Not All iPhone 6s Processors Are Created Equal (itworld.com) 262
itwbennett writes: Apple is splitting the manufacture of the A9 processor for its iPhone 6s between TSMC (~60%) and rival Samsung (~40%) — "and they are not created equal," writes Andy Patrizio. For starters, Chipworks noted that Samsung uses 14nm while TSMC uses 16nm. A Reddit user posted tests of a pair of 6s Plus phones and found the TSMC chip had eight hours of battery life vs. six hours for the Samsung. Meanwhile, benchmark tests from the folks at MyDriver (if Mr. Patrizio's efforts with Google Translate got it right) also found that the Samsung chip is a bigger drain on the phone's battery, while the TSMC chip is slightly faster and runs a bit cooler. So how do you know which chip you got? There's an app for that.
Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple: don't buy it at all. If a company is going to play shenanigans like this where products marketed with the exact same name and part number are significantly different and it's just a luck-of-the-draw ass to whether I get the good one or the crappy one, I'm just not going to buy their product at all.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:4, Informative)
Simple: don't buy it at all. If a company is going to play shenanigans like this where products marketed with the exact same name and part number are significantly different and it's just a luck-of-the-draw ass to whether I get the good one or the crappy one, I'm just not going to buy their product at all.
Play shenanigans? That pre-supposes that somewhere at Apple, Tim Cook and company are laughing at their customers because they fell for their secret, master plan of causing Apple bad PR and headaches. Maybe in the real world, Apple, like many companies, have to source parts from multiple suppliers for practical reasons like: redundancy and demand. Certainly Apple isn't the first and the last company to run into problems when their part which should be identical has differences because of which plant made them.
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For every phone design they run a competition among vendors for key parts that need to be custom for their plan. As their success has increased it has become clear that this model has issues. Reserving half your fab capacity for Apple in case of a design win is VERY expensive, and losing has crippled a couple of their suppliers. Similarly winning comes with the need to do a MASSIVE product ramp. As a result they have had to come up with new internal tactics to keep key suppliers from going under if they
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
If sourcing substantially different parts from different vendors is necessary to meet production volume, then they need to have different part names and model names for these products.
Let's start with the first thing: These parts are not supposed to be substantially different. They are the same design but at a smaller feature size. The fact that they are is a problem and Apple will have to get with Samsung and TSMC to figure what is the issue. Second, different sources parts are known internally but not externally. After all, does Intel rename a Broadwell Core i7 differently when it comes from Oregon or Arizona or Ireland? No. There is a part number that tells where the chip was made and you as a customer don't know where it came from when you order it from Newegg or Micron or wherever.
This isn't a case of having resistors or capacitors from different manufacturers, something that won't affect performance in any measurable way, this is a case of having two completely different CPUs, with very different performance from the two.
How is an dual core A9 from Apple a "completely different CPU" than an dual core A9 from Apple. They are the exact same design by Apple. If you feel that makes them "completely different", did you lecture Microsoft when they switched Xbox processors? From what I remember IBM Xenon processor [wikipedia.org] was shrink reduced from 90nm to 65nm to 45nm. These are all "different" CPUs to you?
6h vs. 8h in a power-consumption test is a huge, huge difference.
And if it's true, Apple will have to look into why.
Intel sells CPUs all the time which are very similar, but have performance that differs to that extent: they use completely different part numbers to describe these parts.
The problem with this comparison is that a Core i7 is not the same as a Core i5 with actual differences like L3 cache size, TDP, clock speed, etc. and these come from different designs.
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Changing an Xbox chip to a lower sized process doesn't negatively impact things like battery life, which is an advertised spec on the iPhone. Even still, Xbox changes the model number when making hardware revisions, where as this iPhone and the similar issue with MacBook Airs a few years ago were not detectable by the hardware revision.
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Changing an Xbox chip to a lower sized process doesn't negatively impact things like battery life, which is an advertised spec on the iPhone.
Your assumption is that Apple intended the two processors to behave differently. They didn't. As for changing the Xbox chip, shrinking the die size may have other impacts like increased heat/power which then they have to account for in the design of the Xbox. That increased heat/power may require additional fans. That affects the power performance of the console. While many people probably don't care about power in a game console, it is a change.
Even still, Xbox changes the model number when making hardware revisions, where as this iPhone and the similar issue with MacBook Airs a few years ago were not detectable by the hardware revision.
It may be detectable in the Apple iPhone 6s serial number. I
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I guess it true that Apple users have small penises (ii?), if you can mouth all that while sucking up so hard.
Intel calls an i5@2600Mhz different than the i5@3400Mhz. If you buy the slow one you get it cheaper. End user overclocking is unrelated so don't even try to bring that up.
For a car analogy, this is DIRECTLY comparable to the difference between ordering a v8 and getting a v6 - but the v6 is the one that burns more gas!
To use your car analogy, I guarantee that if you tested 100 different copies of exactly the same year and model car on a dynanometer, equipped the same, with the same engine and transmission options, you would get exactly 100 different horsepower/kW output numbers. And the "spread" might really surprise you.
Sometimes, these differences from different suppliers become part of the fan-folklore surrounding a particular component or product. The best example I can come up with offhand is the venerable Ford 35
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If Apple advertises the iPhone based on the worse case and you just happen to get one with slightly better specs, how is Apple being dishonest?
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That would allow customers to make an informed decision on which product to buy, the 6sm or the 6ss.
Does Intel let you know which of their plants made the Core i7 you get from Newegg?
If they are marking these products with the same part number at least they should call it the "6?", as in what will you get?
They're not the same part number; the model number A9 is the same. The internal part numbers were APL0898 and APL1022.
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Does Intel let you know which of their plants made the Core i7 you get from Newegg?
Intel labels parts made on different processes with different part numbers. That allows you to choose which processor you want.
They're not the same part number; the model number A9 is the same. The internal part numbers were APL0898 and APL1022.
It's clear from my post I'm talking about the phone part number that the customer uses to order, not the internal Apple part number for the two different processors made on two different processes from two different companies with different performance.
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Intel labels parts made on different processes with different part numbers. That allows you to choose which processor you want.
Really? Which plant made this processor? [newegg.com] Can you tell me? At best you can tell it's a 14nm process but you don't know which 14nm plant made it from the information provided. You have to look at the chip when you get it, but you've already bought it at that point.
It's clear from my post I'm talking about the phone part number that the customer uses to order, not the internal Apple part number for the two different processors made on two different processes from two different companies with different performance.
I would guarantee you that every smartphone model including the iPhone has parts from multiple sources. For example the exact same model might have RAM from Samsung in one phone and RAM from Hynix in another. They shouldn't be different in terms o
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Really? Which plant made this processor? [newegg.com] Can you tell me? At best you can tell it's a 14nm process but you don't know which 14nm plant made it from the information provided. You have to look at the chip when you get it, but you've already bought it at that point.
You are very purposefully ignoring what I wrote to rage against something I did not. Intel processors made on different processes have a different part number the customer can see when ordering. Heck, they even have different part numbers for the same processor on the same process that have been binned differently. But if you want to keep talking about a the same processor made on the same process from the same company, go ahead an knock yourself out. It has nothing to do with anything I wrote.
I would guarantee you that every smartphone model including the iPhone has parts from multiple sources. For example the exact same model might have RAM from Samsung in one phone and RAM from Hynix in another. They shouldn't be different in terms of performance or function but if they are, the manufacturer has to trace down why. The point I'm trying to make is that there shouldn't be a difference in performance.
I agree there
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You are very purposefully ignoring what I wrote to rage against something I did not. Intel processors made on different processes have a different part number the customer can see when ordering.
And you fail to understand the whole point of using multiple suppliers. The parts ARE NOT supposed to be different in terms of function. They are made by different people/processes.
Heck, they even have different part numbers for the same processor on the same process that have been binned differently.
As does Apple.
But if you want to keep talking about a the same processor made on the same process from the same company, go ahead an knock yourself out. It has nothing to do with anything I wrote.
No I am asking you why you feel Apple should do something that you don't expect of anyone else that uses multiple suppliers. Did you know that RAM is made all over the world? Two stick of memory from the same manufacturer with the same part number might have different chips? Shocker!
I agree there should not be a difference in performance, but there is. Whether that performance difference is a problem or not should be left to the customer.
If Apple didn't intend there to be a difference, it should be up to Apple to let the customer know which products have a difference they didn't know about? Do I understand that correctly? If there's a difference; it's a defect that Apple will have to fix. Period. Letting the customer know which phones to avoid before they knew which phones are a problem requires pre-cognition don't you think?
Re:Too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)
And you fail to understand the whole point of using multiple suppliers. The parts ARE NOT supposed to be different in terms of function. They are made by different people/processes.
Well, they are. They vary in a metric that's very important in a mobile device. I'll just wait here while Apple fixes the problems with the inferior version of the CPU that they accidentally released in their hardware, shall I? If Apple sent a design to multiple manufacturers, I'd expect those manufacturers to produce identical parts. As you note, that's the whole point of using multiple suppliers. As everyone else has been trying to point out: these parts aren't identical. Either Apple sent out 2 designs, for the different lithography scales, or one of the suppliers modified Apple's design. Either way, Apple has to know about the difference from internal testing, and implicitly agreed that knowingly releasing two differently-performing pieces of hardware under the same model number was acceptable.
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"Really? Which plant made this processor? [newegg.com] Can you tell me?"
Intel Vietnam made that one.
Learn how to read part numbers.
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Intel Vietnam made that one. Learn how to read part numbers.
Source?
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If it's anything like the iPhone I bought 2 years ago, it's 6-8 hours of being in Airplane mode while in standby in your pocket.
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But who is playing shenanigans Samsung or Apple.
Did Apple Spec out the correct specs to Samsung and they made a cheap knockoff, after sending a batch that seems to meet initial QA, in a very German style. Or did Apple know about/agree to giving different quality products.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
Did Apple Spec out the correct specs to Samsung and they made a cheap knockoff, after sending a batch that seems to meet initial QA, in a very German style. Or did Apple know about/agree to giving different quality products.
There are both done on slightly different processes and it seems there is a difference that should not be there. It may be that somewhere in the Samsung process (masking, lithography, etc), a difference is significant enough to cause this battery issue. Or that something about Apple's design (or chip design in general) is affected by the step down to 14nm that isn't noticeable in 16nm. Remember that chip features are starting approaching the limits where problems occur that require design changes like multi-gate [wikipedia.org] which did not occur at larger feature sizes.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, it's most likely a problem with the design. Shrinking from 16nm to 14nm isn't simply a case of scaling your design files by 87.5%, you have to make separate ones. You can carry over most of the high level design and layout, but the computer has to re-synthesise the detailed transistor structure, you might have to use different cache memory, different power and voltage management devices etc. 14nm is a different process, it's not just a slightly better focus on a lens or something.
So the two were never going to be exactly the same, and chances are it's just that the 16nm design is a bit better optimized. Could be that it makes better use of the materials used, could be that the computer did a better job on synthesis, could be a number of things. I really doubt that Samsung sabotaged it though.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a third possibility that should not be discounted out of hand - Samsung meets the specification, while TSMC exceeds it. Without access to internal information, it's hard to tell what's going on behind the curtain and all too easy to leap on the 'obvious' conspiracy.
Of course, the various mega corps routinely indulge in behavior that makes conspiracy theories not all that far fetched...
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The only fucking reason AMD exists is because IBM mandated vendor plurality when they were creating the first IBM PC.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand why people freak out when a tech vendor releases a new model, as if they are forced to buy it or the one they have is suddenly going to explode. I do think some large vendors are guilty of abandoning support for their legacy products a bit to quickly. Nobody gets all nuts about the fact the Chrysler/Ford/GM/Honda/VW/Mercedes/etc bring out new models every year; often with slight improvements, usually with other changes you may or might not like.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
A vendor making a mid-model year substitution for a better product seems like a benefit to me, not a detriment. Instead of nobody getting the improved version, at least some people do.
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This isn’t a mid-model-year thing. They’re actively shipping both versions right now. Luck of the draw if you get the better or worse CPU, same price either way. That’s not the same as bought later, got a little better for no extra money.
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This isn’t a mid-model-year thing. They’re actively shipping both versions right now. Luck of the draw if you get the better or worse CPU, same price either way. That’s not the same as bought later, got a little better for no extra money.
Or, here's a thought:
Instead of buying online, GO TO THE APPLE STORE, like, in MeatSpace, and buy your phone. When they bring it out, ask to see the Product Number, and REJECT IT if it isn't the one with A TSMC SoC in it.
Simple. At least Apple has denoted the two different "models" in a way that a human can tell which is which without having to load an App.
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Different model #'s detectable in software, but not listed on the package.
Tell the employee, you need to get an iPhone with the Samsung 14nm version of the A9 processor.
As soon as you get it, inspect it, and if it is found to have the 16nm TSMC chip, then promptly return the unit at the store for a refund, or keep exchanging, until you get a 14nm one.
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I don't really blame Apple in this cas
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Yeah I don't see the complaints. The used market will be determined primarily on the condition of the device and the age of it. No one is going to offer you many dollars less in 2 years for your device because it has a Samsung chip in it. The vast majority of the people don't even know and many of those that do don't even care. It's not like one is a collectors item.
Same thing with the new ones. The only problem you run into is if you don't meet the minimum specs. Getting something extra is a pot luck bonus
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has been generally pretty good with that. Older iPhones will still run newer software, although in some cases its debatable if its actually a good idea to do so, if the software is written under the assumption of a more performant processor. At least with the laptops, my Macbook 2011 is running the latest and greatest OSX at a cracking pace, and my GFs iphone 5 is fully updated and running well.
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How is this really on topic? If you're in the market for a 6s, you might be:
> A compulsive Apple consumer who buys every edition on launch
> A head of family who replaces whichever the oldest phone is out of himself, his wife, and his kids, every year.
> Someone who buys phones only when his old one breaks, and his iphone 3 just broke.
> Someone who buys phones every three years, and his last model was bought in 2012.
The first category might puzzle you, but the others shouldn't, and all would be i
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Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn’t “send down” any updates. You’re free to take or leave any OS update you like. They’re remind you a bit, but nobody is forced to upgrade the OS they have on their phone right now.
And do you *seriously* think Apple releases updates to “actively try to fuck up older but functioning hardware”? Paranoid much? Yes, some updates have made older hardware work less well. Other updates have improved long standing issues on older hardware. That’s the nature of software development. It’s not a good thing, but it’s a far distance between “didn’t test it as much on three-year-old hardware” and “let’s intentionally add this bug to make the old phone flake out.”
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Is it intentional? I mean, it keeps happening that older phones are messed up with newer upgrades. If it's been happening for years, the difference between testing your new version less on older hardware and actually being mustache twirling villains planning to force an upgrade is not really relevant. It certainly happens, and it doesn't get fixed, and you can't use an older version.
Plus, many apps will stop working with newer versions, meaning that the stuff your phone does now it won't be able to do i
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Apple doesn’t “send down” any updates. You’re free to take or leave any OS update you like. They’re remind you a bit, but nobody is forced to upgrade the OS they have on their phone right now.
And do you *seriously* think Apple releases updates to “actively try to fuck up older but functioning hardware”? Paranoid much? Yes, some updates have made older hardware work less well. Other updates have improved long standing issues on older hardware. That’s the nature of software development. It’s not a good thing, but it’s a far distance between “didn’t test it as much on three-year-old hardware” and “let’s intentionally add this bug to make the old phone flake out.”
Take a look at the history of Apple-Hater Posts on Slashdot. They are almost universally from Anonymous Cowards.
Doesn't that tell you something about the veracity of the Complainants?
I stick my Karma on the line with Every. Single. Post. Why don't the Apple-Haters?
And don't EVEN begin to tell me that it's because they fear for their Karma from malicious downmodding from the "hordes of Apple Fanbois" on Slashdot! That dog don't hunt!!!
In fact a new version often is how it should be (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies should regularly update their products to use the latest tech. There is no reason to freeze a product and not update it for a long time just to make owners feel like they still have the "latest". Rather they should update as often as changes in available technology/manufacturing/etc dictate. Customers then buy new ones as often as they feel it useful.
That's how it has been with desktop computers, excluding Apple, forever. Few, if any, people upgrade every time something new comes out because the changes are usually minor. They buy something, stick with it for a few years, then buy something new when they feel like they want or need it.
The problem is that Apple devices seem to be something that some people wrap their ego in. They feel a need to have the newest device to be "cool" or some such and thus get mad when a newer device comes out that they cannot or do not wish to purchase since they feel it somehow lessens what they do have.
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Yes, the opposite is Canon. They have many models and cycle features between them, adding and subtracting so there is no clear winner. Then they have long release schedules.
Their goal is to get you to choose a product line and buy old technology -- because you wont expect "that model" to be replaced any time soon.
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The problem is that Apple devices seem to be something that some people wrap their ego in. They feel a need to have the newest device to be "cool" or some such and thus get mad when a newer device comes out that they cannot or do not wish to purchase since they feel it somehow lessens what they do have.
I think you're suffering from cognitive dissonance. The hint is that you're suggesting a rather absurd explanation -- that people buy new phones just to be cool -- and ignoring the much more obvious explanation: that the additional features are compelling enough for them to upgrade. It seems likely that you yourself do not feel that the additional features and improvements are sufficient to warrant an upgrade -- and that's okay. But to project your sensibilities onto the entire rest of the world and then to
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If you bought a product because you wanted it to be the best in that line, then the upgrade rate is definitely a consideration. It's not particularly rational, but remember that these products are also status symbols and in some cases jewelry, so at the very least being *predictable* is a boon for consumers.
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> Companies should regularly update their products to use the latest tech.
The problem here is that you get a bunch of subversions, and it's much harder to find your problem. When you have an issue, going to a forum for "iphone 6" is going to be helpful, but if the iphone 6 spanned several subversions that all require different debug / fix steps, then you can't figure out what you actually have any more. You end up with one of the downsides of the "build your own PC", without getting all the upsides of
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
They have a history of doing this too, because like like to have two suppliers competing. Most of the time no-one cares, but for example a few years back they had all those dodgy "retina" LCDs on their laptops. There were two suppliers, LG and Sharp, and all the LG ones were prone to ghosting while the Sharp ones were fine.
The only thing customers could do is keep taking the laptops back when ghosting appeared and hoping that the replacement had a Sharp LCD. I think that's what upset people, the way it was handled. On the other hand I can appreciate that Apple probably didn't want to replace millions of LCD panels if they could avoid it.
This is pretty shitty though, because the lesser of the two CPUs isn't defective and thus the customer can't swap the phone for a better one. They just have to live with reduced battery life and performance on their very expensive new shiny. It will be interesting to see what Apple do. For example, if they ban apps that detect which CPU you have then people will endlessly speculate about why their battery life is crap and keep worrying about it, but if they don't people will demand exchanges. Could affect resale price too.
Yeah....no. (Score:2)
"Pushing it through the throats of customers" is a bit hyperbolic, but not entirely inaccurate.
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cool until the updates make the old versions unusable ( typing on ipad 2 whose browsers are all crashy messes since the iOS9 update)
Have you filed any bug reports with Apple [apple.com], or just bitched online?
BTW, that Page took all of 1 second of Googling to find.
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He could be using any of the many apps that insist on running under ios8 or ios9, for instance. I've had games refuse to run under older versions of OSes for sure, I can't imagine its just limited to that. To be clear, the case I'm discussing is:
> You buy app X under version A.
> The OS updates to version B.
> After a bit, you find you can't do anything with app X, because it no longer accepts logins from devices with version A
> You must upgrade to version B to keep using X.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but who is pushing a new iPhone "through the throats of customers"??
You are completely free to not fucking buy one.
Did you know that car makers push out a new version, only slightly different, annually? Companies who make golf clubs, also push out new versions at least annually. And companies who make TVs, they also do this.
If customers buy a new expensive phone every year or two, don't blame the vendor. Free will doesn't stop just because you've bought a product.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sorry, but who is pushing a new iPhone "through the throats of customers"??
You are completely free to not fucking buy one.
You obviously have no clue how society works - if you're using a previous-gen iPhone, you're not cool enough, and you should go jump of a bridge.
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wow. these types of comments on a tech site that celebrates new products.
Just because you have a personal issue with the company.
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Actually car makers often makes changes multiple times throughout the year as well.
Opus said it even better. (Score:2)
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Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
As more data is coming to light, it's sounding like the differences are smaller than first estimated and were likely exaggerated as a result of synthetic benchmarks not accurately modeling real-world performance. Specifically, while it does sound like TSMC's chips are performing far better than Samsung's in the synthetic benchmarks (e.g. Geekbench's battery tests), MacRumors has some followup on the topic [macrumors.com], indicating that in the real world tests that are ongoing, the results so far appear to be much closer between the two models.
It sounds like the synthetic benchmarks may be slamming a part of the processor that TSMC has optimized better than Samsung, but that in real-world performance, that part is used far less frequently than in the synthetic benchmark, meaning that the results from the synthetic benchmark may not accurately model real-world performance.
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a shame I ran out of mod points. This makes rather more sense than the alarmist story...
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Even if the processors were all from the same comp
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The MacRumors tests are less realistic than the Geekbench tests. MacRumors ran videos, which are mostly decided by the GPU and fetched by the WiFi or cellular modems. The CPU does very little when playing YouTube videos.
The Geekbench tests are a mix of different real world activities, like browsing, games and app use. Unless all you do is watch YouTube on a tiny screen for hours on end Geekbench is the more realistic test.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
MacRumors didn't do any testing at all. They're just compiling lists of tests that others are doing, in an effort to get a sense for whether or not there actually are large differences. And the A9 chips being provided by Samsung and TSMC are SoCs, not just CPUs, so it makes perfect sense that they'd be running benchmarks that include video processing and other non-CPU-bound tasks, given that the A9 is responsible for those as well.
Moreover, given the variance in performance that can occur within chips from even a single manufacturer, it's no surprise that there will be variation between the two models. If there weren't, it would be a news story. As such, the important questions to ask are:
1) Is the difference between the two broadly reproducible (i.e. is Samsung consistently behind), or is it this just an anecdotal case involving a single low-performing Samsung chip being compared to a single high-performing TSMC chip?
2) Given the variation, do either of them fall below the specs provided by Apple?
We don't have enough data yet to answer #1, but, again, as more data is coming to light, it's sounding like things are not so lopsided as the initial reports indicated. TSMC may have a slight edge, but it's not anywhere in the ballpark of what was being reported earlier. As for #2, by all indications, the answer is "no, neither of them fall below Apple specs". Which is to say, some people may win out on the luck of the draw and get a phone with a chip that performs better...which was already the case anyway, since chips are never perfectly identical in their performance. All a manufacturer will do is guarantee that the performance falls within a certain range, so some will always perform better than others, even when built using the same process from the same manufacturer.
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By all indications, the Samsung chip isn't performing under expectations. Based on the anecdotal evidence, the TSMC chip is better than advertised, while the Samsung chip is as advertised. Given that situation, it'd be hard to argue that anyone is getting gypped.
Some people may be getting more than they expected, but, as anyone who's done any overclocking can tell you, that's always been the case when it comes to CPUs, given that any individual chip's performance is only guaranteed to fall within a certain
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To add to this, it's not unlike what was going on when the first Athlons came out. AMD was having a rough time meeting demand for lower speed chips so they started re-badging higher speed chips as the lower. I lucked out and it turned out my 750MHz CPU was actually a 900MHz CPU clocked at 750MHz. Other buyers of proper 750's would have no valid complaint, they got what they paid for.
Battery Life (Score:2)
Eight and six hours (respectively) battery life is not very impressive... is that because they measured battery life through some standard benchmark? I've got a 4s that can still pull off a 16 hour day if I'm careful with my screen time.
Re:Battery Life (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrast to at home, where that city mandated all infrastructure be buried, and the power lines are only for neighborhood final distribution as opposed to regional distribution, and my phone can go a whole weekend on standby.
Re:Battery Life (Score:5, Informative)
Power lines cause very little interference to cell phones. It is very likely your office has eco-friendly windows. They have a very thin metal coating which greatly attenuates the signal. It is the same at my company. A part of our bulding recently had new windows (and some other eco-tweaks) installed and the signal there is almost gone, returning to almost full strength when the window is opened.
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Had the same issue. At home I have next to no signal for 200 meters around my apartment.
I switched to the iOS 9 beta in August to finally get wifi calling on AT&T and my battery life at home jumped up massively.
Not spending 8 hours trying to reconnect to nothing helped a lot.
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and my phone can go a whole weekend on standby.
What have your turned on ? My Lenovo A840+ (Android 4.2.2, Octa-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A7) can withstand almost three weeks (weeks, not days) in standby when with good cell reception but with wifi and data connection off. I only start worrying about charging it (I mean, charge it on the same day, not immediatly) when it reaches about 8% battery.
Alvie
Re:Battery Life (Score:4, Informative)
I charged my Samsung (non-i) phone once this week.
And that was only because it dipped below 30%.
Admittedly it's not calling 24 hours a day, but it's on 4G all the time and has modern smartphone capabilities.
16 hours battery life? That's pathetic. Really?
The one thing I have to hand to iPads is that they last a long time on battery. But 16 hours? That's just the perfectly ANNOYING level of battery life. Not enough to survive a day.
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I'm not defending 16 hours as great battery time... but you may have missed the part where I said "4s". When new, it would run for several days, but I hammer on it pretty hard (pandora streaming + bluetooth headphones), Youtube videos, etc., mostly over 3g (no wi-fi at work) and it's showing it's age.
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Really? My friend can't make it through half a day without running to charge her Galaxy S5, whereas I get 12 hours of actually tapping on my screen on my iPhone 6.
My anecdote is at least as good as yours.
The 6 and 8 hour values are through synthetic benchmarks that purposely stress the processor and display things on the screen non-stop. I've never gotten as little as 8 hours from my phone, even on a day where I all I do is play games and load webpages. Apple's devices generally get about 10 hours of usable
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Correct, they were being run through a variety of synthetic benchmarks and taxing real-world scenarios (e.g. streaming online video for hours at full brightness). From what I've heard, there was a pretty significant jump in the battery life for the 6-series phones and beyond, though I'm still using an older 5s model that can get through 2-3 days without a charge under typical (admittedly light, in my case) use.
Only seen in specific benchmarks (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/... [macrumors.com]
As suspected from early results yesterday, the takeaway from Morrison and Evans' videos today seems to be that while intense cases like synthetic Geekbench tests designed to push devices to their limits can reveal significant differences in battery life between devices using the two chips, real-world impacts are much smaller and are likely to be unnoticeable to many users.
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To clothe it in a car analogy: The difference is about the same as there being two cars, one has a top speed of 170 km/h, the other one of 200km/h. Certainly sounds like a huge difference, does it?
Unless you'll be driving both almost exclusively in a city, where the speed limit is only about 80 km/h at most. All you'd notice is a hardly perceptible difference in acceleration, as both cars don't even reach 50% of their maximum speed.
Stops sounding so terribly significant, does it?
Samsung Trojan Horse :) (Score:4, Funny)
If we can't beat them, at least we can loose our semiconductor business ?
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Samsung this week posted their first profit growth since 2013, and it wasn't because their phones were selling better. It was because their chips were selling better. In other words, yup, that's exactly it.
That explains a few things... (Score:3, Informative)
Figuring (Score:2)
It's quite impressive you both run exactly the same software with exactly the same background/location/notification settings... do you get together once or twice a day to make sure you have identical settings?
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So he has 3000+ apps, some of which are in background, and it's a mystery why his runs hotter?
Come on.
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It's probably not much of a factor. iOS apps are aggressively throttled in the background. Facebook plays all sorts of dirty tricks to keep running (apparently like trying to pretend it's an audio app, I've heard?) but otherwise, most apps happily accept the kill signal and take up no additional CPU time.
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Or they have the same chip, but his friend has an app that uses a lot of cpu cycles in the background.
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One no sim?? (Score:5, Interesting)
How come
On the chinese test, the Samsung has an extra app installed on it (see the screen of the doc).
And on the Reddit users test, the TSMC has a sim card installed, the Samsung not.
Really would it have killed them to keep the same spec for each?
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If both phones are using different parts of the hardware, for instance if the Samsung is connected to an 802.11 ac network while the TSMC is only connected to LTE, then the Samsung might be using more power.
The phones should be compared in Airplane mode.
16 nm vs 14 nm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:16 nm vs 14 nm (Score:5, Insightful)
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At increasingly smaller sizes, there's something called the short-channel effect or leakage because the size of each gate is starting to be affected by atomic forces not shown in larger gates. It's why chip companies are employing multi-gate [wikipedia.org] devices like FinFET.
Planar transistors have been the core of integrated circuits for several decades, during which the size of the individual transistors has steadily decreased. As the size decreases, planar transistors increasingly suffer from the undesirable short-channel effect, especially "off-state" leakage current, which increases the idle power required by the device.
The reason companies are pushing for smaller size is economics. Reducing the feature size allows for more chips to be made from a single wafer. The move from 20nm to 16nm is about 15% more from what I remember.
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What this means in the real world is that you're a lot more likely to
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The fact that one process is called 16nm and one is called 14nm tells you almost nothing about the relative sizes of equivalent features.
These days, a process is called "14nm" because the previous one was called "20nm" and the next is going to be called "10nm".
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The fact that one process is called 16nm and one is called 14nm tells you almost nothing about the relative sizes of equivalent features.
Um, yes it does. 14nm is the smallest size possible that can be reliably produced by the process. It does not say that ALL features are 14nm. Where possible, the feature will be 14nm, but not all of them will be for practical reasons.
These days, a process is called "14nm" because the previous one was called "20nm" and the next is going to be called "10nm".
You seem to imply that die shrink is completely fictitious because of naming.
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This. How can this ever happen. Also, the battery rundown difference is very large for this half pitch difference, unless the battery test switches off everything else like the screen and wifi, or there are other big process differences.
Maybe... (Score:2)
Samples sizes of 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
"tests of a pair of 6s Plus phones"
You can't argue with the statistical validity of that analysis... because there isn't any.
Apple reporting bias (Score:2)
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How many samples in the test? (Score:2)
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These are synthetic benchmarks and real-world scenarios designed to put high demands on the devices (e.g. streaming online video for hours at full screen brightness), hence the 6-8 hour battery life. In typical use, iPhones routinely get similar results to the ones you mentioned for your phone (my iPhone 5s gets about the same battery life as your Samsung, but there's always variation from user to user, so take my info as the single data point that it is).
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and my iPhone 4S lasts for a week on a charge (despite being old and weary). Its all about how you use it. Is it constantly waking up and fetching email? How much web browsing? Playing music? Watching videos? What about bluetooth? GPS? You even mention you kill "the internet browser task". I've never had to resort to killing tasks in order to maintain battery life.
Anecdotes from individuals about battery life are pretty meaningless when the variabilities of usage far outweigh the baseline power for operatio
Re:in a previous article about the new chips..... (Score:4, Insightful)
For the following post, the sarcasm flag is assumed to be active.
1. has to rely on 3rd parties to integrate their hardware into an existing enterprise..
Yes because Apple's primary focus is enterprise. It's not like Dell or HP ever rely on 3rd parties for consumer or enterprise. Ever.
2. Srir was a huge failure even with 3rd party support
That's why they removed and banished it from all iPhones and iPads and they didn't include it in the new AppleTV.
3. Newton (even with the greatest minds it still could nto get off the ground)
Yes because 20 years ago, mobile hardware was much superior than it is today. Also at the time, Apple was a tightly focused machine.
4. Deperciation of the equipment as compared to its "PC" equiv. is way out of whack.
That's why whenever I go to buy used Apple machines, they are 1/2 of what the comparable Dell or HP is. They are so cheap, people are begging me to take their Macs.
5. They have to reply on 3rd parties for any and all laptop/desktop hardware (intel)
Yes because Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Asus, etc have all started to make their own processors now. Every single one of them even have their own GPUs and make their machines by hand. I've seen the farms where they grow their cases from the soil. It's all organic.
6. they bastardized a variant of BSD and "made it their own" also a 3rd party reliance.
Instead of every other OS out there that magically one day was born. Linux isn't based on Unix at all. And Windows was created completely by Gates and Co one night and didn't rely on design cues from VMS or DOS or anything prior.
7. They tried to tout a turnkey infrastructure (X system [xserv, etc]) which lasted 2-4 years and resembled SUN equipment..
Because every time a company makes a product they should sell that product FOREVER even if it isn't very profitable or core to their strategy. That's why Microsoft and Dell still make MP3 players. IBM still makes PCs right?
8. the cost of the equiv. equipment (PC) is a 3rd of the cost.
In every single case this is true. That's why people still buy Macs; suckers!
9. For any credible attempt at repair, a device must be taken to a service center, no way to "HOME-FIX"
Yes, the internet and websites dedicated to fixing computers don't exist. Also all other manufacturers will honor your warranty when you try to fix things yourself. Warranty, schmwarranty, they say.
10. when people in my env. request a mac. after about a week or so they request a windows 7 vm poped on the "DESKTOP" so they can remain productive and still have the nice SHiny..
This has nothing to do with the fact that some companies rely and insist on Windows only things. I mean, IE is famous for being completely compatible with every other browser known in existence. This is the opposite of those PCs where they have only 1 option: Windows or die. That's fine. Less choice is so much better.
So now we are on the 6th gen of the Iphone, and.......... Samsung the #1 Iphone competitor is varying their production of chips to Apple, like thats a suprise.. It actually seems so friggin lame..
Yes because chip fabs are everywhere. You can't go down the street without some homeless bum offering to move me to a 10nm process. Especially companies like NVidia [wccftech.com] who didn't decide to use Samsung to fab the Tegra X1. And Apple didn't do a responsible thing by using 2 different fabs for redundancy. Not at all
With so Much Apple has going for itself.. Why can't it just produce their own products and why with all the brilliant pe