Ever since it was discovered that the new iPhones came with different-sized chipsets and had very big differences in its battery life, people have been referring to it as “batterygate”, 2015’s iPhone controversy. Apple has since come forward and claimed that the real-world performance is very different, and that it will feature a 2-3% difference unlike what the benchmarks claim.
We suppose that’s what Apple would claim, right? So was it all just a PR cover-up or was Apple really telling the truth? According to the folks at ArsTechnica, Apple was actually right, or at least they came pretty close. After Apple released their statement, ArsTechnica ran new benchmarks to find out if Apple’s claims were true.
According to their findings, they confirmed that the TSMC-made A9 chipset does have an advantage in battery life of about 2-3% as Apple stated. For example in a WiFi test, they found that Samsung’s A9 latest 2.2% minutes less than TSMC’s, and in a GFXBench test, TSMC had the advantage of 4.3% more battery.
It was only on Geekbench that the difference became more apparent at 28%. What they concluded from this is that as long as the Samsung-made A9 is not under heavy load in terms of CPU and GPU processes, the difference will not be as apparent, but when it comes to heavy duty tasks, that’s when we might start seeing the differences in battery.
So what does this mean? For the average user who surfs the web, watches the occasional videos, plays some games, it should not have that big of an impact on battery life. However if you plan to spend all day playing graphic-intensive games and watch high-res videos, that’s when you might start seeing the difference. In the meantime there is a way for you to check which chipset your phone is running, so if you want you can always return your purchase for another model.
Filed in . Read more about iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and SoC.