Apple A9

Next generation iPhone rumors are already flying, with heavy-hitting analysts starting to weigh in with their own research. As MacRumors reports, Ming-Chi Kuo at KGI securities expects Apple to release an updated 4-inch iPhone sometime in the first half of next year. This release schedule would be a departure for Apple, since the company has typically launched new iPhone models only once per year. Summer updates were replaced by fall product launches in recent years, with the iPhone 7 expected to debut in fall 2016.

In the wake of the so called "Chipgate," many iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners are concerned with what brand of A9 processor powers their phones. The mostly unfounded concern arose when, a little over a week ago, some benchmarks showed that the slightly larger 16nm TSMC brand A9 chip was 20% more efficient (in terms of power consumption) than the 14nm Samsung version.

Apple has sourced A9 processors found in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus from two different suppliers, both Samsung and TSMC. While the design and real-world performance are practically the same, each chip manufacturer is actually using a different die size. The Samsung version (APL0898) is arguably more advanced since it uses a 14-nanometer process, resulting in an A9 with a footprint of 3.78 square inches. By contrast, the TSMC chip (APL1022) takes up 4.11 square inches thanks to a 16-nanometer process. So why does any of this matter?