Apple A16 Bionic vs Apple A15 Bionic: Is Newer Better?

With the announcement of the new iPhone 14 series of phones, comes the latest Apple Silicon mobile chip in the form of A16. But how is it different from its predecessor?

Apple announced a slew of new devices at its Far Out event, surprising everyone with the new rugged and durable Apple Watch Ultra, as well as the Apple Watch Series 8 and the latest pair of AirPods Pro 2 with Apple Spatial Audio.

But the new line of phones is what really got the attention: Apple has introduced four new models, including the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.

And it looks like the Pro and Pro Max models will feature Apple’s latest mobile Silicon chip, the A16 Bionic, while the vanilla and Plus phone models will use last year’s A15 Bionic chip.

Here are some key differences between A16 Bionic chip and A15 Bionic chip.

More transistors than before

The A16 Bionic will contain 16 billion transistors, a whole billion more than the A15.

This suggests that the professional models of the iPhone 14 should be much faster in terms of data processing, as more work can be done in less time thanks to the extra transistors. In theory, it should be more powerful than its predecessor, making the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max more efficient overall.

50% more memory bandwidth

While the A15 and A16 share the same 5-core GPU, the A16 improves upon its predecessor by increasing GPU memory bandwidth by 50%. This should provide a better experience while playing mobile games as the GPU will be better equipped to handle heavy workloads.

More memory bandwidth means watching videos or playing games on the iPhone 14 Pro should be much smoother and faster than the vanilla iPhone 14.

Improved camera performance

Apple has created a new image signal processor (ISP) that should produce more detailed images than any other iPhone on the market. In the A16 Bionic chip, the GPU, processor, neural engine, and ISP work together to power the four-pixel sensor.

The latest Apple Silicon chip can perform up to four trillion operations per photo, according to the company. This works in conjunction with the new Photonic Engine, which allows Deep Fusion to run earlier in the uncompressed image process, which should save more data and produce brighter, more vibrant photos.

This was not on the A15 Bionic chip and should provide better photo quality, though we’ll be sure to check that out when we get the review units.

Faster processor

Apple has said that the 6-core processor on the A16 is faster than its predecessor, although it hasn’t provided exact statistics yet.

Both the A16 and A15 have the same configuration of four efficiency cores and two performance cores, as well as a five-core GPU and a 16-core neural engine. While we can’t speculate how much faster this processor is than its predecessor, the increased transistor count will make the processor run faster overall, which should provide smoother performance compared to the A15.