The annual release of the new iPhone will be accompanied by the performance improvement of the A-series chipset and has always maintained a leading edge over the Android camp (such as Samsung and Qualcomm) in recent years. However, there have been recent rumors that in the 2022 iPhone 14 product line, Apple may only be equipped with the new A16 Bionic chip for the iPhone 14 Pro / Pro Max models.
There is a view that Apple’s move is to better divide ordinary iPhone models and Pro derivative models. But from a market competition perspective, the Cupertino tech giant is clearly unafraid of its Android rivals.
Take the Samsung Galaxy S22 series of smartphones, for example, its performance in some benchmarks has not even surpassed the 2019 iPhone 11. What’s more embarrassing is that many of the company’s models have been removed from the Geekbench benchmark database due to suspected cheating.
In the absence of competition, the A16 Bionic of “Duogu seeks defeat” may only be left to “fight each other” with the A15 Bionic on the iPhone 13 series.
If the rumors are reliable, Apple may extend the A15 Bionic for another year to use it on the more entry-level iPhone 14 Standard Edition/iPhone 14 Max, two “non-Pro” models.
However, in terms of memory (RAM), the two “non-Pro” iPhone 14 models may be upgraded from the standard 4GB of the iPhone 13 to a higher 6GB. More interestingly, the A15 Bionic chipset in the iPhone 14 is rumored to receive some modest upgrades (at least on par with the iPhone 13 Pro).
Compared with the A15 SoC used by the iPhone 13 / 13 mini models, the GPU of this series Pro lineup has been increased from 4 to 5 cores. The A16 Bionic, which has a larger performance improvement, may only be exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro / Pro max model.
Well-known whistleblower @VNchocoTaco claims that the A16 Bionic on the iPhone 14 Pro will use TSMC’s 5nm process, rather than immediately jumping to the latest 4nm process already used by competitors.
Even so, the A16 Bionic is expected to bring stronger CPU/GPU performance, supplemented by LPDDR5 RAM support (the current iPhone 13 series still uses LPDDR4X RAM).
As for how much the A16 Bionic has improved compared to last year’s A15, the whistleblower has not disclosed any exact benchmark data.
In addition, the M2 may be based on a custom ARMv9 and TSMC 3nm process, and there is even a last SKU of the M1 family (or a newer Avalanche high performance + Blizzard energy-efficient core).