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Is MLC NAND now definitely being used in the 128GB iphone 6/6 plus?

J

jbattams

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 9, 2015
7
1
Hi, just a very quick query, I've got about a month left of warrenty on my iPhone 6, and have always been a little annoyed that it has the less durable, slower TLC NAND, I know there were 'rumors' around November 2014 that Apple would be switching to MLC NAND for 128GB devices...

I was just wondering if anyone could confirm if this actually happened? (e.g. with benchmark tests?)- since all discussion of it seems to have died down now so I dont know if that means Apple found a way of reducing crashing in software for TLC NAND or if they really did switch at some point?

If you have a 128GB iPhone 6 and have bought it this year, would you mind posting your storage read/write speeds (e.g. using a free app such as Phone Doctor)?

Many Thanks!

Joe
 
sunking101 said:
It's all TLC now isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong...
Click to expand...

Really? That is interesting if True- perhaps it's just become accepted as the 'norm' with higher capacity devices these days....

Odd though, as online reports seem to suggest that TLC has a higher rate of decay/ failure rate because of the three states- so ideal for disposable stuff like pen drives, but not so great for a Premium £650 device :/
 
jbattams said:
Really? That is interesting if True- perhaps it's just become accepted as the 'norm' with higher capacity devices these days....

Odd though, as online reports seem to suggest that TLC has a higher rate of decay/ failure rate because of the three states- so ideal for disposable stuff like pen drives, but not so great for a Premium £650 device :/
Click to expand...

?"Disposable stuff like pens drives"?

Never had any of my USB jump drives forget anything. Found one that was over 5 years old and it had all the information intact.
 
willmtaylor said:
Discussed in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ve-tlc-flash-installed.1929806/#post-22106147

Also discussed in this review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-review/7

And finally here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-preliminary-results

In short: Not the issue it used to be.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's really helpful info, sorry, I should have made it a bit clearer from the thread title that I'm only concerned about the iPhone 6 (not 6s) since I've got a month left of my warranty- does the same still apply with the original (and especially, early production) 6? Many thanks for your advice and wisdom!
 
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willmtaylor said:
Discussed in this thread:
And finally here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-preliminary-results
Click to expand...

Any idea where Anandtech got 'StorageBench by Eric Panto' from? I've googled endlessly and cannot find anything related- i'd be interested in running it on my early 6 128GB to see if my results were similar to theirs for the 6 (am assuming they used the 16GB with MLC, but cant see mention of that...)

Newtons Apple said:
Never had any of my USB jump drives forget anything. Found one that was over 5 years old and it had all the information intact.
Click to expand...

From what I understand, and I dont know a huge amount about NAND storage, it's read/ writes that cause degradation- e.g. a single NAND gate (i.e. there are millions of these in the Solid State Chips) will only have a finite number of times it can be switched before it fails- so storing things long term shouldn't be an issue because you're not constantly changing the state of the gate.

From the limited understanding I have about TLC, the issue is fundamentally that because it has 3 states, there is a greater wear on the gate since it changes states more frequently.
 
It's a long time since I read about this, but data failure shouldn't ever be a concern

It is the fact that the storage space available starts shrinking! This is because the controller tracks the wear, and then blocks out "worn out" gates. Because of this management it also starts to affect speeds as the storage gets older too.

The new 128GB drives have a combination of SLC and TLC where the SLC provides a fast cache that keeps the speed up, and then parks the data to the TLC component in the background. This should also help improve life as well.
 
jbattams said:
Any idea where Anandtech got 'StorageBench by Eric Panto' from? I've googled endlessly and cannot find anything related- i'd be interested in running it on my early 6 128GB to see if my results were similar to theirs for the 6 (am assuming they used the 16GB with MLC, but cant see mention of that...)
Click to expand...

Nope, no idea. Sorry.
 
jonstatt1 said:
It's a long time since I read about this, but data failure shouldn't ever be a concern

It is the fact that the storage space available starts shrinking! This is because the controller tracks the wear, and then blocks out "worn out" gates. Because of this management it also starts to affect speeds as the storage gets older too.

The new 128GB drives have a combination of SLC and TLC where the SLC provides a fast cache that keeps the speed up, and then parks the data to the TLC component in the background. This should also help improve life as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks, yeah, that's what the Anandtech researched seemed to imply at that WilliamTaylor linked to regarding the 6s/ 6s plus- I'm just wondering really if this new-fangled SLC/TLC combo was used on the early 128GB original 6?

Nevertheless, am just going to forget about it, at the end of the day, although we like to think we'll be using these phones for a long time, the chances are that in a year or so we'll replace them with something new and these will be relegated to 'iPod duty' etc. I must admit that I although I was a big Mac fan in the early 00's, I'm not so bothered about Apple these days since it's as much a fashion statement to have an iPhone/ Apple device (I think I liked being in the minority against the evil Microsoft ;) ), but i'm pretty much linux these days- the 6 was my first iPhone and I do really like it, everything ties together so much better than Android 4.4ish in the settings/ bluetooth etc.

I think it's also testament to the quality and durability of Apple devices that i'm still using my old 4gen ipod touch & my dad still uses my old iPad 2- it's incredible the number of ios versions the good old iPad 2 has been able to run!!!!
 
jbattams said:
Thanks, yeah, that's what the Anandtech researched seemed to imply at that WilliamTaylor linked to regarding the 6s/ 6s plus- I'm just wondering really if this new-fangled SLC/TLC combo was used on the early 128GB original 6?
Click to expand...

The implication is that this is new, and they also said it uses NVMe which didn't exist a year ago. One way to get a clue to this would be to run the benchmark tool on your phone. Try the Phone Doctor Plus application and just run the storage test on its own. The 6S Plus gets an incredible over 500MB/s write, and over 1000MB/s read
 
jonstatt1 said:
The implication is that this is new, and they also said it uses NVMe which didn't exist a year ago. One way to get a clue to this would be to run the benchmark tool on your phone. Try the Phone Doctor Plus application and just run the storage test on its own. The 6S Plus gets an incredible over 500MB/s write, and over 1000MB/s read
Click to expand...

That's a very good point- my iPhone 6 gets an absolutely pathetic 191 MB/sec write and 100MB/s read :/ :/ using phone doctor plus- which leads me back to my originaly question- was the TLC debacle late 2014 put to bed because Apple actually switched to MLC in the 128GB capacity in the original 6, or did it remain the same and people just forgot about it? If the former, then i'll maybe try and devise a way to convince the genius bar to swap it for a recent one....(unlikely that they'll do this I guess, unless I put a load of apps on it and it keeps crashing)

I'd be very interested still if anyone has a more recent original 6 in 128GB capacity and could advise if they know what type of NAND they have (if known), and more easily their read/ write speeds in Phone Doctor Plus.

I wonder what capacity iPhone 6 Anandtech used for their original 6 comparison with the 6s?
 
Hmm, it looks like they did change the NAND at some point- just ran Phone Doctor Pro on friend's 128GB iphone 6 that he bought in June this year- he's getting 135MB write 195MB Read,

With mine it's always the other way round- in Phone Doctor Plus I get 195MB write, 126MB read (read is always lower on mine- which doesn't make a lot of sense to me- reading should surely be quicker than writing??)

Will try not to worry about it! Doubt I could convince an Apple Genius to replace it now after having it so long, and with the reboot issues etc being 'fixed' by later iOS versions.... ah well...
 
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