Real-world tests show benefits of iPhone 6s with the ‘good’ chip

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iPhone 6s teardown
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Photo: iFixit

iPhone 6s units with a TSMC A9 processor score two hours’ better battery life over those with Samsung chips in GeekBench test scores, but real-world gains of the “good” chip might be much less significant.

Several YouTubers have put the iPhone 6s TSMC and Samsung A9 chips to the test in real-world scenarios to get to the truth of Chipgate — and what they discovered was quite surprising.

The TSMC chips eke out better battery life, and the Samsung-equipped iPhone 6s also runs about 3 degrees Celsius hotter. The “bad” Samsung chip is just a hair faster, too.

Check out the real-world tests below:

Jonathan Morrison found that there is definitely a difference in battery performance between the TSMC and Samsung chips. In four different heavy-use tests he ran, the TSMC iPhone 6s came out with between 5 percent and 12 percent more battery life than the Samsung iPhone 6s.

The Samsung iPhone 6s performs better in light-use testing, though. Austin Evans found that while the TSMC iPhone 6s lasted 50 minutes longer in a GeekBench 3 battery test, when he played the same hour-long YouTube video on both devices, the TSMC iPhone 6s only delivered 1 percent more battery life.

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