As some of you guys might have heard, it was recently discovered that the A9 chipset found in Apple’s new iPhones is made by both Samsung and TSMC. This means that there will be some chipsets made by Samsung, and some made by TSMC. This shouldn’t really be an issue and so far most benchmarks don’t show that there is too much of a different.
At least this was until recently where a Geekbench 3 benchmark made its way on Reddit (via MacRumors), in which it shows an iPhone with the A9 made by TSMC lasting almost 2 hours longer than the one made by Samsung. As you can see in the screenshot above, the TSMC-made A9 clocks in at 7 hours 50 minutes, versus the Samsung-made A9 which clocks 6 hours and 5 minutes.
According to the original poster, “Ran this test a couple times and results were consistent. Always about a 2 hour difference in duration. Both phones were tested using the same backup, same settings. Also tried testing them as new phones and results were similar.” There have also been some rumors that suggests that despite being made using a 16nm process, TSMC’s A9 is supposedly “superior” than Samsung’s A9 which was made using the 14nm process.
That being said, these are just benchmarks and they do not necessarily reflect real-world use. In real-life, someone with the TSMC A9 could be setting their brightness and volume to the max and spend all day watching videos, versus someone else using the Samsung A9 and using their phone conservatively, but what do you guys make of this?