iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Bionic Chip Could Be 35% More Energy Efficient, Enabling Longer Battery Life

[MacRumors]

The A17 Bionic chip for next year's high-end models of the iPhone 15 lineup could be 35% more efficient compared to current iPhone processors thanks to the use of newer 3nm chip process technology.

Apple is expected to adopt the smaller 3nm process technology for the 2023 iPhone chip, destined to be the A17 Bionic. The current A16 Bionic chip uses TSMC's 4nm process, which offers improved efficiency and performance compared to the A15 Bionic chip based on the 5nm process from the year prior.

Mass production of TSMC's 3nm process began this week, and Bloomberg cites TSMC's chairman Mark Liu as saying the newer process will require 35% less power while also providing better performance than its previous 5nm process. Apple is expected to be TSMC's biggest customer of the 3nm process, reportedly using it for the upcoming M2 Pro and M2 Max chips and the A17 Bionic for the iPhone 15 Pro.

Last week, a report uncovered new challenges Apple faced while developing the A16 Bionic chip for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. According to the report, Apple had more aggressive plans to further improve the GPU on the chip, calling it a "generational leap." Apple initially wanted to include ray tracing for the A16 Bionic's GPU, but those plans failed after the chip overheated, leading to poor battery life. Ultimately, Apple changed plans last minute and included a GPU based on last year's A15 Bionic chip.

The lack of a more advanced GPU in the A16 Bionic chip could mean we see more considerable improvements with the A17 Bionic chip on high-end iPhone 15 models next year. For the first time with the iPhone 14 lineup, Apple only gave the higher-end Pro models the newer A16 Bionic chip while keeping the lower-end models with the one-year-old A15 Bionic chip. That same precedent is expected to continue next year, with only the higher-end models of the lineup gaining the A17 Bionic while the rest of the lineup will use this year's A16 Bionic chip.

Details on the iPhone 15 and higher-end iPhone 15 Pro and possibly iPhone 15 "Ultra" are scant, but we are expecting improvements with the cameras, including a periscope lens, the expansion of Dynamic Island to all models of the lineup, and more. For everything we know about the iPhone 15, check out our roundup.

Article Link: iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Bionic Chip Could Be 35% More Energy Efficient, Enabling Longer Battery Life

 

[Kylo83]

Good we don’t need more power as there’s nothing that needs it

 

[Reason077]

USB-C and 35% better battery life? The 15 Pro is sounding better and better. Finally, a significant upgrade worthy of my money!

 

[fredrik9]

As long as it doesn’t break I’ll try to keep my iPhone 12 (2020) to around 2025.

 

[DMG35]

iPhone 15 is just going to be iPhone 14S.

 

[alpi123]

Good we don’t need more power as there’s nothing that needs it

It would still be a more powerful chip, lol

 

[MayaUser]

since pro has great battery life, Apple will go for more power
Since A16 is almost the same as the A15..Apple will dont focus on battery but for performance instead

 

[MayaUser]

Good we don’t need more power as there’s nothing that needs it

Since this is a thing of scaling...power is always needed since this will scale to the macs as well
And we have almost the same performance for 2 years...a third year would mean that SD will be way ahead
For first you need the power and after the apps can be build around it and not vice versa. So if this will be the first ray-tracing dev needs the SoC to build the apps

 

[Leon Ze Professional]

"According to the report, Apple had more aggressive plans to further improve the GPU on the chip, calling it a "generational leap." Apple initially wanted to include ray tracing for the A16 Bionic's GPU, but those plans failed after the chip overheated, leading to poor battery life."

It will be interesting to see if Apple can continue to push the GPU envelope on 3nm chips whilst maintaining or improving the current awesome battery life of the iPhone?

I'm confident Apple will achieve it.

 

[MayaUser]

"According to the report, Apple had more aggressive plans to further improve the GPU on the chip, calling it a "generational leap." Apple initially wanted to include ray tracing for the A16 Bionic's GPU, but those plans failed after the chip overheated, leading to poor battery life."

It will be interesting to see if Apple can continue to push the GPU envelope on 3nm chips whilst maintaining or improving the current awesome battery life of the iPhone?

I'm confident Apple will achieve it.

the better way is to improve the power as much as they can while keeping the current battery life, since is already good enough.
Since SD gen 2 has hardware ray tracing i am pretty sure A17 will have something like this, maybe with different marketing name, Apples way

 

[lars666]

Bring it on – love the crazy great battery life on my Pro Max, feeling good to leave the house even for a very long day without a power bank as backup. If Apple can extend this battery life even longer, go for it!

 

[RickDEGH]

USB-C and 35% better battery life? The 15 Pro is sounding better and better. Finally, a significant upgrade worthy of my money!

35% more efficient chip is not the same as 35% better battery life. Anyway, that’s what we hear every year - efficient this, efficient that - but we run for the charger at nearly the same intervals.

 

[PsykX]

USB-C and 35% better battery life? The 15 Pro is sounding better and better. Finally, a significant upgrade worthy of my money!

And what about armv9 instruction set ? It was supposed to come in the M2 chip.

@MacRumors : It would be good to have an article dedicated to this.

 

[BvizioN]

Good we don’t need more power as there’s nothing that needs it

More future proof! We don't know yet what sort of power hungry new useful apps could come at the AppStore.

 

[Beatrix Kiddo]

iPhone 15 is just going to be iPhone 14S.

At this point it is 13S S.

 

[AlexESP]

Good we don’t need more power as there’s nothing that needs it

Of course many things need more power. LiDAR scans, games, computational photography… I don’t know where this trend of “iPad and iPhone don’t need more power” comes from.

 

[contacos]

I wish Apple would add a battery capacity like Android vendors. Imagine an android battery with the optimizations of an iPhone 🤯

 

[bLackjackj]

iPhone 15 is just going to be iPhone 14S.

Actually the iPhone 14 is the iPhone 13s.

 

[bLackjackj]

At this point it is 13S S.

Actually no, it is the 15 Pro. Consider the iPhone 14 a 13s with the new bloat bar aka notch.

 

[Christoffee]

iPhone 15 is just going to be iPhone 14S.

Hang on, wasn't the 14 just a 13S?

 

[d686546s]

Sounds like an overall good step forward. Since I don't buy my phones subsidised there's no way I would ever get a Pro, the prices are simply ludicrous, so I guess I'll hold out a year or two longer until this filters down to the regular or SE iPhones.

On a side note, I'm really curious how the diversification strategy is working out for Apple. I'd assume that they've successfully pushed some customers to the Pros, but equally some will just not buy or buy older models elsewhere.

 

[Alexwastaken]

hopefully they make the iPhone thinner. tired of carrying this brick 🧱

 

[akbarali.ch]

No latest news/leaks on USBC ?

 

[xxray]

My New Year’s resolution of buying no Apple products in 2023 isn’t off to a good start with rumors like these. 😟

 

[Scarecrow8311]

As long as it doesn’t break I’ll try to keep my iPhone 12 (2020) to around 2025.

What is your battery health looking like? I just traded my 11 pro max in and it had a 93% battery health left on it.