A9 iPhone 6s

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I'm only assuming the iPhone 6s will house an A9. Any good sources on possibly when it will be released and what is expected of it's performance?

 

[Mopetar]

How would anyone possibly know that outside of the engineers working on it?

Also, why does it matter? The next iPhone won't be out for nearly another year, so speculating about it this far in advance is rather pointless.

 

[Ravynmagi]

iPhone 6 JUST came out... This is about 10 or 11 months away, seems pointless to speculate this early. But I'm guessing it'll be faster.

 

[Eug]

I am guessing it will be an absolute beast... and will have 2 GB RAM. And it will come out in September 2015.

I may pick one up. No point in getting the 6/6+ which was already limited at release by its 1 GB RAM.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

How is the 1Gb of Ram holding people back?

 

[Eug]

How is the 1Gb of Ram holding people back?

Safari tab reloads are annoying.

Apps have to be stingy with memory usage.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I really haven't had a problem with the 1GB of RAM on my iPhone 6 Plus. But I suppose the main area it might bite me is with the number of browser tabs and apps we can have open before they have to reload. For me that's usually a little more of an issue on my iPad, than iPhone though. Still, seems odd Apple with 2GB with the new iPads, but only 1GB on the new iPhones.

 

[poofyhairguy]

How is the 1Gb of Ram holding people back?

64bit apps use more memory resources so all current 1GB Apple devices are a regression on available RAM from the A6 and A6X. Anand theorized a 25% hit on the high end.

 

[Sooon]

I thought the A7 was already plenty fast. Power efficiency is probably more important than improvements in speed moving forward.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Anand theorized a 25% hit on the high end.

whose Anand? Does he work for Apple or something?

 

[Commodus]

Way too early to know what it'll be like. The safe bets are on 2GB of RAM or more on all high end devices, and a new architecture (since the A8 is a "tock" chip that refines an existing design). If I were an Android phone maker relying on Qualcomm, I'd be nervous... the A8 is already faster than a Snapdragon 801 despite half as many cores and a lower clock speed, and there no certainty that the 810 will be that much better in practice.

 

[finbarqs]

I am guessing it will be an absolute beast... and will have 2 GB RAM. And it will come out in September 2015.

I may pick one up. No point in getting the 6/6+ which was already limited at release by its 1 GB RAM.

I will not buy another smartphone unless it has at least 8GB of RAM. I tired of people short changing phones to only so little RAM. I want a decent GPU also. Something that can push at least Dreamcast level graphics. Something that'll hit at least 3 million poly's shaded/textured/lit per second!!!

I also want my NAND storage to be at least 500MB/s. No more of these cheap Nand storages. Come on, what are we, in the 2005's? Nand is cheap these days.

 

[Eug]

You jest but your 8 GB snark is silly. 2 GB today is helpful even for basic usage.

As for NAND benchmarks, have a look at my iPad Air 2 Passmark speeds:

However that read bench result is probably a result of RAM caching.

OTOH, the 157 MB/s write speed is nice.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I want a decent GPU also. Something that can push at least Dreamcast level graphics.

We are close to the 360 level this generation.

 

[Kaido]

No point in getting the 6/6+ which was already limited at release by its 1 GB RAM.

Just curious, what do you need 2GB RAM for? (asking because I mostly use my phone for photos & email type of stuff, which is pretty lightweight compared to poweruser applications)

 

[poofyhairguy]

Just curious, what do you need 2GB RAM for?

Tabs. I have had 50+ tabs in mobile Chrome before.

 

[finbarqs]

So are we finally passed the intel integrated graphics? I have a feeling that 360 still can out perform the intel integrated GPU on Intel CPU's

 

[Eug]

Just curious, what do you need 2GB RAM for? (asking because I mostly use my phone for photos & email type of stuff, which is pretty lightweight compared to poweruser applications)

I just did a mini experiment. I loaded up about 8 or 9 tabs in Safari and a couple of other apps including a memory monitor. Most of the 2 GB was full. It looked something like this.

I could navigate all the tabs no problem. No reloads.

I then killed Safari. This brought me to 792 MB free from under 100 previously.

I then reloaded Safari. This brought me to 583 MB free. All the tabs were intact but they had to be reloaded.

I then reloaded all the tabs. This brought me to 128 MB free.

In other words, Safari with less than 10 tabs was using over 650 MB RAM active memory.

 

[tsupersonic]

While we're talking iPhone 6S, I think they'll add the new Apple SIM a la new iPad LTE models

 

[Eug]

While we're talking iPhone 6S, I think they'll add the new Apple SIM a la new iPad LTE models

And in the US, AT&T will make it pointless.

 

[Steelbom]

That depends... If Apple remains at the same node size, then I expect some architectural improvements and a minor bump in clock speed. If they can move to a smaller node, we may see a more substantial increase in clock speed and/or energy savings. Either way, I think it will remain a dual-core.

 

[tsupersonic]

And in the US, AT&T will make it pointless.

I hope Apple slaps them for that. The Apple SIM is really a great idea! I guess this is why they didn't exactly tout it at their press-release...

 

[dagamer34]

1GB of RAM was fine pre-iOS 7 when apps didn't have background tasks which caused the app to load and do processing. Now apps get evicted from memory rather quickly, especially if a single app misbehaves and triggers a low memory warning.

While I had predicted that this round of phones would see 2GB of RAM, I find it impossible that the A9 would not get 2GB of RAM. iOS *really* needs it. Safari (heck, the web in general) is a real memory hog.