There has been a lot of hoopla over the supposed lesser battery life and raw CPU performance of the Samsung-sourced A9 iPhone 6s’ and the TSMC-sourced versions. This so-called “Chipgate” is neither the first, nor likely the last “—gate” to befall the iPhone.
When I first heard about Chipgate, my first act was to follow the advice of all the bloggers and download Rogerio Hirooka’s Lirum Device Info application.
The results?
N71mAP.
My A9 is the good one—the one manufactured by TSCM.[1]For those who got N71AP, the A9 manufactured by Samsung (the “bad” one), the results could be disconcerting to say the least.Thankfully, Consumer Reports looked into the issue, and found there was no real-world difference between either CPU.
Here’s Andrew Cunningham, reporting for Ars Technica:
The publication ran two different tests, one that stressed cellular connectivity and one that continuously loads webpages while playing music. In both cases, the difference between the two phones was between one and two percent [emphasis added], the same margin that Apple provided. With the exception of the Geekbench test, our battery life tests showed roughly the same thing.
So there you have it: Samsung A9 or TSMC A9—it doesn’t matter. Just use your iPhone 6s and be happy.
Interestingly, up until today, I was somehow under the impression that I had the bad CPU. I’m not sure how I misread the
min the CPU code, but I did. ↩