Despite the A15 chip, Apple iPhone 14 / Max will still get a performance boost

Despite using the same A15 bionic chip as its predecessor, the base version of Apple's iPhone 14 will still offer better performance than iPhone 13.

In March, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that only the two iPhone 14 Pro Series models will have the A16 chip, while the standard iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max will have the same A15 chip as in the iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman agrees, saying that the standard iPhone 14 model "will probably stick with last year's A15 or a fine-tuned product. Since then, the story has been further echoed by other sources like TrendForce.

Of course, some sources also believe that, in keeping with Apple's marketing strategy, they'll rename the A15 the A16 and then change the real A16 to the A16 Pro. But no matter what the name is, whether it's A16 or A16 Pro, iPhone 14 Max or iPhone 14 Plus, the final product is already confirmed.

Apple has equipped all of its latest iPhones to date with the A15 chip - iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max - but the A15 in iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro and iPad mini 6 is slightly different in terms of CPU and GPU. There are slight differences in the CPU and GPU.

ShrimpApplePro says that despite keeping "some older hardware," the non-Pro series iPhone 14 models "will still deliver an overall performance boost over the iPhone 13 series. The new models are said to have some upgrades in areas like baseband and internal design. And most importantly, all iPhone 14 models will come with 6GB of RAM, 2GB more than iPhone 13.

Earlier this year, Mark Gurman said that in addition to trying to differentiate the Pro from the non-pro, the ongoing chip shortage was the reason Apple decided to limit the use of the next-generation chip to the iPhone 14 Pro models.