A customer shows off the latest Apple iPhone 6 she bought at a sale last week. (Photo : www.gadgets.ndtv.com)
After some complaints about iPhone 6S Plus TouchID button turning hot, the controversy died down to Apple's relief. However, just days after, another problem turned up involving the use of different chips for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Motley Fool reports that because of the ongoing legal battle between the Cupertino-based tech giant and its South Korean rival, Apple tapped Taiwan Semiconductor in 2014 to manufacture A8 chips for its then upcoming flagship devices. However, at that time, Samsung was still making A9 chips for Apple.
Instead of Taiwan Semiconductor making A9X for the iPad Pro, it made A9 for iPhones. Because of the different, although similar, production processes and technologies used by the two Asian companies, recent standards tests indicated those made by the Taipei-based firm were more power efficient.
That meant that longer life of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6Plus batteries depended if it was made in Taiwan or South Korea.
To defend the difference in battery life, Apple said in a statement, "Certain manufactured lab test 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."
The tech giant insisted that it is a misleading way to test real-world battery life. It said that Apple's testing and customer data for the two flagships show that the battery life have a variation of only 2-3 percent of each other, which already took into account variable component differences.
To find out whether an iPhone has a Taiwan- or Seoul-made processor, Gottabemobile reports that device owners could download from App Store the free app Lirium Info Lite. If the model indicator says the phone's model is N71mAP, it is made in Taiwan, while N71AP means the gadget's processor was made by Samsung.
