iPhone 18 Pro: Everything M6 Tells Us About the A20 Chip

[BorisDG]

If the underlying schematic is authentic and Reptalica is interpreting the power rails correctly, I would regard it as meaningful technical evidence that the A20 Pro uses LPDDR5x rather than LPDDR6.

As far as the M6 goes, A20 and M6 do belong to closely related Apple architectural generations. But that isn't confirmatory evidence that M6 also uses LPDDR5x, because Apple historically has allowed the A- and M-series memory subsystems to diverge.

Again, I'm not arguing against the idea that M6 uses LPDDR5x—as I already said, I agree that's what it's most likely to have. I'm just arguing against the idea that we have confirmatory evidence for this.

I think the diagram is from the Apple leaks that happened recently.

 

[JoshuaBru]

This article is great. I really wish you would publish more articles that do a technical deepdive.

Agreed. Super interesting read. It makes up for all the mind numbing posts about Ted Lasso

 

[Tyler O'Bannon]

These are the articles I live for on this forum

 

[Tagbert]

Meanwhile, my 14 Pro is still performing at peak performance. Still destroying every task at hand without breaking a sweat.

But we all need that A20 Pro.

Right?

Right.

You may not need a new phone now but someone coming from a 12 or 13 may be ready. Apple releases new models for a wide range of users only some of whom upgrade on short cycles. Many people hold their phones until the time is right for this. It good that they can get a better phone when that time comes.

 

[Tagbert]

Still the same 20 year old battery technology that they’ve gotten to all day usage from, all by cutting features (intelligent battery management turns of services and processes) not by making the battery better. Now they sell on us charging them to only 80% if we want them to last longer than a year before their overall storage tanks.

The heat from the battery when the chips are running are the real killer, both in longevity and performance loss due to to thermal throttling. After some two decades, they finally started building vapour chambers to dissipate some of that heat but that’s a bandaid on a cargo ship.

What’s the point of more boostafazoo when every time you jump, your head smacks the low ceiling?

The battery tech in iPhones has changed a lot since the original iPhone came out. It is still lithium ion but the actual engineering in side has been in an ongoing improvement cycle. There are some pending changes that might make a bigger jump in battery performance and we will probably see them once Apple is comfortable shipping millions of phones that they can be certain won’t fail early due to the new tech.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

The battery tech in iPhones has changed a lot since the original iPhone came out. It is still lithium ion but the actual engineering in side has been in an ongoing improvement cycle. There are some pending changes that might make a bigger jump in battery performance and we will probably see them once Apple is comfortable shipping millions of phones that they can be certain won’t fail early due to the new tech.

There are only so many ways to chop an onion bro. At the end of the day, it’s still an onion.

🥱

 

[Homme]

The battery tech in iPhones has changed a lot since the original iPhone came out. It is still lithium ion but the actual engineering in side has been in an ongoing improvement cycle.

while of course battery tech has changed plenty since the OG iPhone the best and biggest change has been with the 15 lineup when battery capacity went up from 500 to 1000 cycle counts and with the 15 Pro and higher having support of Adaptive Power Mode via Apple Intelligence

 

[conmee]

After some two decades, they finally started building vapour chambers to dissipate some of that heat but that’s a bandaid on a cargo ship.

Good sir, no need to exaggerate, it’s at least a tack weld on a cargo ship. 😉

Agree with all sentiments about battery tech. But despite no significant change in battery tech (or battery material) for the entire life of the iPhone product line, I think for me the XS (2,658mAh) was the first phone where I felt battery life was “all day” for my use, but I also don’t game or watch endless videos.

Then I felt battery life took a step back with the introduction of 5G despite larger batteries. I normally just use 4G LTE as that is more than fast enough for what I do. But 12 Pro through 15 Pro felt like they struggled to get through the entire day unless I manually disabled 5G and even then no guarantees. I know many people mentioned getting Max phones as much or more for battery life as screen size.

My iPhone 17 Pro (3,988mAh) is the first iPhone since XS that I definitely get “all day” battery life and I don’t disable 5G and I charge to 100% and don’t use any of the energy saving features like turning off background refresh etc. I turn them all off and I don’t care about the grid or environment, I want 100% charge whether it’s “green energy” or not. lol Coming from my 14 Pro, battery life turned out to be the unexpected best part of my upgrade to 17 Pro.

Anyhow, all that to say if they could improve battery and camera tech such that I can get the same power and features in a 5S form factor (or at least 13 mini) and with flush cameras/no plateau that would be great.

 

[Nicky G]

The M/A processors really are marvels of engineering. The amount of compute power is staggering.

Enough to bring a tear to the eye of this aging Apple user, who never saw this coming when Apple transitioned to x86. 🥲😆

 

[chars1ub0w]

I was just on a couple week vacation doing many of those items on a daily basis including checking mail/messages and using maps and the only day is was down to 20% was due a day where cellular connection was hard to come by. Most days, I ended the day with >50%. If you want exhaust your battery watch videos and play games.

Did you use your camera to take pictures and videos?

 

[lapstags]

Leaks suggest that the a20 pro will be 96gb it memory bus and an extra gpu core. So memory bandwidth should be significantly higher and the extra gpu core will contribute to better performance

 

[SteveJobs2.0]

Ram is a much bigger issue these days. On the 16 Pro activating the camera shuts down most other apps to conserve ram. This will only get worse year after year.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Ram is a much bigger issue these days. On the 16 Pro activating the camera shuts down most other apps to conserve ram. This will only get worse year after year.

Too much post processing. I think the OS is largely to blame. OS26/27 has stolen all my RAM where my apps and games are ejected almost immediately after sending them to MT. OS 18 was fine as were prior OSes. I think Apple is aggressively loading a lot of AI slop under the hood. The 16 Pro was taking some of the most AI slop looking pics I have ever seen posted online. It’s gotten better but still, if you zoom in, there are a lot of melted parts.

I think this use of AI has infested all avenues of iOS sadly, whether you want it or not as it seems turning off AI doesn’t actually do that. I have it all disabled as much as possible but Mail still shoves summaries in my face and spellcheck or just writing is always plagued with it trying to “fix” your text.

Their hardware has been in a great place since 2020. It’s the software now that they just don’t seem to care about, adding complex shaders and whatnot rather than working to optimize and strengthen. Feels like Apple silicon is too good and they need to drag it down to keep everyone upgrading lol.

 

[Burnincoco]

The M/A processors really are marvels of engineering. The amount of compute power is staggering.

I have a 16 pro max witch is sooo old news now, and to know that a new laptop that is a school work horse has my same phone chip is absolutely and completely bonkers.

 

[coachingguy]

Still the same 20 year old battery technology that they’ve gotten to all day usage from, all by cutting features (intelligent battery management turns of services and processes) not by making the battery better. Now they sell on us charging them to only 80% if we want them to last longer than a year before their overall storage tanks.

The heat from the battery when the chips are running are the real killer, both in longevity and performance loss due to to thermal throttling. After some two decades, they finally started building vapour chambers to dissipate some of that heat but that’s a bandaid on a cargo ship.

What’s the point of more boostafazoo when every time you jump, your head smacks the low ceiling?

While I appreciate your power user status... For 97.314% of people buying iPhones or cell phones in general, will never run into those ceilings...

 

[DBR2025]

This article is great. I really wish you would publish more articles that do a technical deepdive.

It's all speculation. You could have asked ChatGPT to write you a technical deep dive article on an upcoming iPhone processor and ti would be just as accurate.