Apple will launch the new iPhone in September

Jul 14, 2016 09:33 GMT  ·  By

As it happens with every new iPhone generation, the upcoming model due in September will get a new chip inside, and naturally, everyone expects the company to call it A10 and come with performance increases over the existing A9 configuration used on the iPhone 6s.

And if we are to trust this Geekbench chart, the A10 will indeed be installed on the iPhone 7, and what’s more, it’ll also bring noticeable performance improvements over the current generations.

But let’s take things one at a time and see what the A10 is all about.

First and foremost, the A10 will be manufactured by TSMC, and it appears that this company will be the sole producer of the new chip, mostly because of the chipgate scandal that impacted the 6s. The existing models come with chips manufactured by both TSMC and Samsung, and benchmarks showed that the latter provides shorter battery life.

As a result, Samsung was believed to be left out from negotiations this time, and the iPhone 7 will come with chips manufactured entirely by TSMC.

The unit will be based on the 16nm FinFET platform and will adopt the so-called fan-out architecture, which allows for smaller size but improved performance.

Given Apple’s struggle to make the iPhone last longer, but at the same time to reduce the dimensions of its internal components for new features or bigger batteries, TSMC’s new technology is clearly playing an important role for the next iPhone, which the company could design to be thinner and lighter. Rumor has it that Apple originally wanted the iPhone 7 to be significantly thinner than the 6s, but recent leaks have shown that a 1mm difference is more likely, and a bigger overhaul is planned for the 2017 model, so this year’s version could just pave the way for a bigger change.

Same performance as the iPad Pro

According to these benchmarks, the A10 performance might be on par with the A9X, which is the chip currently used on the iPad Pro. At the moment, the iPad Pro is the most powerful iOS model on the market, so the iPhone 7 will achieve performance figures similar to those scored by its bigger brother. Still, certain improvements, such as longer battery life, are likely to be achieved - this is actually Apple’s final goal with components that are smaller in size, as the company would have more space inside for a bigger battery.

What’s interesting, however, is that the A10 chip is 18 percent faster than the current A9 used on the 6s and 6s Plus, so at certain moments, you might not even notice the boost.

Many could describe this as an underachievement, given the performance increases that the previous chip upgrades brought, but Apple is believed to be preparing some other hardware upgrades too, including a boost to 3GB of RAM for the iPhone 7 Plus. The difference between the A8 and A9 chips was approximately 43 percent, so the iPhone 6s was nearly 50 percent faster than its predecessor.

The iPhone 7 is projected to launch in September, and we’ll find out more about the chip during the official unveiling. Apple usually shares chip performance figures during these events, so the actual figures won’t land before the iPhone 7 sees daylight.