Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
A man takes pictures as Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus go on sale at an Apple Store in Beijing, China.
A man takes pictures as Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus go on sale at an Apple Store in Beijing, China. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/REUTERS
A man takes pictures as Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus go on sale at an Apple Store in Beijing, China. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/REUTERS

iPhones 6S battery life 'varies by up to two hours depending on chip supplier'

This article is more than 8 years old

TSMC and Samsung make chips for iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, but power consumption varies markedly, according to user reports

Two seemingly identical, brand new, iPhones 6S may have a battery life that differs by up to two hours depending on which of two companies manufactured their processor, according to reports from owners.

The investigations were sparked by a report from technology news site Anandtech that Apple is dual-sourcing one of the key components of the new phones. The A9 “system on a chip”, the lump of silicon that lies at the heart of the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, is designed by Apple but manufactured by two independent contractors: Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Taiwan’s TSMC. The two chips interact with the rest of the hardware identically, based as they are on the same designs, but differences in their production is apparently having an effect on how efficient they are at doing their jobs.

TSMC’s implementation of Apple’s designs uses a manfacturing process with a minimum transistor width of 16nm compared to Samsung’s 14nm, and results in a chip that is physically larger by 8.5mm2. But as well as the physical difference, the TSMC version of the chip also seems to have markedly better power consumption, according to user reports shared on sites including Mac Rumours and Reddit. One user, with two iPhone 6S Pluses with different chips, reported a difference of two hours in battery life between the phones: the TSMC chip hit almost eight hours while running a suite of battery-intensive activities, while the Samsung one managed barely six.

It is tricky to determine which version of the chip is installed in a particular phone, but some apps such as Lirum Device Info can tell owners. Samsung’s chip shows up as N66AP or N71AP, while TSMC’s appears as N66MAP or N71MAP.

This is not the first time Apple has run into trouble dual-sourcing key components. In 2012, when it launched the Retina MacBook Pro, the company bought screens from two different suppliers, LG and Samsung. The LG-provided screens turned out to suffer from significant “burn-in” issues, displaying a ghost of any image left onscreen for too long. Despite calls for a recall from users, the company didn’t publicly acknowledge the difference in quality, but did apparently begin replacing the defective laptops if users brought them in to a store complaining about the quality.

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that attempts to dual-source the new “taptic engine” in the Apple Watch had also led to issues. One of the two providers of the ground-breaking vibration component, AAC Technologies, was apparently unable to consistently provide reliable parts, leading Apple to drop it as a supplier and scrap some completed watches. In the end, the company only used parts provided by Japan’s Nidec, which didn’t experience the same problem.

Apple has not responded to a request for comment.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed