Saturday, July 16, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

iPhone 4S Rumors Won’t Die; Will We Have To Await 28 Nanometer A6 Chips For Major iPhone Redesign?

Posted: 16 Jul 2011 09:56 AM PDT


Michael put a positive spin yesterday on a rumor sourced from a Chinese-language tech website that the the iPhone 5′s long production delay can be attributed to the dual-core A5 processor chip’s overheating when confined in a thinner handset form factor. I’m not quite as sunny, but at least the overheating would be a plausible reason for the ongoing delay. It does put more wind beneath the wings of persistent iPhone 4S rumblings (I personally remain agnostic) from the school of thought contending that
September’s iPhone refresh won’t be a true iPhone 5, but rather either a souped-up iPhone 4 branded as iPhone 5, or even a revamp released as the iPhone 4S.

The now widely chewed-over Chinese-language Sohu.com site’s report contends that Apple hasn’t yet figured out how to get the iPad 2′s A5 processor into the iPhone case and keep it cool, with an unnamed insider source alleging that the A5 overheats even when installed in an iPhone 4 shell, forcing Apple to put any major form factor upgrade/downsize on temporary hold until it figures out how to solve the problem, and in the meantime the best we can expect is essentially iPhone 4 tweaks.

On the other hand, Smith observes that Apple uses the A5 in the iPad 2, inside which are not exactly wide-open-spaces, and it still manages to run without overheating. I can attest that my five week old iPad 2 has never even hinted at running noticeably hot.

Nevertheless, the A5 is inevitably in closer quarters inside an iPhone 4 case and significantly larger bigger, nearly twice the size of the single-core A4 chip used in the iPhone 4 (10.1 x 12.1 mm, vs. 7.3 x 7.3 mm for the A4), so it would be even more cramped in a thinner and lighter Phone 5 form factor, so Smith suggests that Apple may have to resort to plan B — a smaller dual-core chip, the A6, to be produced using a 28-nanometer manufacturing process, which will make it both smaller and more power efficient compared with the A5 chip which is fabricated using Samsung Electronics Co.'s 45-nanometer process.

Reuters news agency’s Clare Jim and Argin Chang reported on Friday that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), reportedly the world’s largest OEM chipmaker, has commenced trial manufacturing runs of A6 CPUs, indicating among other things that Apple is planning to shift its idevice processor sourcing at least partly away from traditional supplier and frenemy Samsung, with which relations are increasingly strained due to a bewildering concatenation of patent claims and lawsuits. Samsung is also one of Apple's toughest rivals for in smartphone and tablet market share.

Incidentally, we first mentioned TSMC as a potential idevice CPU supplier here back in June, citing a report by Taiwan-based Digitimes' Jessie Shen that Chinese-language Commercial Times quoted Dan Heyler, a semiconductor analyst with Merrill Lynch in Taipei suggesting that TSMC had a good shot at securing some orders from Apple for its next-generation A6 processors in 2012

However, it would be extravagantly optimistic to imagine that even with an accelerated development timeline, Apple and TSMC could get A6 powered iPhones to market before late winter or early spring 2012, not to mention that Apple will almost certainly want to release an A6 powered iPad 3 before the faster CPU makes it into an iPhone.

Consequently, the prospect of Apple releasing a range of the transition products, whether they’re a “simple refresh” of the iPhone 4 dubbed iPhone 5, or a straightforward iPhone 4 upgrade, is conceptually believable. Sohu.com cites as potential iPhone 4 tweak possibilities an 800-megapixel camera and a gorilla glass screen, or even a dual-core variant of the A4 chip and 4G network support, a bright side in their view being that worldwide iPhone 4 sales remain quite hot, which takes some of the pressure off Apple, although that’s cold comfort to iPhone fans impatiently anticipating a major iPhone redesign in September.