The new iPhone 6s may have another “gate” crisis coming its way. Image courtesy of Apple

For every iPhone Apple releases, users find flaws and exaggerate them in epic proportions on the Internet. The iPhone 6’s “gate” crisis was bendgate, because the phones bent fairly easily under malicious intent. Although Apple nullified bending problems for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus by adding stronger aluminum bodies, social media users were quick to propose “chipgate” as a successor to bendgate.

Chipgate is based on the fact that not all of Apple’s new phones contain the same silicon. To meet the enormous consumer demand, Apple split the production of the iPhone 6s’ A9 processors between Samsung and TSMC. These two manufacturers used different processes to build the chips; thus, Samsung’s output and TSMC’s output differed noticeably. Under early teardowns, people found that TSMC’s chips were slightly larger that Samsung’s. The more concerning differences, however, were discovered once more comprehensive tests were conducted on each variant of the A9.

Obsessive iPhone owners found that TSMC iPhones generally ran cooler and more efficiently than their Samsung counterparts in synthetic benchmarks and real-world tests. While performance was nearly the same, power consumption varied by significant margins. In some tests, battery life differed by almost two hours. Heat output was another concern as reports of overheating iPhones spread online. As a result, many users concluded that phones with Samsung’s A9s were inferior products.

Apple has disputed these accusations by claiming that the battery life differences between iPhones with Samsung’s A9 and TSMC’s A9 should only be 2-3% under normal usage, but it is unlikely to suppress the upcoming chipgate hysteria.

by Raymond Cao’17