Chipgate debunked: All iPhone 6s models are created equal

By

The A9X chip puts iPhone 6s graphics to shame.
Don't discriminate between iPhone models. Chipgate doesn't exist.
Photo: Apple

A test to pit the two different iPhone 6s models against each other — one with a TSMC chip and the other with a Samsung chip — has officially debunked Chipgate. It turns out there are no discernible differences in battery life between the two.

Consumer Reports acquired an iPhone 6s with an A9 chip made from TSMC and another from Samsung. They made sure all settings were equal on both devices including the carrier, brightness settings, wireless connections, iOS version, running apps and more. Then they got to work.

This wasn’t just your typical play a movie in iTunes until the phone dies type of test. This was pretty scientific. “In one test, for instance, we made the phones transmit at a nominal +10 decibels per milliwatt (dBm) on the same channel in the commonly used Frequency Band 5,” Consumer Reports wrote.

They conducted various other tests involving brightness and usage. One app they ran automatically loaded different web pages in a continuous cycle while music played in the background. The iPhones both handled this for about 11 hours before shutting down. In all of the tests, Consumer Reports found that the difference between each iPhone’s battery life was less than 1 percent by the time both of them turned off.

This means that Chipgate, quite frankly, isn’t real. It probably shouldn’t come as much surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to iPhone releases over the past few years. Who can forget Bendgate in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last year? And of course 2010’s Antennagate in the iPhone 4 had Android users mocking us mercilessly. Yet, all of these “gates” always wind up being negligible.

The moral of the story here is to not lose sleep over which iPhone 6s you buy because of possibly getting a “bad chip.” The Apple A9 is perfectly capable and delivers virtually identical battery life in all models of the device.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.