1TB iPhone 16 Pro Models Could Face Performance Setback

[Lounge vibes 05]

everyone getting angry before even reading the article, and realizing that it’s a report from DigiTimes.
DigiTimes isn’t even the slightest bit reliable, they are the geniuses that brought us AirPods Lite.
And that told us the sixth generation iPad mini was supposed to have a home button, a day before it was announced without one.
Going all the way back when the iPhone 4S was introduced, DigiTimes claimed that it was supposed to have a “teardrop” design with a massive screen. In 2011. How wrong they were.

 

[Mojohanna32]

Wow, Apple is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. I wouldn’t trust important data to QLC without frequent backups. Which becomes more tedious at terabyte sizes, especially with slower storage.

you get automatic back ups if you have it turned on. If this weren't reported, you'd probably never even notice the difference.
This is a compromise. Increased storage and physical volume. They are basically saying the non-QLC at 2T woudl take up too much space. So if they did that, you all would be bitching about how big the phone is...

 

[jlc1978]

I hope my EU will take actions for those decisions.

That would be ridiculous. The device will perform as designed, and nothing says a more expensive version has to have the same or better specs than a cheaper one; despite the views of some on MR. The loss-aversion on this site is amazing.

If it impacts performance in normal day to day use Apple will take a hit in PR, if not then life goes on. Most people don't care about specs, especially ones not likely to impact their use, and simply buy a device that meets their needs. Lower costs vs. irrelevant specs is a good tradeoff.

 

[Porco]

Poetically summed up by a different TLC…

“Don't go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to. I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all, But I think you're moving too fast.”

 

[MayaUser]

So the 1T iphones will also be cheaper

 

[gideon2cold]

I take thousands of photos and videos and I’ve still yet to even come close to filling a 256gb phone. What are you all doing that you need that much space?

ProRes Log takes up 6gigs per minute. Obviously its a niche case but i can see that an extra tb gets rid of a portable ssd hooked up via usbc.

 

[bodhisattva]

Let's be honest, on a mobile device we are not performing intensive read write functions at any time. Not in comparison to a desktop where intensive computational models for AI/ML are being processed, complex 3d models rendered, multi track 8K video editing. I am by all definitions a power user and I've yet to ever sit idle thinking to myself, my phone is taking so long to process this request. I used to race sport motorcycles in my youth and we often made lots of jokes about how each year, bike manufacturers would brag about this new amazing update to the engine would allow a zero - 60 to be 1.875 seconds over last year's turtle speed of 1.880. We would watch the public scramble to spend crazy amounts of money to attain a fraction of a second difference. All the while not realizing that 99.9999% of those riding said bikes never come close to the 100% of its capability to begin with. I'd argue the same with this news article. Even the most power of users on a phone will only notice the slightest of hiccup moments on intense phone related tasks. Yet queue the utter outrage in whatever reason Apple has for doing it. I read more about "less space" than the "cost less" here as we are always trying to get bigger, better batteries into smaller spaces. So reducing size is always on radar. Maybe it's both, after all it is business. But the level of utter disgust is almost comical to a change that will be anything but imperceptible to 99.999% of all users.

 

[1129846]

Another reason to keep my iPhone 14 Pro Max even longer.

I agree. I head onto my xr for 4 years and only reason i replaced it with a 14 pro was I cracked my screen in Jan of 23. My original plan was to hold onto it until the 15’s came out. Don’t get me wrong the camera improvement is huge and my wife loves hers as well but the XR was working great.

The 14s I expect we will try to get 5 years out of them as newer generation of the iPhones are not honestly adding that much any longer. Hell comparing the 14 pro to the XR the camera is nicer and the direction help of air tags is a huge plus. I would argue it sure as hell not the 1k worth of improvement over the XR I replaced it with.

I had my last Mac go for 7 years and would have pushed it a little farther if I had not lost my job at the time as I was trying to hold on a few more months for m2 14 in update but instead got a loaded 13 m2 pro and I am happy with it. I plan on running it a while as well.

 

[bodhisattva]

ProRes Log takes up 6gigs per minute. Obviously its a niche case but i can see that an extra tb gets rid of a portable ssd hooked up via usbc.

I can see your case and agree that it is niche. But that would be precisely the user like me who just opts for a larger 1gb model. There are some that will use it, and some that are just the average Tim Taylor personality (more power). Either way, I'm just happy we have the options to purchase what we need.

 

[lkrupp]

Classic Tim's cost costing measures.

The headline contains the word COULD, not FACT. Jumping the gun here a wee bit. It’s a rumor.

 

[1129846]

I don't get this either. Do people casually take 10000 photos every week? Can't they offload old photos and videos to the home NAS or cloud storage? Do people really need to have 5 year old photos still in their pocket on the local storage?

My wife started taking damn near 1k photos a month and has for a little over 3 years now which lines up when our first kid was born. My photo count has spike a lot well. Mostly it is from not deleting them and I have upgraded to the 2 TB I cloud plan because of my wife. Currently using 500gigs of it most of it I know are photos.

 

[muasachi]

It's fun to read harsh comments about rumors that may or may not going to happen.

 

[Zdigital2015]

This rumor doesn't say anything at all about the price of iPhone having to go higher if Apple keeps using the SAME, faster storage than opting for this rumored slower storage.

This card is played to make it sound like keeping it the same means the price must go up. What will go up if this is true is margin.

And Apple may opt to raise the price anyway to further enhance that margin... which is as plausible as the idea that Apple would otherwise have to raise the price without slowing down the storage.

Want to somewhat manage customer frustration with an OPTIONAL decision like this? Pass through the savings to the customers with LOWERED iPhone pricing. That too is just as plausible as the idea that pricing must go up without reducing the underlying cost of storage as rumored here.

But that's not the proposition in this rumor: it appears to be hold the price at the SAME but slow the storage because it's cheaper for Apple. Customers thinking as customers should never applaud margin expansion. That's a shareholder mentality. Customers should want as much value for their money as they can get.

The truth being that gross margin is the most important metric to Apple at their quarterly conference calls. It has been since the company was founded.

 

[Apple_Robert]

All that could go away if Apple focused on consumer benefits in such things vs. shareholder ROI maximization. IMO: in the last 5-8 years, too much of the latter at the expense of the former. This- if true- smells like more of the same.

Valid point but, we both know the direction will stay the same.

 

[SactoGuy18]

I don't think slightly slower storage on the iPhone is a major issue. That's more a major issue for the Mac models, where read-write speeds are much more critically important.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

The truth being that gross margin is the most important metric to Apple at their quarterly conference calls. It has been since the company was founded.

Yes, that IS the truth, but it doesn't mean customers thinking as customers have to celebrate it and/or try to convince their fellow customers how even fatter margins is somehow a good thing for customers.

An older version of Apple just seemed better and making us all believe that along with Apple fortunes growing, we consumers were getting greater & greater benefits too. The current version of Apple seems to just blatantly be looking to squeeze out every nickel & dime. Both may have been exactly the same Apple for all I know but I was happier with the (former's potential) illusion than the "in-my-face" (current) one working that margin higher & higher.

Hooray, another record quarter! Hooray, shareholders rejoice! And where does all that ever-expanding profit come from again??? Maybe that other group should be thrown a few more bones? While goodwill doesn't show up in "another record quarter" numbers in dollars & cents, growth & greater success doesn't require being built so heavily at the expense of that other group.

Valid point but, we both know the direction will stay the same.

Yes we do... thus- IMO- making it perfectly acceptable for customers thinking as customers instead of as shareholders to vent some frustration at rumors like this.

 

[3530025]

My wife started taking damn near 1k photos a month and has for a little over 3 years now which lines up when our first kid was born. My photo count has spike a lot well. Mostly it is from not deleting them and I have upgraded to the 2 TB I cloud plan because of my wife. Currently using 500gigs of it most of it I know are photos.

So you've got 2TB iCloud - why not delete it from the local storage then and buy cheaper lower storage iPhone then?

Or just switch to home NAS and get 8TB or bigger drive in RAID1. It's a lot cheaper in the long term and whole family can use it. Both QNAP and Synology got great apps with syncing capability. No need for 1TB or 2TB iPhone... 256GB is plenty enough, just sync your photos and delete the oldest ones from your iPhone and keep them just on your NAS. Takes few minutes and saves you a lot of money.

 

[GuyDouche]

To the individuals asking why the need to high capacity storage....
LOTS of ProRes videos and Live Photos from Traveling. Also, capturing moments while at the club, party, festival etc.
Plus I like not having to worry about storage restrictions or if Im going to run out of storage if I keep tacking shots.
Yes I know, data hygiene, but that's what we pay the extra coin for, peace of mind. At some point it becomes more about value and not about cost.
Also, Apple is probably banking on people not being able to distinguish the speed variable going from faster to slightly slower. Take a look at the M2 & M3 with the memory Bandwidth, or the earlier MBA's when Apple shipped with slightly slower NAND speeds. If apple is charging a premium cost to their products, then we should expect high quality components and performance. Tim Apple needs to step down already.

 

[ph001bi]

iPhone 16 Pro models configured with 1TB of storage could feature slower read and write speeds to reduce costs, DigiTimes reports.

The change is part of Apple's potential switch to higher-density Quad-Level Cell (QLC) NAND flash memory for its 1TB iPhone models, which the company is said to currently be "actively evaluating." Apple currently uses costlier Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND.

Using QLC NAND would allow Apple to cram more storage into a smaller space and comes at a lower price, but with the disadvantage of slower read and write speeds. QLC NAND can also be less durable and reliable than TLC NAND, handling constant write operations less effectively. Apple could, of course, seek to mitigate these issues with specific optimizations.

The report adds that adopting QLC NAND could make offering iPhones with up to 2TB of storage viable for the first time. A 1TB iPhone 15 Pro Max is priced at $1,599, $200 more than the 512GB model, so a future 2TB model would need to be cost-effective, as well as contain flash storage that is sufficiently compact inside the device.

New iPhone models with 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB of storage are highly likely to stick with TLC NAND for the foreseeable future. Although TLC NAND is still widespread in the industry, QLC NAND is expected to account for about 20% of all NAND shipments from the second half of 2023 to the first half of 2024, suggesting that its usage is growing despite its drawbacks.

Article Link: 1TB iPhone 16 Pro Models Could Face Performance Setback

I was worried at first and then I saw Digitimes report. No problem it won't happened.

 

[Timo_Existencia]

Yes we do... thus- IMO- making it perfectly acceptable for customers thinking as customers instead of as shareholders to vent some frustration at rumors like this.

I personally think keeping ROI healthy is good for the consumer.

Just yesterday, in my business, I had to analyze a potential new branch in my business. But the potential return on it wasn't worth the energy. Not only because I wouldn't be earning enough for the effort required, but because in the real world, something always goes wrong. And if I'm not earning enough of a return to cover those eventualities, then I know that I can't provide the kind of service my clients require. I require a base-level 50% ROI before I'll even consider expansion. And a business that thinks they can sustain a 10% ROI isn't being honest with themselves, in my opinion, and thus are doing their clients no favors in the long run.

...and with Apple, I want them to have a healthy R&D budget. In the tech space, I want Appe's vision combined with the ability to have the necessary funds to explore new ideas, to take risks on new products, like the Vision Pro. Absent a healthy ROI, that goes away.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

To be honest, I don't really recall anyone comparing iPhone read/write speeds between models. Does anyone really care and is it that noticeable? In the PC world, some SSD's are QLC-based and while a little slower, one can't really notice unless you run synthetic benchmarks.

 

[1129846]

So you've got 2TB iCloud - why not delete it from the local storage then and buy cheaper lower storage iPhone then?

Or just switch to home NAS and get 8TB or bigger drive in RAID1. It's a lot cheaper in the long term and whole family can use it. Both QNAP and Synology got great apps with syncing capability. No need for 1TB or 2TB iPhone... 256GB is plenty enough, just sync your photos and delete the oldest ones from your iPhone and keep them just on your NAS. Takes few minutes and saves you a lot of money.

Tell you the truth i have my phone set to optimize local storage so it will delete older local photos automatically freeing up space. My phone is not 1tb but 256gig.

I more was explaining the raw amount of photos taking up space.

Now my next phone I might go for 512 gb but that is more for more offline movies and what not as that is getting used a lot more heavily with a kid.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

So you've got 2TB iCloud - why not delete it from the local storage then and buy cheaper lower storage iPhone then?

Or just switch to home NAS and get 8TB or bigger drive in RAID1. It's a lot cheaper in the long term and whole family can use it. Both QNAP and Synology got great apps with syncing capability. No need for 1TB or 2TB iPhone... 256GB is plenty enough, just sync your photos and delete the oldest ones from your iPhone and keep them just on your NAS. Takes few minutes and saves you a lot of money.

No reason to even get that complicated. I just use an external USB drive on my Mac.

 

[Schizoid]

Classic Tim's cost costing measures.

If it’s smaller, cheaper, with worse performance, Tim will order 20 million of them!

 

[subjonas]

Give me 8 TB, I don’t care of you have to put a spinning hard drive in there!