Apple Announces iPhone 12 with A14 Bionic (5 nm): “Fastest Chip in a Smartphone”

[Tsing]

Image: Apple



During today’s special event, Apple unveiled its latest 5G smartphones: the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. All of these models boast the company’s new cutting-edge SoC, the A14 Bionic, which was built on TSMC’s 5-nanometer process.



Apple claims that the new iPhones are up to 50 percent faster than the competition in terms of both CPU and GPU performance. Machine learning has also improved by a remarkable 80 percent thanks to the A14’s 16-core Neural Engine.



While the cheaper iPhone 12 models get some of the latest goodies (e.g., Super Retina XDR display, Ceramic Shield front cover), Pro users get access to new cameras (wide/ultra wide/telephoto)...

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[Zarathustra]

Apple's chips are certainly much more powerful than anything else out there in mobile devices.

At this point I have to wonder if this is a real selling point though.

Most people use their phones for text messaging, email, and some light web browsing and social media, and that's it.

Even a 5 year old Android model is still OK for that, as long as it still gets software patches.

 

[Uvilla]

Apple's chips are certainly much more powerful than anything else out there in mobile devices.

At this point I have to wonder if this is a real selling point though.

Most people use their phones for text messaging, email, and some light web browsing and social media, and that's it.

Even a 5 year old Android model is still OK for that, as long as it still gets software patches.

I tend to agree...
This is becoming more enticing to me than 'specs'.

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Of course I would prefer this to be more powerful as this is just a decent low end.
Hopefully they make enough money to apply the same concepts to a higher end model. Though if my phone dies I just might get this one anyway.

 

[Riccochet]

I kind of chuckle at these "most powerful phone" articles.

Just how much power does a phone need and does it directly relate to the experience you have?

I have yet to find an app or game that my 3 year old Pixel 2XL won't run perfectly. If the battery in my phone wasn't starting to degrade I wouldn't be shopping for a new phone.

 

[Auer]

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[Brian_B]

Yeah I don’t really care about it in my phone - I care about battery life there, and if a fast CPU gets better life because of race to idle or any other reason - that’s the market point for me

The speed is nice for the iPad and the upcoming ARM OSX machines though.

 

[Zarathustra]

I kind of chuckle at these "most powerful phone" articles.

Just how much power does a phone need and does it directly relate to the experience you have?

I have yet to find an app or game that my 3 year old Pixel 2XL won't run perfectly. If the battery in my phone wasn't starting to degrade I wouldn't be shopping for a new phone.

Yeah my last two phones got replaced, not because the hardware became too slow, but because the software was no longer patched in one case and because it just bricked itself in the other.

Phone hardware just doesn't matter that much anymore.