When Apple announced the iPhone 16E on WednesdayThere was a lot of focus on the price (599 US dollars for a new iPhone, but not for a new iPhone The cheap), the lack of Magsafe support and Apple’s decision to finally kill the home button.
But there is an interesting discussion about the 16e processor: the A18. At first glance it seems the same chip as that iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 plus. The telephones also have the A18, which sounds as if the iPhone 16e offers the same performance as its more expensive siblings for at least $ 200 less. The thing is that these are not the same chips: the A18 in the iPhone 16E is “Banned”.
What is a “Banned” chip?
“Binned” chips apply not only to Apple products. All computer chip manufacturers can clear your chips. It has to do with the manufacturing process: Chips are extremely complicated products and they don’t all come exactly. The samples are tested for quality assurance purposes, and the chips that are not entirely up to snuff are separated from those who do up to standard. The former are then “binned” and are not used as high-end chips because they are unable to achieve the performance levels that the manufacturers are looking for.
However, this does not mean that Binned chips are not used at all. On the contrary, fighters are often used, especially as options with medium and lower levels. Manufacturers often deactivate various “kernels” of these chips to keep their performance in chess. They are still perfectly capable of chips, especially if you have this ceiling in place. Intel does this with its chip line, for example, why they have different performance variants such as i5, i7 and i9. Apple also does that: for the iPad Mini 7, The company used Binned A17 Pro Chips. Now Apple Bastned A18S uses the iPhone 16E.
How the iPhone 16e Bastned A18S uses
So Apple makes a batch of A18 chips that are originally supposed to send with the iPhone 16 series. During the test, some of these A18 chips are not fully for snuff tobacco, so they are put aside and not used for iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus devices.
However, Apple has a new iPhone that you want to sell for less than the flagship line -one that exhausts “Premium” functions in order to keep the costs low, but also offers incentives for users to actually offer your new iPhone about others To buy options. There will be some A18 chips lying around: Why not use them instead?
The iPhone 16e uses the “same” chip as you can find in the iPhone 16 and 16 plus – but we know that it does not work so well and therefore cannot be pressed so far. Apple then deactivates one of the GPU cores to keep the performance in chess. The 16e CPU has the same six kernels as 16 and 16 plus (two performance and four efficiency), and the NPU has the same 16 cores on all devices. But where the GPU has five kernels in the 16 and 16 plus, the GPU has only four cores in the 16e. This is because these chips are fired.
We will not know exactly how the A18 with the A18 in iPhone 16 and 16 and with the iPhone 16E is in our hands. However, I suspect that the differences will be minimal. CPUs and NPUs are the same and the GPU of the 16e has four kernels, which means that most tasks on the iPhone perform. However, if the difference shows in graphically demanding apps such as AAA games. Developers were able to push the iPhone 16 a little further than the iPhone 16e because it has these additional GPU core. This will probably also extend to the longevity of these devices: If the software progresses and becomes more demanding, the additional GPU core on the iPhone 16 could help to run more smoothly for longer.
That means it is only an additional core. In all likelihood, it will not make a big difference. We will see the numbers as soon as reviewers run their benchmarks, but I think Apple’s choice was more about saving the company than offering users a noticeably worse experience.
