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IHS teardown Bill Of Materials (BOM) for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s

For iPhone 5:
For NAND flash price was ~$10 per 16GB.
16GB model $10 of NAND flash
32GB model $20 of NAND flash
64GB model $40 of NAND flash

For DRAM, 1GB LPDDR2 DRAM was ~$10

https://technology.ihs.com/410378/iphone-5-carries-199-bom-virtual-teardown-reveals

For iPhone 5s:

IHS has the BOM roughly $10 less per handset vs an iPhone 5.
NAND flash price was ~$9 per 16GB
For DRAM, 1GB LPDDR3 DRAM was ~$11


So asking for 2GB of DRAM is asking for the BOM to go up ~$11, roughly 5% of the total BOM, equivalent to more than the material cost of the other contents in the box,more than the entire manufacturing cost, or half the cost of the A8/Camera (Anyone know the Material cost of MDM9625 vs MDM9635?)

https://technology.ihs.com/451425/g...m-and-manufacturing-cost-ihs-teardown-reveals

For that extra $10, they could make the 16GB model a 32GB model instead of giving 2GB DRAM.

Hard tradeoff if they don't budge on BOM/profit margin.

So? Make the phone $11 more expensive. Who cares.
 
Maybe stupid question but that DDR3 chip seems to have a 32bit data bus.

What if the A8 has two of these 8Gb chips to leverage the 64bit data bus?
So total of 2GB with 2x the speed?
 
We know that for a few dollars more, they could make a much better product (2gb of ram, 32 gb of storage) that would improve the experience immensely.

That of course, is the irony here: Because they are choking off their entry level products with too little ram and storage, new buyers who don't know any different will buy - the least expensive model. Then their iPhone experience won't be ideal, and as a result, they may not buy another iPhone. Even worse, they may tell their friends about their not-so-great iPhone experience, and as a result ... LESS PEOPLE WILL BUY IPHONES.

So ... while a lot of people here say Apple is being greedy (and they're probably right) the IRONY is that in the long run, this may hurt Apple sales and total profits, so ... THAT GREED IS ACTUALLY COSTING THEM MONEY!!!
 
It doesn't clearly look like a 8. The picture is heavily enlarged and sharpened. Could well be a B - sharpening artifacts tend to round edges.

I think you might be on to something here - the top-right, upward line of the letter "H" curves inward (as does the bottom-right line to a certain extent). It is plausible that the very same thing could be happening to the straight, upward line in the letter "B" - if we assume that this is the actual letter.
 
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So? Make the phone $11 more expensive. Who cares.

Bingo! That's what I don't get when people suggest that adding a $10 component would ruin Apple's margins! They could just charge $11 (or $14) more. It would be an almost negligible cost to the consumer for a much better experience.
And the better the experience, the more likely people will buy and iPhone and recommend one to their friends. Wouldn't that help Apple's margins more than being stingy on $10 worth of ram?!?!!
 
How would people feel if an iPhone 6s had 2GB DRAM, but the tabs still reloaded, and the memory restraints on developers were the same?

i.e. if it was Apple policy regardless of DRAM was 1GB or 2GB?

Has there been any formal word on tab reloading? In some cases where the page is not going to change, it's a pain (especially if you don't have signal - you lose the page), but what if you're in signal and the page has updated content - e.g. a front page for a newspaper? By forcing a reload of the page, you get the updated content, any new comments etc.

Is the reload purely due to DRAM contraints?
I don't recall coming across anything official, so we mainly go by educated guesses, as well as people attempting to compare behaviors on different iterations of devices when specs have changed. Forcing a reload of a page is not good practice, in my opinion, because you are needlessly expending resources which may noticeably impact other constraints on a phone, such as the amount of data that you're using, as well as battery life. Since you also mentioned forums, I've also ran into situations where I have a comment started, but is lost when the page is refreshed - it's a hit or a miss on whether the comment is retained upon refresh, but it's not exactly good user experience when it is lost.
 
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I understand that adding ram to the phone will cost millions of dollars. But really, if the phone is so smooth now imagine with 2x the ram.

I know Apple will set new sales records with the 6. That's why this possible lack of ram is crazy. Go with 2gbs and sell more.

I'm not a iPhone user. I have a g3 currently and love it. I will most definitely take a look at the iPhone 6. Maybe a New line to get it. I had the iPhone 5 and loved it. The screen was just to small. 4.7 is nice. And I'll have to look at the 5.5. The note 3 was too big for me.
 
What? Safari on OS X does not reload...
Hit the back button on safari and you may notice a page refresh. I don't think this is a problem of the amount of ram in a system, since I notice it even when there is more than enough free memory available.

I shouldn't have lumped that together with the refreshing issue on ios, since it may be a different factor on osx.

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I understand that adding ram to the phone will cost millions of dollars. But really, if the phone is so smooth now imagine with 2x the ram.

I know Apple will set new sales records with the 6. That's why this possible lack of ram is crazy. Go with 2gbs and sell more.

I'm not a iPhone user. I have a g3 currently and love it. I will most definitely take a look at the iPhone 6. Maybe a New line to get it. I had the iPhone 5 and loved it. The screen was just to small. 4.7 is nice. And I'll have to look at the 5.5. The note 3 was too big for me.
It is smooth because ios prioritizes resources for the user interface. Combined with the stringent memory management strategy it uses, it's the reason why many people may think that there is already enough memory as it is. Now that we are also getting "widgets" in the notification center, I would also be inclined to believe that additional memory would be beneficial.
 
It doesn't clearly look like a 8. The picture is heavily enlarged and sharpened. Could well be a B - sharpening artifacts tend to round edges.

I think you might be on to something here - the top-right, upward line of the letter "H" curves inward (as does the bottom-right line to a certain extent). It is plausible that the very same thing could be happening to the straight, upward line in the letter "B" - if we assume that this is the actual letter.

Also Hynix spec sheet says RAM amount is two characters, positions 8 and 9.
8G for 1GB
BK for 2GB

The char after the 8/B is clearly not a G. In fact, looks a lot, like the character in position 4.
 
Also Hynix spec sheet says RAM amount is two characters, positions 8 and 9.
8G for 1GB
BK for 2GB

The char after the 8/B is clearly not a G. In fact, looks a lot, like the character in position 4.

Well spotted, I'm now inclining towards this being 2gb after all
 
Also Hynix spec sheet says RAM amount is two characters, positions 8 and 9.
8G for 1GB
BK for 2GB

The char after the 8/B is clearly not a G. In fact, looks a lot, like the character in position 4.

There are also "8K" chips with 1GiB

If you want to know for sure, you have to determine if it's an 8 or a B without looking at anything else.
 
There are also "8K" chips with 1GiB

If you want to know for sure, you have to determine if it's an 8 or a B without looking at anything else.

I dont think we're talking GiB... GB.

Your right, missed that sku with an 8K :(
 
There are also "8K" chips with 1GiB

If you want to know for sure, you have to determine if it's an 8 or a B without looking at anything else.

Just to be absolutely clear, if it were "8K" rather than "BK" - it could still have 2gb of RAM?
 
i agree. that doesn't make sense...

after disappoint, i'm confused. ELPIDA ram used in iPhone 5s has 64bit I/O(inside packaging, there's 2 x 512MB 32bit ram).
apple a7's memory bus is 64bit single channel and there's no 64bit LPDDR3 in Hynix catalog.
i even suspicious that Hynix supplies LPDDR ram for iPhone 5S...
i searched iPhone 5s logic board picture and only sees ELPIDA 64bit 8Gb part number.
what's going on?


Maybe stupid question but that DDR3 chip seems to have a 32bit data bus.

What if the A8 has two of these 8Gb chips to leverage the 64bit data bus?
So total of 2GB with 2x the speed?
 
Just to be absolutely clear, if it were "8K" rather than "BK" - it could still have 2gb of RAM?

If their codes are consistent, no, as from the codes known, the 8K chips have 1 GiB, while the BK chips have 2 GiB.

The 8 position would indicate the size, while the K position other characteristics of the memory.

I would imagine A is reserved for 1.5GiB RAM, as this is another usual memory amount found in smartphones.
 
So everyone is claiming more than 1GB of ram is needed, but posting no evidence. I have tried to make a webpage with 1GB of data to see what happens on my iphone 5s, and as far as I can tell, it just starts using flash, and there is barely a hickup.
 
So everyone is claiming more than 1GB of ram is needed, but posting no evidence. I have tried to make a webpage with 1GB of data to see what happens on my iphone 5s, and as far as I can tell, it just starts using flash, and there is barely a hickup.

Can you people at MR ban this guy forever?

I mean, if he doesn't understand that we do not have better/more complex/more advanced apps because Apple doesn't use more RAM, if he doesn't understand that people are still using phones from 2010 (iPhone 4. It was sold not long ago. So support is mandatory, and one of Apple's best features), if doesn't understand that the tech is there with 0 drawback, f he doesn't understand that this is an intentional move to cripple the device and make more money RIGHT NOW (it will bite them in the ass, later), he shouldn't be allowed to post on any public forum.

There isn't room for debate about this matter. The 1 GB of RAM already is the bottleneck on the iPhone 5 (the a6 has power to spare), not to mention the 5s (the a7 is always sleeping, there's nothing that could take advantage of it without exceeding the RAM limit too.).

This will hit the whole industry, even other OSes, because Devs are the same and they won't do anything without iOS's support. It will slow evolution of software.

I'm ok about saying that iOS is more efficient and doesn't need as many resources, but that has always been BS by ignorant people. Apple always gave the best SoC possible, for example. The A7 is unmatched on a number of areas, despite 1 year old. Only people that associate number of cores and GHz, and screen size as innovation would say such thing.

But if we were talking about 512 MB of ram vs 1 GB, 1 GB vs 2, 2 VS 3, I would understand. But soon it is going to be 1 GB of RAM vs 4, and the advantages of having 2 GB of RAM are huge and users would feel the effect on day one of using the device, by loading more apps, and multitask better. Not to mention longer support and better apps in the future.
 
Everything you said is irrelevant to memory demand. That's probably because you're not a computer architect & ASIC designer like I am.

Like I said, get used to 1GB for mobile devices over the next 10 years.

The ability to save power is more important than your ability to do more things at once. Nobody gives a crap about doing more things at once.

Everybody gives a crap about saving power.

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Or you could close those tabs and save power.

If you want to multitask, go use a laptop... or one of those terribly designed Android "phones" with 8 cores and 3GB memory and a giant 2800mAh battery that lasts 4 hours because idiots think more is better.

Your comment is so...2012. There is so many phone out there have better battery life AND much higher ram AND run smoothly.

The technology is already here, Having more ram wouldn't make the battery life shorter. In fact, Iphone 5S is way down the list to compare against other year 2014 smart phone in terms of battery life. I mean, the battery life on iphone 5S SUCKS compare to the latest smartphone out there with way higher screen resolution and much more ram.

Please stop being a fanboy. Look around what is out there first and look at what the Iphone gives you now.


ksqVITH.jpg

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http://www.phonearena.com/phones/benchmarks

B7G54BR.jpg


KA9CqhE.jpg


http://www.gsmarena.com/battery-test.php3
 
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For those of us with the air or rMini, and don't upgrade with every iteration, all I can say is "hahahahaha hahahaha"

I have a much better appreciation for the iPad3 folks now.
 
I'm not convinced that the image shown even indicates that the iPhone 6 will have 1GB of RAM.

The above makes sense to me, but let me know if someone sees anything I may have done wrong.

Good work ruler22 and I will take this a little bit further.

First I haven't read all the posts so maybe someone posted this already.

All those LPDDR3 parts are x32 in a standard PoP package.

Apple uses a custom PoP package - as do many application processors vendors. In the A7, the LPDDR3 memory interface is x64 - I think Anandtech has an article about the A7 that has this information as well as other places. The A7 has two 4Gb LPDDR3 dies to get 1GB of RAM.

So it seems very likely that the A8 has two x32 8Gb LPDDR3 dies on a x64 interface for 2GB of RAM.

I'm definitely not panicking because I think it does have 2GB of RAM :)

UPDATE: Looks like ee4life figured this out before me - good work!
 
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You can read my post (it is above yours) to see what I think about the subject, but you CAN'T use phone arena as a a credible source. NEVER.

Real professional and objective websites show that the guy that you are answering to is wrong, but they also show that on tasks when the screen is ON, the iPhone is (below) but close to most of those devices, and ahead of a few.

For example, all things being equal (same nits, GPS on or off on both, etc) the iPhone has similar battery life to the Note 3 on WIFI web browsing. Ars technica confirms this too.

Proof

And with 4g LTE (most people have always data connection, the iPhone 5s is very close to being the best.

Phone arena is made by amateur geeks, to amateur geeks. "this camera is better, it has 16 MP! The other only has 8, so it is 50 % worse". Likely their software is poorly written.

Good work ruler22 and I will take this a little bit further.

First I haven't read all the posts so maybe someone posted this already.

All those LPDDR3 parts are x32 in a standard PoP package.

Apple uses a custom PoP package - as do many application processors vendors. In the A7, the LPDDR3 memory interface is x64 - I think Anandtech has an article about the A7 that has this information as well as other places. The A7 has two 4Gb LPDDR3 dies to get 1GB of RAM.

So it seems very likely that the A8 has two x32 8Gb LPDDR3 dies on a x64 interface for 2GB of RAM.

I'm definitely not panicking because I think it does have 2GB of RAM :)

I seriously agree with that and I hope that you are right. But if the 16 GB is possible, so is the 1 GB of ram.
 
Your comment is so...2012. There is so many phone out there have better battery life AND much higher ram AND run smoothly.

The technology is already here, Having more ram wouldn't make the battery life shorter. In fact, Iphone 5S is way down the list to compare against other phone in terms of battery life. I mean, the battery life on iphone 5S SUCKS compare to the latest smartphone out there with way higher screen resolution and much more ram.

Image
Image
Image

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/benchmarks

Image

Image

http://www.gsmarena.com/battery-test.php3

Hah, holy crap I didn't know my 5S battery was THAT bad compare to some of the latest Androids... But yes, well said. Extra 1Gb of ram will not heavily "drain" your phone's battery.

As a matter of fact, if iOS uses NAND storage as a cache for temporary files to make up for the lack of RAM, then with the 1GB upgrade, it would mean the iPhone won't have to keep storing and retrieving those data back and forth from NAND <--> RAM as frequently. As a result, we would see a decrease in battery usage.
 
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It's not going to change anything.

Computers have reached an upper limit on resource requirements. That's why CPUs are about the same speed now as they were 10 years ago.

The only difference now is the lower power.

Get used to 1GB for phones. You're going to be seeing it for the next 10 years.

This is one of the most incorrect statements I've heard in a long while. 1GB will not be on phones for the next ten years.
 
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