News Apple's A17 Pro is a 3nm Chip Powering iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max

[Admin]

Apple announced the A17 Pro at its iPhone 15 event.

Apple's A17 Pro is a 3nm Chip Powering iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max : Read more

 

[Dave Haynie]

"iPhone Pro Max allows for a 5x zoom (120 mm focal length"

As with nearly every other phone, there is NO ZOOM on this phone. The telephoto camera is, as you also say here, a fixed focal length camera. So are the other two. All of the "zooming" is the result of either jumping between cameras and/or digital processing.

The telephoto camera is actually the most interesting thing, because it's based on a tetra prism used to effectively lengthen the focal length without the need to turn the sensor on its side, as "periscope" teles do in phones, thus limiting the size of the sensor to some fraction of the thickness of the phone. That's actual innovation, for a change!

 

[CelicaGT]

"iPhone Pro Max allows for a 5x zoom (120 mm focal length"

As with nearly every other phone, there is NO ZOOM on this phone. The telephoto camera is, as you also say here, a fixed focal length camera. So are the other two. All of the "zooming" is the result of either jumping between cameras and/or digital processing.

The telephoto camera is actually the most interesting thing, because it's based on a tetra prism used to effectively lengthen the focal length without the need to turn the sensor on its side, as "periscope" teles do in phones, thus limiting the size of the sensor to some fraction of the thickness of the phone. That's actual innovation, for a change!

Apples marketing is always cringe, and it seems zoom=telephoto for the layperson these days (Don't get me started on 5X, focal distance and aperture numbers they state....).

On a side note I recently picked up an iPhone 14 Pro Max (tm all rights reserves etc etc) and the camera system is...OK, I'd put it on par with a quality point and shoot. Then again I have actual kit that I use for the purpose of taking "real" pictures. Now, that said the old adage of "the camera you have" is in play here. I always have my phone and rarely my DSLR, and composition counts for a lot. I have many pictures from my phone that I would commit to print and hang on the wall. Could I have done better with the big camera? For sure, but it was at home.

 

[garrett040]

Introducing USB-C to the iphone 15 and limiting its bandwidth unless you buy the "pro" is the most apple thing they could have done. Did they even list the speed of the regular iPhone 15's usb-c port? Also they never listed any battery times in hours just "all day"

bogus garbage

 

[rluker5]

How is apple doing with the game availability these days? Can you play from your libraries from various launchers? Or emulators? Or sit the phone in one of those Bluetooth gamepad phone holders and play like that?
I was thinking they were barking up the wrong tree with gaming, but a decent handheld is expensive.
But I haven't been following Apple closely for a while and maybe if they are pushing the GPU so much they might have opened up games and peripherals?

 

[TJ Hooker]

Did they even list the speed of the regular iPhone 15's usb-c port?

The non-Pro models only get USB 2 speeds, 480 Mbps.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The A17 Pro boasts 19 billion transistors and a 6-core CPU, with two high-performance cores (which Apple calls the "faster mobile CPU"), up to 10% faster than predecessors, and four high-efficiency cores.

Tech sites: First to point out this (quite possibly) extremely lackluster performance jump despite a price jump.

Mac sites: LOOK AT THE CAMERA! We can't do what Samsung and Google can, BUT LOOK AT THE CAMERA! BEST ON AN iPHONE EVER!!!!!

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Apples marketing is always cringe, and it seems zoom=telephoto for the layperson these days (Don't get me started on 5X, focal distance and aperture numbers they state....).

Sony's Xperia 1 V is one of the few that has "True Optical Zoom", it's limited, but it's something.

That's not the end of the Xperia 1 V's tricks. For instance, the zoom camera has a variable lens that lets you take between 3.5x and 5.2x zoom at full optical resolution. It's an ingenious piece of tech that major smartphone makers have not adopted.

 

[JamesJones44]

Don't get me wrong, I like Apple and if you can make it work why not. However, I could care less about RayTracing on a 6 inch display as a selling feature. Even on a 10 inch display on an iPad will give many difficultly picking out that level of detail, but distance and size may make it worth it, but on a 6.1/6.8 inch display it seems silly to me.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I would rather get an extra hour of battery life while gaming than have RayTracing.

 

[DougMcC]

How is apple doing with the game availability these days? Can you play from your libraries from various launchers? Or emulators? Or sit the phone in one of those Bluetooth gamepad phone holders and play like that?
I was thinking they were barking up the wrong tree with gaming, but a decent handheld is expensive.
But I haven't been following Apple closely for a while and maybe if they are pushing the GPU so much they might have opened up games and peripherals?

I'm afraid emulation is still a no-no on ios so very small library of games for iphone.

 

[nitrium]

However, I could care less about RayTracing on a 6 inch display as a selling feature.

So you do care, which begs the question how much less? Or did you really mean "I couldn't care less"?

 

[bit_user]

I just want to know if the new SoC has on-package memory and what speed it's running at. Beyond that, more details on the CPU cores would be nice, but I know that's not to be expected.

 

[MartianM]

Introducing USB-C to the iphone 15 and limiting its bandwidth unless you buy the "pro" is the most apple thing they could have done. Did they even list the speed of the regular iPhone 15's usb-c port? Also they never listed any battery times in hours just "all day"

bogus garbage

I’m not sure they ‘limited’ anything. Note the the iPhone 15 uses last year’s A16 (like the std iPhone 14 ‘only’ had an A15 in it). The USB controller is unchanged, only having USB2 speeds necessary for Lighting cables of yore. So they actively *upgraded* the USB controller in the A17 to USB 3 with 10 Gbps speeds, not limited the iPhone 15. I suspect the iPhone 16 next year will have the A17 and USB 3 @10 Gbps too.

 

[bit_user]

Mac sites: LOOK AT THE CAMERA! We can't do what Samsung and Google can, ...

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but what sorts of things do you mean, when you say: "We can't do what Samsung and Google can"?

 

[bit_user]

I could care less about RayTracing on a 6 inch display as a selling feature. Even on a 10 inch display on an iPad will give many difficultly picking out that level of detail, but distance and size may make it worth it, but on a 6.1/6.8 inch display it seems silly to me.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I would rather get an extra hour of battery life while gaming than have RayTracing.

What I expect will happen is that ray tracing becomes sufficiently ubiquitous that game engines devote less and less time towards effects and refinement on non-RT hardware. Sure, you can still play the games, but they'll look more and more basic. That will make the gap between the raster and RT versions even bigger, creating more demand for RT hardware.

If someone buys a new iPhone now, by the time they replace it, we could already be a ways down that path. So, think of it as a forward-looking feature, rather than something you'd necessarily use today.

 

[Findecanor]

Did they even list the speed of the regular iPhone 15's usb-c port?

They do on the product's page on Apple's web site. It is USB 2.0 speeds only.

Personally, I think it is a bit of a bit fail of Apple not to have given it USB 3.0 to begin with. That Apple would have had to go USB-C has been a long-time coming.

 

[evdjj3j]

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but what sorts of things do you mean, when you say: "We can't do what Samsung and Google can"?

I know something Apple can do that Samsung and a Google can't seem to do. Release software updates for their phones for 7 years like Apple has done for my 7 Plus. I plan on buying a new phone this year since the updates are about to stop.

 

[excalibur1814]

"console-quality games announced for the phone"

Pay 2 play, more than likely.

 

[dm29]

Apple announced the A17 Pro at its iPhone 15 event.

Apple's A17 Pro is a 3nm Chip Powering iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max : Read more

iPhone 15 Pro camera is quiet the same as the 14 Pro. The "focal lengths" are nothing more than lossless zoom thanks to the extra pixels compared to 12MP output.

 

[techconc]

Introducing USB-C to the iphone 15 and limiting its bandwidth unless you buy the "pro" is the most apple thing they could have done. Did they even list the speed of the regular iPhone 15's usb-c port? Also they never listed any battery times in hours just "all day"

bogus garbage

The iPhone 15 is getting last year’s iPhone pro chip, the A16. If the A16 doesn’t have a USB3 capable controller in it, they’re not going to fab a completely new version of the chip just to make you happy. Sometimes it’s helpful to look at the practical nature of things rather than simply assuming Apple is crippling something on purpose.

 

[Murissokah]

"up to 10% faster" sounds very unimpressive, specially for a new node.

 

[bit_user]

"up to 10% faster" sounds very unimpressive, specially for a new node.

IMO, it depends somewhat on battery life. Maybe they were pushing the old process too hard, as I think it was their 3rd gen on N5 (or roughly comparable nodes)?

 

[expunged]

IMO, it depends somewhat on battery life. Maybe they were pushing the old process too hard, as I think it was their 3rd gen on N5 (or roughly comparable nodes)?

Their 3nm node is not 3nm it is closer to 8nm. In December 2022, at IEDM 2022 conference, TSMC disclosed a few details about their 3 nm process technologies: contacted gate pitch of N3 is 45 nm, minimum metal pitch of N3E is 23 nm, and SRAM cell area is 0.0199 μm² for N3 and 0.021 μm² for N3E (same as in N5).

 

[Kahless01]

console quality games isnt exactly a high bar to pass these days.

 

[bit_user]

Their 3nm node is not 3nm it is closer to 8nm.

What does that have to do with anything? In this context, all that matters is that N3 is a relatively better node than the N5 family.

My point was that the prior 3 generations all used similar process nodes. By the time they reached A16, you might expect it was pushing that node rather hard.