My real world experience with TSMC vs Samsung

[HEK]

these are very solid reasons that are fairly common when using a smartphone these days,
i can imagine myself being part of all of them.

Wow man we are way different, these don't apply to me and here is why.

1) If you do a lot of movie making and you like to edit the clips on your phone. For example when you're on holiday and want to send your friends a daily clip.
I'm on holiday to get away from my daily friends. Don't want to contact them at all.

2) You play a lot of (cpu intensive) games on your phone during your hour and a half trip to work and back.
I used to game while driving, but after the third ticket, and collision I gave it up and just read the paper now while I drive.

3) Or in the distant future, when the A9 Chip in this phone is more heavily used because of newer IOS versions / games and apps.
In the distant future my A9 Chip phone will be in the hands of some third world relative of the guy I e-bayed the phone to.

 

[daniesy]

Because I work a 60 hour a week job, go to school at night, and have a kid and a life. I have the TSMC chip as well, so not as much incentive to confirm Geekbench. Also, not like anyone would accept our test anyway. Some will lie about their results. "Medium" brightness is subjective, what if mine is ever so miniscule to the left or right from someone else's. Most of us will have different apps and other things stored on the phone, different carriers, different wifi networks, have charged it more/less than others since buying, buy it on a different date, from different manufacturing runs, with different bands in the phone, different storage capacities which may use different components between them.....etc.etc.etc.etc.

What incentive do I have to do this unscientific test you propose that everyone will just pick apart anyway?

If you have a kid, a life, a 60 hours week job and go to school at night, how come you find the time to reply to my pointless post? It doesn't affect your life in any way. If i were you, i'd rather sleep instead of hanging on some forum. Your health is much more important (i'm serious).

The differences you talked about are so small, they wouldn't influence the battery consumption that much. And even if they did, if the sample is big enough, for every phone with a higher brightness there will be a phone with lower brightness. In the end, when you average the results, it will all even out *Statistics*. By your reasoning, statistics is pointless because you can never remove all variables, trust your data and know for sure what variable might influence the final result. Lol.

However, if MY test is not enough, maybe think of another. There are plenty of smart people on this forum who could come up with a real or better way of testing it. But no one is looking at the problem from this point of view, they prefer ranting, arguing or insulting other people. I'd rather do something, but i haven't bought the new 6s yet, so i'm trying to help in other ways.

What incentive? Well as i previously said, MacRumors and reddit are supposed to be communities, people in a community help each other. But i guess i'm wrong. They'd prefer wasting time proving me that i'm wrong )

 

[lordofthereef]

Setting aside sample size, which is unrealistic to expect a larger sample size for just a regular consumer, I feel like you could have done a better comparison by loading nothing on the phones other than the stress test app. If you were going through the trouble of swapping phones out, why not just set it up as a new phone, download the one app, and let it rip? No reason to be getting ANY notifications in the middle of the night.

That said, this is a notable difference, but we need to keep in mind that this is at a cou going full bore the whole time. I don't consider this a real world test at all, unless you're the person who is gaming 24/7 on your device. What I would rather see is two phones side by side getting the same notifications sitting in the same network going from 100% to dead. Obviously this would take two phones (at the same time), but that would give a closer real world test.

This isn't to say that there isn't s clear difference between chips (under specific conditions), but the real question is how much of an impact that feasibly has in the user's daily life. So far I've not seen a test that successfully answers that question.

 

[petko1523]

6s Samsung chip what battery gate I love my battery

 

[roeiz]

Wow man we are way different, these don't apply to me and here is why.

1) If you do a lot of movie making and you like to edit the clips on your phone. For example when you're on holiday and want to send your friends a daily clip.
I'm on holiday to get away from my daily friends. Don't want to contact them at all.

2) You play a lot of (cpu intensive) games on your phone during your hour and a half trip to work and back.
I used to game while driving, but after the third ticket, and collision I gave it up and just read the paper now while I drive.

3) Or in the distant future, when the A9 Chip in this phone is more heavily used because of newer IOS versions / games and apps.
In the distant future my A9 Chip phone will be in the hands of some third world relative of the guy I e-bayed the phone to.

What I meant was that I might shoot movies for my own creative reasons, and play cookie jam ( which drains my current phone in an hour)

 

[heshirecat]

Setting aside sample size, which is unrealistic to expect a larger sample size for just a regular consumer, I feel like you could have done a better comparison by loading nothing on the phones other than the stress test app. If you were going through the trouble of swapping phones out, why not just set it up as a new phone, download the one app, and let it rip? No reason to be getting ANY notifications in the middle of the night.

That said, this is a notable difference, but we need to keep in mind that this is at a cou going full bore the whole time. I don't consider this a real world test at all, unless you're the person who is gaming 24/7 on your device. What I would rather see is two phones side by side getting the same notifications sitting in the same network going from 100% to dead. Obviously this would take two phones (at the same time), but that would give a closer real world test.

This isn't to say that there isn't s clear difference between chips (under specific conditions), but the real question is how much of an impact that feasibly has in the user's daily life. So far I've not seen a test that successfully answers that question.

That's the thing. There are people that DO use the phone to do more things than the average person and this issue affects them more than anyone else. They should be privy to information that can affect their purchase. If I'm throwing down more than a grand for a phone and have certain uses in mind, I'd like to know if there's a variant of the phone I want that is more capable in terms of endurance. I think it's pretty much certain that the two chips are reasonably equal in terms of basic usage.

 

[evorc]

My Samsung 6s plus continue to impress me battery wise compared to TMSC one I had. There's no issue here folks. Save your energy. How funny would it be if Apple does some software optimization for the Samsung. I wouldn't count it out. Just to shut the OCD crowd.

 

[bruinsrme]

Wow man we are way different, these don't apply to me and here is why.

1) If you do a lot of movie making and you like to edit the clips on your phone. For example when you're on holiday and want to send your friends a daily clip.
I'm on holiday to get away from my daily friends. Don't want to contact them at all.

2) You play a lot of (cpu intensive) games on your phone during your hour and a half trip to work and back.
I used to game while driving, but after the third ticket, and collision I gave it up and just read the paper now while I drive.

3) Or in the distant future, when the A9 Chip in this phone is more heavily used because of newer IOS versions / games and apps.
In the distant future my A9 Chip phone will be in the hands of some third world relative of the guy I e-bayed the phone to.

Exactly.

 

[HEK]

What I meant was that I might shoot movies for my own creative reasons, and play cookie jam ( which drains my current phone in an hour)

Cool

 

[Shirasaki]

OK. Seems that the fact is:
Precise test between two chips are either statistically or theoretically impossible, because in order to eliminate difference between all test iPhone, we need all circuits being drawn and printed in exact the same way, while all components are in exact same condition, except A9 chips, and all A9 chips should be defect free, and fully attached on board.

Oh, and test should be started in exact same time, and surrounding running environment should be exact the same time, and the way using phone should be exact the same. What about loading the exact same iOS 9, which means all bits are loaded on Flash on the exact same place?

Everyone knows that such test doesn't even exist right?

By the way, I have iPhone 6 Plus and the battery is not really good due to iOS 9.1 beta 4 but I am happy with it.

 

[j2ee]

OK. Seems that the fact is:
Precise test between two chips are either statistically or theoretically impossible, because in order to eliminate difference between all test iPhone, we need all circuits being drawn and printed in exact the same way, while all components are in exact same condition, except A9 chips, and all A9 chips should be defect free, and fully attached on board.

Oh, and test should be started in exact same time, and surrounding running environment should be exact the same time, and the way using phone should be exact the same. What about loading the exact same iOS 9, which means all bits are loaded on Flash on the exact same place?

Everyone knows that such test doesn't even exist right?

By the way, I have iPhone 6 Plus and the battery is not really good due to iOS 9.1 beta 4 but I am happy with it.

What you said is not big factors, as long as few people compare the two chip in some kind of fair real life test, then we have a reasonable practical answer, we dont need to know exactly 0.01% different. I am sure a lot of people will do youtube review and compare anyway, and apple 1 to 2 percent lie cannot hide the truth.

 

[HEK]

What you said is not big factors, as long as few people compare the two chip in some kind of fair real life test, then we have a reasonable practical answer, we dont need to know exactly 0.01% different. I am sure a lot of people will do youtube review and compare anyway, and apple 1 to 2 percent lie cannot hide the truth.

Your whole point fell apart apart and partisanship became obvious when you misquoted the percentages Apple stated to make your point look better.

 

[h3nG]

In this case, the field results are strongly suggesting that a precise test is not necessary to determine with a significant degree of confidence whether TSMC chipset has a better battery life. In almost all cases, the tests demonstrate that the TSMC chip performs better than the Samsung chip - without the the need to isolate the variables (and I am sure people are purposely making the Samsung chip look bad by rigging the settings).

This goes to show that the margin of difference in battery performance between the two chipsets is pretty significant for the types of test people are using (heavy benchmarks). If we had mix results, I would agree that you would need a more controlled testing environment.

 

[jamezr]

As most of you know, earlier this week MacRumors posted that our iPhones 6s A9 chip sets were outsourced by two companies that being TSMC and Samsung and that there is or could be a possible discrepancy between the two chips in performance and/or battery life in the iPhone 6s Pluses. One user posted a geek bench battery life of 6hours and 5mins with a Samsung chipped phone and another of a TSMC Chipped phone of 7 hours and 50 mins. To me, that was a huge concern. For some of us who pay close to or over a thousand dollars for our devices, to have a difference of almost 2 hours of battery life and for some who really put a premium on battery life, thats something we can't ignore. Personally, 5-20 mins of battery life is probably normal between phones because of usage, testing, etc but when its getting into 1-2 hours that for me is a problem.

For me, there was no way I was going to accept the fact that someone who has the same exact phone as me (I'm talking iPhone 6s Pluses only) spec for spec and them have almost 1-2 hours more of battery life than me. Of course, I immediately downloaded the Lirum App from the app store (before it was taken down but now its been put back up) and come to find out I had the Samsung chip in my phone. I charged my phone to 100 percent and ran the test down to 0 during the middle of the night where i don't normally get tons of email, text messages, etc. After my test was finished I arrived at 6 hours and 17 minutes. Clearly not the 7h and 50 mins that the reddit user posted on the Mac Rumor article. So next course of action was to get a hold of a TSMC phone which i knew was going to require a lot of luck because i could go to the Apple Store and do a exchange but that wasn't going to assure me of getting a TSMC built iPhone, but luckily for me I exchanged my Samsung chipped phone and got a TSMC. Saved me a lot of trouble (and probably Apple as well) because I was going to get a hold of one regardless.

Anyway, I did a back up of my Samsung chipped iPhone on my Mac and loaded up this TSMC iPhone with the same exact apps, pictures, music, emails etc. to give it the most realistic apples to apples comparison that i could control. I ran the test in the middle of the night at almost the same time I did my first test to avoid text messages, email, etc and the result was exactly what i was expecting. This TSMC phone came in at 7 hours and 51 mins.

Logically, Apple wants to claim only a 2-3 percent difference and maybe they're right but for me, I look at them saying something like that for damage control. They are trying to avoid people like me going into the store and exchanging their phone until they got a TSMC and honestly, why wouldn't we? Again, almost 2 hours of battery life is a huge deal. That is no where near the "2-3 percent." View attachment 591410View attachment 591418

Its funny reading all the comments in this thread. If your phone works great and have no issues then which chip it has makes no difference.

But to those that are complaining about the Samsung chip......
Why does Apple quality control get a pass? Surely this was tested way before mass production. Apple has a huge department called Quality Control that tests all these scenarios out before going into mass production.

Then as part of any quality control/assurance process they randomly check production lines pull iphones and test them again.

So if there is a difference between the two chips....Apple knew about it before mass production.

 

[MaciMac100]

Apple has a huge department called Quality Control that tests all these scenarios out before going into mass production.

You mean that Huge Quality Control department that tested SSD's speeds or Macbook's retina screens?

 

[Shirasaki]

What you said is not big factors, as long as few people compare the two chip in some kind of fair real life test, then we have a reasonable practical answer, we dont need to know exactly 0.01% different. I am sure a lot of people will do youtube review and compare anyway, and apple 1 to 2 percent lie cannot hide the truth.

Yeah I know. Just want to throw it to some statements spread throughout the whole forum.

 

[Shirasaki]

Its funny reading all the comments in this thread. If your phone works great and have no issues then which chip it has makes no difference.

But to those that are complaining about the Samsung chip......
Why does Apple quality control get a pass? Surely this was tested way before mass production. Apple has a huge department called Quality Control that tests all these scenarios out before going into mass production.

Then as part of any quality control/assurance process they randomly check production lines pull iphones and test them again.

So if there is a difference between the two chips....Apple knew about it before mass production.

Well. They may know that. But what if they release the real difference in understandable statements rather than the 2-3% difference announcement yet many YouTube videos show some 1.5 hours difference regarding to different chips?

I mean, perhaps their test scenarios are way too far from many real world usage patterns. But they should realise the difference in certain areas. Well, let me do a simple math. Assume the time an iPhone 6s Plus could last in a usage pattern is 10 hours, or 600 minutes. Then 2% of such would be 12 minutes. Yes, subtle difference and we can accept.

But, as videos may imply, there are possibilities that those two A9 chips have different battery consumption control capabilities. And such would be hard to discover in a controlled lab environment.

 

[jamezr]

Well. They may know that. But what if they release the real difference in understandable statements rather than the 2-3% difference announcement yet many YouTube videos show some 1.5 hours difference regarding to different chips?

I mean, perhaps their test scenarios are way too far from many real world usage patterns. But they should realise the difference in certain areas. Well, let me do a simple math. Assume the time an iPhone 6s Plus could last in a usage pattern is 10 hours, or 600 minutes. Then 2% of such would be 12 minutes. Yes, subtle difference and we can accept.

But, as videos may imply, there are possibilities that those two A9 chips have different battery consumption control capabilities. And such would be hard to discover in a controlled lab environment.

I am not saying there is a difference in the two chips plus or minus.......


I am just saying that with all the QA and QC controls a corporation like Apple has in place.......this is not a news to them. they knew about it before customers or the media.

 

[Shirasaki]

I am not saying there is a difference in the two chips plus or minus.......


I am just saying that with all the QA and QC controls a corporation like Apple has in place.......this is not a news to them. they knew about it before customers or the media.

Oh. Sorry for misunderstanding it.

 

[Dented]

All I can say is that my real world experience with a Samsung-chipped 6S (128Gb) is that it's an awesome phone. The screen and build is absolute perfection, it's blazingly fast and powerful, utterly utterly reliable since launch day (I have no overheating issues, no lag, no freezes, no problems of any kind), and the battery very comfortably lasts me all day every day, busy day or not.

I've had iPhones exclusively since 2008. I took about five 3GS's back with duff screens before returning another for a faulty chip, my launch day 4S had terrible build quality and suffered weird shutdowns resulting in another return, my subsequent iPhone 5 then had another four returns before I got a screen without dead pixels. The point I'm making is I'm picky, and very aware of apple's very longstanding QA issues (it makes me laugh when people act surprised at these each year and start invoking Steve Jobs, things were every bit as bad in his day). I've no shyness about taking my apple products back if they're not quite right. Despite all this my 6S is going nowhere. It's perfection in my eyes and simply the best iPhone I've ever had in every sense.

Does the chip in it make it lower caste? Am I now a second class citizen with my non-TSMC iPhone? Is my phone now effectively worthless? Possibly. But honestly and truthfully I'm not bothered. It's an amazing phone and everything i hoped it would be; that's enough for me.

 

[treichert]

My real world experience with TSMC vs Samsung

No real world experience in this article.

They are trying to avoid people like me going into the store and exchanging their phone until they got a TSMC and honestly, why wouldn't we?

Because you have no right to. You got a phone wit an SOC within spec, just as you got a phone with a display within spec from various source that may even change throughout production over the years.

 

[Bram1982]

Ok, so who's the first one to actually test some scenarios?

 

[Cuniac]

I hear a lot of talk regarding battery life, but has anyone ran a benchmark test between the two CPUs?

-TSMC Chip-
3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited: 28314
3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited with Low Power Mode on (just for fun): 18207
Geek bench 3: 2532 SingleCore / 4401 MultiCore
Geek bench 3 with Low Power Mode on (just for fun): 1467 SingleCore / 2447 MultiCore

 

[HEK]

In this case, the field results are strongly suggesting that a precise test is not necessary to determine with a significant degree of confidence whether TSMC chipset has a better battery life. In almost all cases, the tests demonstrate that the TSMC chip performs better than the Samsung chip - without the the need to isolate the variables (and I am sure people are purposely making the Samsung chip look bad by rigging the settings).

This goes to show that the margin of difference in battery performance between the two chipsets is pretty significant for the types of test people are using (heavy benchmarks). If we had mix results, I would agree that you would need a more controlled testing environment.

My Samsung 6s plus continue to impress me battery wise compared to TMSC one I had. There's no issue here folks. Save your energy. How funny would it be if Apple does some software optimization for the Samsung. I wouldn't count it out. Just to shut the OCD crowd.

Never shut the OCD crowd. Years of why don't we have 2 meg ram.. Now the chips are not the same. And on it goes.....just enjoy a great phone, nah, let's find something to blame Apple for.

 

[phositadc]

Because you have no right to. You got a phone wit an SOC within spec, just as you got a phone with a display within spec from various source that may even change throughout production over the years.

But Apple can charge the same price for two different chips that have a potentially significant 20% battery difference and expect customers who get the worse chip not to care? I think it has to go both ways. If Apple is going to sell different chips, the performance difference either has to be negligible, or they have to be prepared for exchanges.

Same issue with the SSD in MacBook air. Significant performance difference with Samsung vs sandisk. I'm not saying I would exchange, but I certainly don't blame the people who do. Buying a product that costs nearly $1000 shouldn't be a lottery. If Apple turns it into one, expect exchanges.