Reports from Taiwan showed that Apple expects 35% better power efficiency from the A17 Bionic chipset. According to previous reports, the A17 Bionic will be built by TSMC based on the 3 Nm FinFet technology process. In addition to the new main camera and the USB-C connection, the processor in particular should boost demand for new iPhones.
According to DigiTimes sources, Apple has purchased the entire first production run of TSMC’s 3Nm chipsets. This makes the Californians the only smartphone company with such a processor in 2023. Qualcomm and MediaTek will not develop their own solutions for the time being. Qualcomm is holding back for now, while MediaTek is quoted as saying “high production costs”. That leaves only Samsung, who are also working on a 3 Nm process and are said to be very happy with the results so far.
Apple should use the A17 Bionic in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The Pro series also features a new design, a periscope camera and solid-state volume and power buttons. The normal iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Plus will probably stick with the A16 Bionic, but they won’t be able to avoid the USB-C port either. In that regard, Apple doesn’t have much of a choice – the European Union has mandated all smartphone manufacturers to switch to USB-C.
We have summarized all previous rumors and leaks in our Apple iPhone 15 overview article.
