Sometimes we think that major technological announcements are leaps into the void made out of nowhere. But that’s not the case; to reach these milestones, many steps have been taken before. This applies to everything, including the new iPhone 15.
While the A17 Pro may be the industry’s first 3nm chipset, several leaks and performance metrics reveal that it only offers a modest performance increase compared to the A16 Bionic.
For instance, in multi-core tests, the new chip has only achieved a single-digit increase over last year’s SoC, and the GPU has only seen a 20% improvement. It’s enough to handle video games, but not a significant leap in performance.
Are the A16 and A17 the same SoC?
Now, the reason for these slight differences is that a new leak suggests that the A17 Pro and the A16 Bionic might not be so different from each other after all: the new chip would be an upgraded version with higher clock speeds and other optimizations.
The leak is related to the code names given to the performance and efficiency cores of the chipsets, and we take a closer look at those tests.
The leak reported by Wccftech shows code names that originate from an undisclosed Weibo account, but Revegnus has posted an image below from their X account, illustrating the similarities between the A17 Pro and the A16 Bionic.
Each performance and efficiency core of a chipset is designated by a code name. For the A15 Bionic, it was H14C, and for the A16 Bionic, H15. However, what’s most interesting is that for the A17 Pro, the code name used is “H15 Coll.”
If Apple’s first 3nm chip were entirely different, it should have been assigned a completely new code name, like H16, but that’s not the case.
In the post, Revegnus suggests that the A17 Pro could be an improved iteration of the A16 Bionic, featuring an additional GPU core, enhanced clock speeds for the performance cores, and more optimizations.
We’ve also noticed that, according to a Chinese regulatory document, despite all models of the iPhone 15 having larger batteries than their direct predecessors, their battery life is the same as that of the iPhone 14 series, which shouldn’t be the case when you have an efficient 3nm SoC.
In case you’ve missed this detail as well, Apple didn’t showcase any graphs with the A17 Pro outperforming the competition in any category, which implies that there might be something they’re keeping under wraps.
It’s possible that this silicon is just another “interim” product, and the real improvements may come with the A18 Pro or the A18 Bionic, whatever name Apple decides to give to next year’s flagship iPhone chip.
