Apple iPhone 6s Batterygate: Apple Responds to A9 Crisis
Release crises seem to be becoming a tradition for Apple, as each new iPhone brings another backlash over a device flaw.
As customers flock to get their hands on the latest Apple device, users often find a problem -- or at least go looking for one -- with the new iPhone. Then, whatever that problem is gets a "-gate" suffix appended to it, and voilà: We have the iPhone controversy of the year.
While bend tests are still popular with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, this year's iPhone controversy seems to be focusing around the difference -- real or perceived -- in battery life between iPhone 6s smartphones that have a Samsung-built A9 processor powering them and those that have an A9 manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
"Batterygate," as it is already being called, charges that the iPhone 6s models running on the 16nm A9 chip from TSMC do better in battery life tests than those that have the 14nm A9 made by Samsung. According to BGR, some battery benchmarks have found that TSMC models of the iPhone 6s last up to 50 minutes longer than the Samsung-powered iPhone 6s models.
But Apple says the difference in battery life represents only a couple of percentage points. The company responded to "batterygate" in a statement to TechCrunch:
With the Apple-designed A9 chip in your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, you are getting the most advanced smartphone chip in the world. Every chip we ship meets Apple's highest standards for providing incredible performance and deliver great battery life, regardless of iPhone 6s capacity, color, or model.
Certain manufactured lab tests which run the processors with a continuous heavy workload until the battery depletes are not representative of real-world usage, since they spend an unrealistic amount of time at the highest CPU performance state. It's a misleading way to measure real-world battery life. Our testing and customer data show the actual battery life of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, even taking into account variable component differences, vary within just 2-3% of each other.
It's worth remembering that both models of the Apple iPhone 6s, unlike so many previous iPhones, have been ranked near or at the very top of battery life tests comparing the devices against company rivals. In fact, as Latin Post previously reported, it has been found to be one of the most power-efficient smartphones ever.