain that you are about to be lied to.In fact, the tests that have been done show a significant difference in both power consumption and thermals. Apple even took down the app that lets owners see which CPU they have so obviously they are extremely concerned.
Morawka - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
If i were going to run a compeletly controlled test.. here is how i would do it.Get 5 phones each with TSMC and Samsung A9's
Run Battery Test one of Each Fab
Then take apart the phone, and replace the logic board from the other 4 phones. Using the same Battery, Screen etc... and then run your battery test with the same exact settings each time.
This way, you eliminate all variances in screen, and battery.
Just swap out the mainboards and collect results, then average. Presto
The only concern i have is if the Touch ID Sensor is Paired to the SOC somehow for security, if so, you would have to swap the sensor each time, but that probably has 0 variance anyway.
name99 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
"However since Apple currently only uses at most two bins of chips (those suitable for 6s and those suitable for 6s Plus)"This is not exactly true. There are probably at least four bins being taken, though only two are currently being used. The other two bins are probably
- future iPad Mini (runs at say 2GHz rather than 1.85, while still at low power --- so the "best" chips)
- future Apple TV (runs at god knows what, maybe 2GHz, but power is mostly a non-issue, so the "worst" chips)
imorven168 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Besides the battery power consumption, many people in the world already think 14nm is better 16nm and Samsung won the game and beat TSMC in this 14/16nm competition. However, ideally 14nm square is almost 23.4% smaller than 16nm square, and finally the chip difference is around 9% smaller only, and Apple says that the overall difference is 2-3%. I think TSMC did a great job!! Well done.Wooloomooloo - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
Isn't this simply due to the fact the 14nm process means the chip runs cooler so stays at full speed for longer (during tests), whereas TSMC's 16nm process is larger, hotter and probably throttles more quickly, resulting in clock speed coming down and using less power?Mugur - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
In theory, within a certain thermal envelop, when a cpu throttles more, it also sips more current (that's the whole reason for higher temps and throttling is the consequence of higher temps) and by throttling the performance will be affected. From the few tests I've spotted on the 'net the TSMC chip is the one with a bit higher performance (just barely), probably due to the fact that it throttles less...T-Will - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Have you picked up one of the SIM-free 6s's 64GB space gray (model A1633)? Out of two that I checked, both had a Samsung processor.bummerb - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
Don't forget Apple worked hard and helped TSMC a lot to make this chips while Samsung had to learn by itself.When the next stepping is out Samsung chips will be the ones everybody wants.
yhselp - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
A great read. Thank you. Can't wait for the review.mr_tawan - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
It's probably interesting to test a number of TSMC devices to see if there are any differences between them.zodiacfml - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
I highly doubt this is worth discussing. I'm sure Apple made their homework and real world workloads just can't bring out that small difference.steve1616 - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
The reason why it is worth discussing is because it looks like you are wrong. Apple probably wouldn't have even responded if they didn't know this was an issue. They screwed up, simple as that.dmacfour - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
2-3% a screw up? Okay...tynopik - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
'Rudamentary', not a wordsteve1616 - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
I hope anandtech really looks into this. I think Apple is lying badly. I took both of our phones today and did the same amount of every single thing on them. Also, she has a privacy screen protector which makes her screen think its darker outside so her auto brightness levels are way lower. My tsmc was at 60% battery life after 3 hours and 39 minutes of usage, and 28 hours and 4 min. standby. Her battery was at 28% after 3 hours and 37 minutes of usage and 20 hours of standby. Her phone has the Samsung chip. My dads Samsung based chip is lasting exactly a day until its at 10% and it only has 5 minutes of usage time. It is also Samsung based and all he does is receive a call or 2. I have gone through all of the phones to eliminate any apps from running in the background. My dad doesn't even have any other apps so that isn't an issue on his phone. I also did a hard reset and restore on all phones. I am not a happy camper.ezridah - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
Obviously there could be many other differences between each phone's display brightness and other settings, but looking at the current Geekbench results the trend is showing all of the front runners to be TSMC chips. Right now, the first 6S Plus with a Samsung chip is in 7th place and is anywhere from 25 minutes to 4 hours behind each TSMC 6S Plus in front of it. The first Samsung 6S is in 15th place and is anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour behind each TSMC 6S in front of it. This is still a small sample, but the starting trend is a bit disturbing. If there was just 1 Samsung 6S or 6S Plus that broke into the top 3 positions it would make me feel better about all of this. The results might get muddier as time goes on. Maybe in a few days we'll see a Samsung fabbed iPhone break into the top ranks, but I'm not holding my breath.J0N4TH4N - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
That would explain my very very bad battery performance, when using skype it goes from 95% to 72% in only 27 minutes, my old iPhone 4 performs better.jenchih liu - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
Isat is different among those A9 and it will cause different power consumption. Samsung' A9 14n process yield isn't reach to its production level of 80%, it means Samsung' A9 is unstable and shouldn't put into mass production.TEAMSWITCHER - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
"The short answer is that all we know is that we don't know."And you felt compelled to write an article about it? With "Completely Fictitious Charts?" I just might delete my bookmark to this site. My, oh my, have things fallen since Anand's departure.
Ryan Smith - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
Sometimes it's more important to state that we don't know - that we can't know - rather than acting as if we do know or staying silent. Several readers had asked us for our thoughts, and in light of so many people extrapolating from 1-on-1 comparisons, Josh and I wanted to take the time to point out that while these are a good starting point, there are many variables in play that make the task of comparing TSMC and Samsung harder than it first appears.Similarly, the fictitious chart is meant to demonstrate the basic properties of chip quality distribution in a manner more accessible to a wider audience.
steve1616 - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
Ryan, I really appreciate what you guys are doing. It is very important to someone like me who just bought 3 new iphones and am only having problems with the Samsung based ones. I am seeing a huge discrepancy that correlates very closely to the testing. I have been a reader for a very long time, and think you guys are the best in the industry. Almost all of the pc's I have built were completed strictly from the recommendations you guys have made. Don't be discouraged or even aknowledge people that are being mean as they don't have to read the articles they aren't interested in. They usually have agendas. Also, I have always held apple to greater standards because they have always had more consistency in their products. When we see something like this, there is reason for concern since this is the kind of thing Apple was known not to do. This is the kind of thing that has always separated apple, and why you never had to be concerned about the consistency and quality of their products.EdBenton - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
PrimateLabs say that their battery benchmark runs at 30%. The report at the end of the test also claims this.During some analysis of the test using the Xcode "Instruments" tool, I have found the true CPU utilisation to be closer to 60%.
If they their suppositions about how much CPU they are using are out by almost 100% perhaps we should also take their claims of emulating "real life usage" with a pinch of salt.
A short video of the first few seconds of the test for anyone who might be curious:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z4mdom3h1irls9z/Instrume...
steve1616 - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
what you are saying may be true, but I would tend to believe them since I am seeing it with my own eyes. I am seeing more of a discrepancy with battery life with real world use than their tests are even showing. You shouldn't have to struggle with battery life when a phone is new. My wife and Dad told me that they really don't care what phone I get them as long as it works and has decent battery life. This is a big enough issue that they said just get them a galaxy or whatever as long as the battery life is more reasonable. I almost think there is something else differently being packaged with these Samsung processors because I can't believe a processor is making this much difference.duckie7777 - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
"My sources tell me that Samsung's 14nm is 3-6 months ahead of TSMC’s 16FF+. My sources also tell me that TSMC 16nm FF+ is today the most competitive FinFET offering, meaning power, performance, area, AND cost. This is based on information from the associated PDKs and not from PowerPoint slides or press releases."- Daniel Nenni 6/8/2014
https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/3546-tsmc-v...
BitJunkie - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
What's interesting is that this conversation is even happening. It's relatively easy to differentiate a product when you can make significant and obvious improvements between iterations (dimensions, mass, screen resolution, gamut etc). Doing this by securing preferential agreements with the supply chain and making sure leading edge tech in the products is part a key part of this.Products mature, marginal improvements force a conversation around specs and then the "magic" is harder to sell. Yes this SoC is technically impressive, but the points about real-life impact and wow factor are on the money. Apple's success in the last 10 years was driven by the whole package - design + specs. This iteration and those of other product lines are not following that "recipe". So what is Apple going to do next?
The form factor of phones is no longer up for grabs, as an integrator, Apple has the challenge that most of the components are comoditised and available in competing products. If the only edge they have is on the SoC, and the SoC is not driving differentiation in an obvious way, they are up the creek.
Now they have to compete on level playing field unless, the conversation around value becomes harder and so they need to do SOMETHING to make a difference. This will drive the need to innovate, and if they don't they will be in the wilderness. My prediction is that they are going to stall for a few years, and Microsoft is going to seem to be more innovative over the next few product cycles. Take it or leave it as an opinion, but I think Apple are struggling...
ciderrules - Tuesday, October 13, 2015 - link
Thanks for the morning laugh.ezridah - Wednesday, October 14, 2015 - link
I don't know if anyone is still looking at this thread, but looking at the current Geekbench scores gives this rumored issue some credibility. I am only referring to tests that went from 100% to 0% battery here:iPhone 6s Plus - 10 TSMC before first Samsung. None after. TSMC anywhere from 7.5 to 8.5 hours (one crazy 11 hour outlier). Samsung anywhere from 5.5 to 7 hours.
iPhone 6s - 16 TSMC before first Samsung. None after. TSMC anywhere from 5.5 to 5.75 hours. Samsung anywhere from 2.5 to 4.75 hours.
There are literally no TSMC iPhones with a lower score than any Samsung iPhones and unfortunately it appears there are significantly more phones with Samsung chips.
I understand that this still isn't conclusive evidence, but these trends are certainly pointing towards this being a real issue. There's no way that all of the TSMC phone owners had their screen brightness all the way down and all of the Samsung phone owners had theirs all the way up (or anything else that could contribute to the scores being lower/higher). This is pretty damning IMO and I'm guessing the more phones get tested the more this will keep showing the same trends.
What do you guys think?
iczer123 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Hi guys, take a look at this this article from tom'shardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iphone-6s-a9-sams... they conclude that both versions of Apple's A9 SoC deliver the same level of performance, but Samsung's 14nm FinFET process appears to offer slightly better power efficiency....TechJunkie4Life - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
The best information by far that I have come across is here.. http://www2.techinsights.com/l/8892/2015-09-28/zxx...And the images of all the A9 Processor images are great, and FREE