Apple responds to battery life concerns with its A9 SoCs

By Joel Hruska - Extremetech, Oct. 09, 2015 – 

Yesterday, we covered reports from concerned iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners, who have seen markedly different results between those devices built on Samsung's 14nm node and those using TSMC's 16nm. Apple has since released a statement covering these concerns in greater detail than we initially alluded to yesterday, and it's worth considering how the company's statements fit into the overall picture. Apple's statement is reprinted below:

With the Apple-designed A9 chip in your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, you are getting the most advanced smartphone chip in the world. Every chip we ship meets Apple's highest standards for providing incredible performance and deliver great battery life, regardless of iPhone 6s capacity, color, or model.

Certain manufactured lab tests which run the processors with a continuous heavy workload until the battery depletes are not representative of real-world usage, since they spend an unrealistic amount of time at the highest CPU performance state. It's a misleading way to measure real-world battery life. Our testing and customer data show the actual battery life of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, even taking into account variable component differences, vary within just 2-3% of each other.

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