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elliots11

macrumors member
May 23, 2011
50
9
Maybe Apple over promised and under delivered on 14’s battery life, and so this time they’re being conservative and aiming to exceed last year’s goals, which isn’t compelling marketing, so they don’t mention it. Likely it was not on purpose, googling it shows there’s been issues with the 14 pro’s battery degradation.
 
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auwkeung

macrumors regular
Apr 8, 2008
104
33
So the CPU is 3nm, the battery capacity increased by 11%, but the battery life stays the same? and the new chip is only 10% faster in performance cores and the efficiency core is just "also faster"??

Makes no sense....maybe TSMC is stagnating, or Apple is just resting on their laurels as Qualcomm is not catching up.
 
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dampfnudel

macrumors 601
Aug 14, 2010
4,638
2,678
Brooklyn, NY
They’re reserving the longer battery “feature” for next year’s lineup. :confused:
Stacked battery tech is rumored for the 16 Pro/Pro Max. That should provide a significant boost in battery life and I have a feeling they’ll highlight that when they introduce the phones.
 

UKapple73

macrumors 6502a
Sep 13, 2014
593
495
There probably is a battery life bump, but not massive, they are saving the battery bump marketing push for next years Ultra
 

FlyingTexan

macrumors 6502a
Jul 13, 2015
877
601
Why do so many people believe that myth?

The past few nodes have shown only transistor density is increasing by any appreciable amount, and even that is slowing.
It's not a myth at all. That's a very hard headed stance to take. The density is directly related to the size of the chip and the nm used. 3nm gives great efficiency improvements.
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
12,749
23,789
As expected, N3 is the culprit. Or rather, it's in line with expectations.
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
12,749
23,789
It's not a myth at all. That's a very hard headed stance to take. The density is directly related to the size of the chip and the nm used. 3nm gives great efficiency improvements.

Transistor density and power efficiency are two separate things.

That's why TSMC always states, you can get X performance improvement or Y lower power consumption. Transistor density is a third factor but doesn't mean power efficiency.
 

Dulcimer

macrumors 6502a
Nov 20, 2012
911
813
I’d be really surprised that combo of N3 + marginally higher battery capacity doesn’t lead to some minor real world bump in battery life.

Sure, the efficiency of the new node depends on how Apple tunes it, but why wouldn’t they go for some efficiency benefit for a smartphone use case? Not like the early Geekbench scores indicate impressive gains.
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
12,749
23,789
I’d be really surprised that combo of N3 + marginally higher battery capacity doesn’t lead to some minor real world bump in battery life.

Sure, the efficiency of the new node depends on how Apple tunes it, but why wouldn’t they go for some efficiency benefit for a smartphone use case? Not like the early Geekbench scores indicate impressive gains.

Because each node provides less and less benefit. For N4 vs. N3, you can choose between 10% performance or 10% power efficiency. We already know A17 Pro clock speed is up by 10% compared to A16. That leaves nothing left for power efficiency.

Even increases in transistor density is quickly slowing down. This is why everyone is talking about stacking chips and packaging technology.
 

Dulcimer

macrumors 6502a
Nov 20, 2012
911
813
Because each node provides less and less benefit. For N4 vs. N3, you can choose between 10% performance or 10% power efficiency. We already know A17 Pro clock speed is up by 10% compared to A16. That leaves nothing left for power efficiency.
Do we know if that 10% ST bump was with no IPC improvement?

I know the node benefits are diminishing with each jump but I could swear it was more than max 10% efficiency. Might’ve been looking at comparisons with older N5 node, however.
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
12,749
23,789
Do we know if that 10% ST bump was with no IPC improvement?

I know the node benefits are diminishing with each jump but I could swear it was more than max 10% efficiency. Might’ve been looking at comparisons with older N5 node, however.

ST performance is up by 12% or 15% so a small portion is IPC.

Almost all the numbers we see TSMC quote are against N5 v1.0. When you do the math to factor in N5P (A15) then N4 (A16) and finally N3, it's down to about 10%.
 
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FlyingTexan

macrumors 6502a
Jul 13, 2015
877
601
Transistor density and power efficiency are two separate things.

That's why TSMC always states, you can get X performance improvement or Y lower power consumption. Transistor density is a third factor but doesn't mean power efficiency.
transitory density does equal efficiency. If they up the freq and capability of the cpu that's on them but a 3nm node is going to be much more efficient than a 5nm node if all else is kept equal.
 

arjuna137

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 12, 2023
4
1
For me there are only two explanations:
- the cpu needs as few energy, that a decrease in energy is not noticeable anymore, because of other system components need a lot more( display, modem, motherboard, ram)....but the modem was also improved according to energy demand
- machine learning does a lot in the background and because of this a lot of energy is needed in addition
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
12,749
23,789
transitory density does equal efficiency. If they up the freq and capability of the cpu that's on them but a 3nm node is going to be much more efficient than a 5nm node if all else is kept equal.

No, it doesn't - especially if you want to communicate using industry standard terms. The term efficiency refers to work done per unit of energy.

Apple battery tests show the same amount of work done (video and audio playback hours) with essentially the same amount of energy (battery capacity).
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
12,749
23,789
For me there are only two explanations:
- the cpu needs as few energy, that a decrease in energy is not noticeable anymore, because of other system components need a lot more( display, modem, motherboard, ram)....but the modem was also improved according to energy demand
- machine learning does a lot in the background and because of this a lot of energy is needed in addition

That's way too complicated. Apple battery tests are very straightforward. Apple loops a particular video and audio tracks until the device shuts down. It puts a very low demand on other components. There's no machine learning or whatever happening in the background.


People are doing mental gymnastics trying to explain the obvious. They were fed unrealistic power and performance expectations around N3. The gain from N3 was the 10% boost in clock speed for A17 Pro. There is little or no power efficiency gains.
 
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george88

macrumors member
May 1, 2022
66
217
the answer is obvious, the a17 chip is less efficient than the a16, that's why even with higher battery capacities, the iphone 15 pro lineup all have at best the same battery life as the iphone 14 pros, which was worse than the iphone 13 pros
 

Rnd-chars

macrumors regular
Apr 4, 2023
247
233
In addition to what’s already been called out, I see these possible contributors:
- Apple touted longer sustained performance. While that will mean higher performance overall, it also means that it can consume more power for longer without throttling (which would reduce power consumption).
- more RAM means more power consumption.
- like you said, other components could require more power (E.g. faster main storage). The upgrade to WiFi6E likely means higher power consumption (it does in routers) and the Ultrawideband 2 chips could be thirstier, too (especially when in Precision Finding mode)
- and all of the new computation photography enhancements (SmartHDR5, next gen portrait mode, etc.) plus AI features (on device Siri processing, ML driven text prediction, etc.) can require more processing power than their predecessors.
- brighter screen == more power

In contrast, we also see better battery life for certain scenarios, like streaming video (likely due to the new AV1 encoder).
 
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Mikeske

macrumors 6502
Jan 14, 2012
441
333
Washington
It really makes nothing as if they can solve the battery problems on the 14 pro series phones others have had. I said it before and say it now that as long as battery stays close to or slightly better then the 14 pro series folks should not get wrapped around the axle. It is a mobile hand computer
 

Dulcimer

macrumors 6502a
Nov 20, 2012
911
813
Looks like the expectation that battery life improved despite Apple’s claims are true.

Tom's Guide's Mark Spoonaeur on battery life:

On our battery test, which involves continuous web surfing at 150 nits of screen brightness, the iPhone 15 Pro lasted 10 hours and 53 minutes. That’s 40 minutes longer than the iPhone 14 Pro and nearly 2 hours longer than the Pixel 7 Pro. We consider 11 hours or more to be excellent
 

vertsix

macrumors 68000
Aug 12, 2015
1,666
4,622
Texas

Nothing too promising so far based on SoC metrics we have now. :(

Dramatic increase in power consumption and 24.9% worse PPW.
 

M.Rizk

macrumors 6502a
Apr 20, 2015
782
612
Looks like the expectation that battery life improved despite Apple’s claims are true.

Tom's Guide's Mark Spoonaeur on battery life:
Interestingly they show the 13 Pro Max as lasting less, which is definitely not the case for me and many others here. Regardless, I am happy the 15 Pro Max shows as lasting more even if just 20 minutes, and of course I hope they test against phones with 100% battery health.
 
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