Apple downplays iPhone 6s ‘Batterygate’

Remember ‘Antennagate’? Five years on Apple has sound itself facing a new, albeit somewhat less dramatic, controversy.

A recent teardown of the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus discovered that not all models are equal. The A9 chip powering the devices is actually sourced from two different suppliers – Samsung and TSMC. This is because having agreed a deal with Samsung, Apple also signed up with TSMC to protect against any potential yield and allocation problems.

Testing subsequently pointed to better battery performance and reduced heat output from handsets incorporating TSMC’s chip. The scale of the discrepancy varies according to the test, although some reports suggested a difference of up to two hours battery life. Others suggested that Samsung’s chip ran up to three degrees hotter than its rival.

And so ‘Batterygate’ was born.

Apple, however, has insisted to TechCrunch that the actual real-world battery performance of each versions actually differs by only between two and three per cent.

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,” it stated. Every chip we ship meets Apple’s highest standards for providing incredible performance and deliver great battery life, regardless of iPhone 6s capacity, colour, 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.”

It’s certainly fair to say that lab-based tests aren’t always indicative of real-life performance, as Volkswagen knows all too well.

Image credit: IDigitalTimes