Apple Claims TSMC vs Samsung A9 Chip Variants Result in Only 2-3% Difference in 'Real World' Battery Life

[Harthag]

This story is having some legs isn't it....probably won't go away. Has this made it to the mainstream media yet?

The unfortunate truth is that this will have zero impact on sales or public perception in general of Apple. No one cares about some geeks and power users who have these issues. The general consumer couldn't care less and also will have no clue that this is even an issue. The Toshiba SSD issues of past Macbooks, antenna-gate (or all the other gates for that matter), yellow screens, Samsung vs LG displays in the retina MBP and ghosting. Sure "bend-gate" made it to more media outlets, but sales didn't go down and people still all love Apple. I can go on and on. People just don't care and it's a shame, I feel, but it is what it is.

Edit- not defending Apple here at all, but I say again, had Apple not dual-sourced the A9, we'd all be waiting months for our iPhones and there would be mass geek hysteria and complaining about stock issues. Hopefully this won't be an issue with TSMC as the sole source of A10.

 

[MrXiro]

Facebook app is a battery killer even before iOS 9. I access through Safari and do a home screen shortcut much less drain.

FB app is a friggin vampire!

 

[Artimus12]

I've had pretty poor battery life from my 6s, compared to my 6, so out of curiosity I wrote a quick app and found out I have a Samsung chip. But then I decided to take a look at the battery usage in Settings.

Turns out the Facebook app was rapin' my battery in the background, regardless how often I actually used it. So I turned off Background App Refresh just for Facebook. And now things are looking great

So check your battery usage -- it might just be a badly behaving app.

Yeah, Facebook is a resource hog! But I've had Background App Refresh switched off for FB since forever, and it still continues to operate in the background. You have to kill it in the app switcher to be certain it's not using resources behind your back.

 

[MrXiro]

The unfortunate truth is that this will have zero impact on sales or public perception in general of Apple. No one cares about some geeks and power users who have these issues. The general consumer couldn't care less and also will have no clue that this is even an issue. The Toshiba SSD issues of past Macbooks, antenna-gate (or all the other gates for that matter), yellow screens, Samsung vs LG displays in the retina MBP and ghosting. Sure "bend-gate" made it to more media outlets, but sales didn't go down and people still all love Apple. I can go on and on. People just don't care and it's a shame, I feel, but it is what it is.

Edit- not defending Apple here at all, but I say again, had Apple not dual-sourced the A9, we'd all be waiting months for our iPhones and there would be mass geek hysteria and complaining about stock issues. Hopefully this won't be an issue with TSMC as the sole source of A10.

That's because the geeks on here make a non-issue into a BIG issue... and overall 2% real world battery usage is a non-issue. If you're a so called "power user" of the phone go ahead and exchange your phone for the TSMC. That accounts for about 1% of actual users of iPhones. This whining makes "first world problems" look like a big deal in comparison.

 

[odedia]

and yet you wouldn't have given it a second thought if you didn't know that two different chips existed.

Ofcourse not. And I wouldn't even care if I found I had the Samsung. It's a "nice-to-have" feature .

 

[philcmk]

Has anyone considered that we might have just witnessed the real world limits of lithography? The 14nm process, while theoretically more energy efficient (due to transistor size) might actually be less efficient due to leakage. Could it be possible that 16nm is going to be the real world limit, and the 7nm goal will never be realized (as a viable success)?

 

[philcmk]

Junction leakage is caused by lattice damage during implantation.One can anneal the wafer to repair the damage but that would diffuse the implant too far. This is a process that is very hard to balance. Incidentally, I had a chance to actually visit the TSMC Fab and was really impressed by their cryogenic implantation process.

 

[guychicago]

Got my Shamesung chip phone replaced at the Apple Store today. Luckily there replacement device is a TSMC.

 

[Carotdo]

Got my Shamesung chip phone replaced at the Apple Store today. Luckily there placement device is a TSMC.

let us know how it turns out for you