Next-Gen iPhone & iPhone Nano Speculation

[Mariner]

If they've managed to get Cortex-A15 ready in time for inclusion in the new iPhone, then kudos to them. Without confirmation of this, I suppose it is quite possible that the A6 could just have a higher-clocked A9? 1.6Ghz is nothing out of the ordinary these days, especially on 32nm.

I'm not entirely convinced that the thinner-is-better meme for smartphones can go on for ever. At some stage, we'll be getting to the point where phones are too unwieldy to hold and use comfortably if they are too thin. The drop in weight is a plus point but I'm left wondering if Apple wouldn't have been better off keeping the weight and thickness at a similar level as the iPhone 4S and simply including a slightly larger battery? I also think the iPhone 5 seems to be a bit 'tall'. Oh well, I'm sure Apple will have made sure it is easy to handle.

It sounds as though the screen has some pretty impressive specs and I'm very surprised to see they are fitting the same screen in the new iPod Touch. Economies of scale make this possible, I suppose.

Overall, pretty much what was expected by everyone and I expect Apple will sell a just about as many of the new iPhones as they can produce, as usual. I wonder how much longer they can hang on to the cachet of the brand, however, as the quality of Android phones (and the OS itself) are improving greatly year on year. The new iPhone doesn't really surpass the latest top-end Android devices in various areas to any great degree. I wonder what we'll be seeing from the Android camp within the next year.

 

[Jubei]

Anand seems sure about his info:

anandshimpi ‏@anandshimpi
"Can't provide more hints on the A15 stuff. Think about voltage/frequency curves, also think about perf gains promised as to why not A9."

 

[Grall]

No LTE = no buy. I don't get Apple sometimes, so stupidly focused on form over function. Ives going on and on about his fucking diamond-polished shiny beveled edges, he can take all that and shove it up his rear end.

Gimme something WORTHWILE Apple. My phone will be 2 years old soon and it's starting to show. I need a solid reason to upgrade, and fucking up on LTE twice now in Europe isn't something I'm going to forget, or forgive.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

No LTE = no buy. I don't get Apple sometimes, so stupidly focused on form over function. Ives going on and on about his fucking diamond-polished shiny beveled edges, he can take all that and shove it up his rear end.

Gimme something WORTHWILE Apple. My phone will be 2 years old soon and it's starting to show. I need a solid reason to upgrade, and fucking up on LTE twice now in Europe isn't something I'm going to forget, or forgive.

Countdown for appletards to cross that saying that LTE in Europe is somehow terribly flawed and regular hspa is the best option for that zone.
Next is how steve jobs invented the widescreen for smartphones before he passed away, a couple of months after he invented the 3G videocall for mobile devices.




Now for the questions in the table:

I don't think the iphone 5 has a Cortex A15, no way. If it was, apple would be bragging about it non-stop.
Instead, they just carefully used their words claiming that the new device is very fast (2x faster than its predecessor) without letting the word out that the CPU is actually slower than 8-month old devices (which it is compared to dual kraits @ 1.5GHz and 1.5GHz quad-A9s, to a certain extent).

Apple was very fast at making comparisons to Tegra3 during the ipad 3's presentation, and they would'nt hesitate to do so again if it put them in a good light.

Regarding the GPU, the 2x performance increase may also come from the same SGX 543MP2 clocked at 380-400MHz.

The real innovation might come from memory bandwidth, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to get their hands on the first batches of LPDDR3.

 

[Mize]

Yes, all Lumia 920's sold anywhere in the world support GSM 800/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100 and LTE 800/900/1800/2100/2600

It's funny. Back when I was pointing out how superior Nokia was for its true pentaband UMTS everyone said it didn't matter...

Nokia have always been the best at world phones. Always.

 

[(((interference)))]

Do we know if they've increased the RAM to 1 GB?

 

[ltcommander.data]

No LTE = no buy. I don't get Apple sometimes, so stupidly focused on form over function. Ives going on and on about his fucking diamond-polished shiny beveled edges, he can take all that and shove it up his rear end.

Gimme something WORTHWILE Apple. My phone will be 2 years old soon and it's starting to show. I need a solid reason to upgrade, and fucking up on LTE twice now in Europe isn't something I'm going to forget, or forgive.

That is kind of how Apple operates though. Along the lines of "we'll support it when we support it" and focusing on fit and finish. The iPhone 5 doesn't look like it'll be an obvious stand out on a spec sheet comparison, but will likely be able to convince people to want it through build quality once they've had it in their hands.

I don't think the iphone 5 has a Cortex A15, no way. If it was, apple would be bragging about it non-stop.
Instead, they just carefully used their words claiming that the new device is very fast (2x faster than its predecessor) without letting the word out that the CPU is actually slower than 8-month old devices (which it is compared to dual kraits @ 1.5GHz and 1.5GHz quad-A9s, to a certain extent).

Apple was very fast at making comparisons to Tegra3 during the ipad 3's presentation, and they would'nt hesitate to do so again if it put them in a good light.

Regarding the GPU, the 2x performance increase may also come from the same SGX 543MP2 clocked at 380-400MHz.

The real innovation might come from memory bandwidth, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to get their hands on the first batches of LPDDR3.

If I'm not mistaken, Apple never stood out and stated they were moving to Cortex A9 when they announced the A5 and iPad 2 either. They just stated a general 2x CPU performance claim for the A5 over the A4 and confirmed that they've moved to a dual core. As such, I don't see Apple not promoting that it's a Cortex A15 means that it can't be one. Since they didn't specifically mention any increase in core count we can be more confident that the A6 isn't a quad core. Apple only makes direct comparisons with competitors when they can arguably show they are on top. Given Apple is starting from a low 800MHz dual core Cortex A9, a 2x performance increase wouldn't put them on top of say a 1.5GHz quad core Cortex A9 Tegra 3 so they just don't bother making a direct comparison to competitors. But again, that doesn't mean the 2x figure couldn't be achieved with a 1.2GHz dual core Cortex A15. The A6 may well be the first implementation of Cortex A15 even if it doesn't outperform the best existing generation SoC.

 

[wco81]

Good chart of the LTE bands here:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/want-global-lte-roaming-on-iphone-5-dont-buy-it-from-att/

Looking at that, I wouldn't be surprised if they deliberately kept the AT&T and Verizon bands on separate SKUs so American customers can't go back and forth with the same phone.

There two carriers obviously don't want that. And if you think about it from Apple's perspective, beyond possible financial incentives from the carriers to not enable interoperability between the two networks, they'd be getting an additional sale each time a customer switched, whereas if the phones were interoperable, there wouldn't have to be a new phone purchase.

 

[ltcommander.data]

Good chart of the LTE bands here:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/want-global-lte-roaming-on-iphone-5-dont-buy-it-from-att/

Looking at that, I wouldn't be surprised if they deliberately kept the AT&T and Verizon bands on separate SKUs so American customers can't go back and forth with the same phone.

There two carriers obviously don't want that. And if you think about it from Apple's perspective, beyond possible financial incentives from the carriers to not enable interoperability between the two networks, they'd be getting an additional sale each time a customer switched, whereas if the phones were interoperable, there wouldn't have to be a new phone purchase.

I wonder how much incremental costs CDMA components add over GSM components? Specifically, seeing the CDMA model is a superset of the non-US/Canada GSM model, would it really have cost Apple a lot to simply sell the CDMA model to the rest world and drop the dedicated non-US/Canada GSM model?

 

[liolio]

The more I think about the "artistic blur" surrounding the SoC specification the more I think it's a rework /shrink of the A5x.

Do we know precisely what kind of power management features the A5/5x included?
For some reason I can't see Apple take any risks with thermal dissipation and battery life. I could see them to wait for a valid A15 / A7 combinations.
So I would not be surprised if Apple stuck to is A9 implementation while possibly implementing extra power saving features.
Would it be doable for them to have the same approach as Nvidia with the tegra 3, so having a third cores and mixing different 32nm processes? (if Samsung foundry offers the option that's it)
It would have advantage vs Nvidia approach as all 3 cores could be active at the same time. Possibly easier on the software pov than Nvidia approach and a cheap solution till they iron out a A15/A7 SOC. Anyway I would put the odds really low.

Anyway looking at an Exynos 4212, I would really not be surprised that A9 are good enough and can be clocked high enough within the power envelop.

I made calculations based on those data (thanks to Anandtech).
22% smaller than an A5 is ~95 sq.mm
It would take a ~0.6 scaling to get an A5x to that size. Is that doable? That sounds in line with Samsung claim for their process.
Still while doubling doubling the GPU performances I can't see Apple having more room for anything aside A9.

So end of my rant Apple is playing us and the A6 ain't that much of a "new" chip it's a real close parents of the A5x on a newer process, if not a straight shrink I also think that doubling the GPU performances was pretty much not critical, to me it's a further hint at more or less a A5x die shrink. Samsung claim +40% of the perfs for the same power characteristic (vs their 45nm process), with regard to clock speed A5 was really in the low side.
Add a possibly improved memory interface, a jump from 512MB to 1GB and along with a significant boost in clock speed. For the data Apple gave I wonder if faster flash/ faster access to the flash could also help.

Overall (looking at the form factor) I would bet at pretty mild improvement something like:
A6=A5x with the A9 @1.2 GHz and the GPU SGX 543 MP4 @200MHz
1 GB of RAM
May be faster access to mass storage/ flash.
All together it may very well amount to the improvement Apple spoke about.

I think that Apple might be ironing out their next brand new chip for the next ipad where it will have more room to breath and to make sure the ipad fares well vs the competition.
For the next ipad we should see an A15/A7 combination as well as a powerVr series 6 GPU.

 

[RudeCurve]

I thought the design of the Earpods were pretty cool with the three separate tuned ports. I wonder how good they sound compared to my in ear monitors.

 

[mboeller]

I wonder a little bit, but couldn't come a good portion of the speed-up from a 32bit -> 64bit memory interface? We saw the same with the iPad already.

 

[glw]

I wonder a little bit, but couldn't come a good portion of the speed-up from a 32bit -> 64bit memory interface? We saw the same with the iPad already.

On a similar line I wonder if there is a much faster eMMC controller.

Look at the comparisons Apple showed; launching an app, saving an image, loading the Music app with songs, viewing a Keynote attachement. Those all sound like things that would benefit from faster I/O.

 

[french toast]

On a similar line I wonder if there is a much faster eMMC controller.

Look at the comparisons Apple showed; launching an app, saving an image, loading the Music app with songs, viewing a Keynote attachement. Those all sound like things that would benefit from faster I/O.

I agree faster IO is what would improve phones a lot..especially when talking about multi core A9s @ 1.6ghz..

I suppose we could be looking at a shrunk A5x...or an over clocked a5...perhaps 2 cortex a9s @ 1.2ghz with faster memory bandwidth and better IO would be enough for 2x..

I think web browsing tests will give the game away untill a strip down, I just wouldn't have expected apple to redesign a new chip again that wasn't going to be clocked differently for all 3 products...I fully expect a rogue implementation as well as lpddr3 and cortex a15 to pop up in the next iPad 4...so I'm changing my stance to a more conservative shrink and jiggle of either of the current line ups.

 

[Ailuros]

I wonder how would anyone "overclock" parts of a SoC and the SoC would end up 22% smaller than the original SoC.

 

[Pressure]

No LTE = no buy. I don't get Apple sometimes, so stupidly focused on form over function. Ives going on and on about his fucking diamond-polished shiny beveled edges, he can take all that and shove it up his rear end.

Gimme something WORTHWILE Apple. My phone will be 2 years old soon and it's starting to show. I need a solid reason to upgrade, and fucking up on LTE twice now in Europe isn't something I'm going to forget, or forgive.

Yeah, it's quite sucky. Most of Europe uses 800Mhz (Band 20), 1800 Mhz (Band 3) and 2600 Mhz (Band 7) for LTE

As far as I known, commercial LTE service is pretty widespread in Europe though.

Adoption of LTE technology as of May 8, 2012.
Red Countries with commercial LTE service
Dark blue Countries with commercial LTE network deployment on-going or planned
Light blue Countries with LTE trial systems (pre-commitment)

 

[tangey]

I wonder how would anyone "overclock" parts of a SoC and the SoC would end up 22% smaller than the original SoC.

I assume the thought is that it's shrunk from 45 to 32nm.

On a different note, "lightning" seems a really strange name, just for a new connector. The old connector didn't have a name, so why bother with a name. Is this just the usual apple thing of making something out of nothing (the 30pin to 9 pin converters are an amazing $29), or is there any thoughts that they've went to usb3.0

 

[Jubei]

I assume the thought is that it's shrunk from 45 to 32nm.

On a different note, "lightning" seems a really strange name, just for a new connector. The old connector didn't have a name, so why bother with a name. Is this just the usual apple thing of making something out of nothing (the 30pin to 9 pin converters are an amazing $29), or is there any thoughts that they've went to usb3.0

Unfortunately it looks like its still going to be usb 2.0

 

[Pressure]

Unfortunately it looks like its still going to be usb 2.0

Read / Write speed is still limited by the single NAND flash memory in the phone, so it is hardly an issue.

~50MB/s is still respectable and we are probably limited by something else.

 

[ams]

Yes I can see the performance and battery life is doable on a 4s chassis and baseband...if juggled about on 32nm...

What makes it crazy good is those performance improvements..combined with a larger more colourfull higher res screen, lte connectivity and claimed/reported BETTER battery life...in a human hair like 7.6mm....you have to admit that is ridiculous advancement with out using next gen battery/cpu/gpu components..even with 32nm and in cell.

This is a very nice phone, but the importance of using a smaller fabrication process to achieve the end result cannot be understated. Looking at ipad 2 vs. ipad 2,4, the die-shrink resulted in an SoC die size for ipad 2,4 that was only ~ 57% of the ipad 2, with battery life that was up to 30% better in most instances (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5789/the-ipad-24-review-32nm-a5-tested). If the iphone 5 was fabricated on the 45nm process, then the SoC die size would actually be larger than the iphone 4s (which makes sense given the higher performance CPU/GPU). But since the iphone 5 is fabricated on 32nm process, the SoC die size is actually smaller than iphone 4s, even with the higher performance CPU/GPU. So at the end of the day, improvements with the fabrication process and screen technology play a critical role in explaining better battery life and thinner chassis. P.S. Anandtech seems quite sure that the iphone 5 is using dual core A15 CPU running at a relatively modest operating frequency.