The iPhone 13 Pro Max to sport unique main camera and more efficient Apple A15 chip
It seems that Apple will again set the Pro Max model apart from the rest of the iPhone 13 crowd by equipping it with a better main camera, or at least better lens. That's what Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has advised in a note to clients, and he tips that the lens aperture of the iPhone 13 Pro Max's main camera will widen to f/1.5 from the current f/1.6 on the 12 Pro Max, letting more light in, and potentially improving night and indoor photography with the handset.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max is also rumored to have a larger main camera sensor than the rest of the 2021 iPhone gang, just as its predecessor, while what's in the 12 Pro Max now is set to end up as main camera in the 13 mini, 13, and 13 Pro, or whatever Apple calls them.
Couple these main camera sensor improvements with the new ƒ/1.8 aperture for the ultrawide camera on all four new iPhones (vs the ƒ/2.4 aperture on the iPhone 12), and the sensor-shift stabilization trickling down to all 2021 models, and the iPhone 13 series is shaping up as a bigger upgrade in the camera department than expected. By the way, here's everything we know about the iPhone 13 camera so far.
Apple iPhone 13's A15 vs iPhone 12's A14 processor battery and performance gains
On the other hand, Apple's TSMC processor foundry is gearing up to start the iPhone 13 chipset production in May, reports Digitimes, with a second-generation 5nm process dubbed N5P. In comparison to the current process that the chips in the iPhone 12 series are made with, N5P bring power consumption, transistor density, and performance improvements.
As a rule of thumb, those second-gen tapeouts further refine the gains achieved with the first generation, as happened with the 7nm process, rather than introduce some breathtaking technology jumps which are getting harder and harder with each production node shrink.
During the N5P introduction to investors, TSMC stated that the second generation process node will let manufacturers pick either a a 15% better power efficiency, or 7% performance boost.
At this point in Apple's A-series processor development, however, the silicon is so powerful that the company even started producing M1 laptops with it, putting Intel's entire business model in jeopardy strong enough to warrant a negative ad campaign.
That is why Apple usually opts for efficiency rather than performance gains within different generations of the same processor nodes, so we can expect a very modest bump in the Apple A15 vs A14 performance scores, and a more significant 10-15% power draw reduction.
It's a constant tradeoff that phone makers have now become very accustomed to, as each subsequent mobile generation lets them pick between raw power or power draw optimization, and they meet somewhere in the middle since phones are already fast enough for anything you throw at them.
The report also states that TSMC is ready to start a new 4nm node that will begin risk production in by the end of this year, and will see mass volume in 2022. It is rumored to be for the Apple M2 laptop, however, rather than the iPhone 14 but there's plenty of time for Apple to decide.
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