In a research note written for Hong Kong investment firm Haitong International Securities, Jeff Pu outlined his expectations for the iPhone 15 lineup, which he said would include a 6.1-inch iPhone 15, a 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Plus, a 6.1-inch. The iPhone 15 Pro and the 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Pro Max. Notably, he expects the Pro model to feature titanium bezels and solid-state volume and power buttons, with tactile feedback provided by two additional Taptic engines. He also expects the Pro models to have 8GB of RAM, up from 6GB in the iPhone 14 Pro models.

Pu said the iPhone 15 Pro models will feature the A17 Bionic chip manufactured by TSMC’s 3-nanometer process, while he expects the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus to feature the A16 Bionic chip and 6GB of RAM. All four models will feature USB-C ports and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X70 modem for 5G and LTE, he said.

Jeff Pu also expects the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s telephoto lens to feature periscope technology for improved optical zoom capabilities. As for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, Jeff Pu is expected to have a 48-megapixel rear camera lens like the iPhone 14 Pro models.

Based on “recent supply chain inspections and views on the technology industry,” Pu is cautious about the stock prices of many companies within Apple’s supply chain. Pu believes that Apple’s product momentum has “turned weaker,” and he expects shipments of iPhones, Macs, Apple Watches, and AirPods to decline year over year in 2023.

Pu has a mixed record when it comes to predicting Apple’s future plans, but most of the information he shared about the iPhone 15 models was preceded by rumors. Apple is expected to release the new iPhone 15 series in September as usual.

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Apple’s A-series SoCs continue to lead the smartphone market in terms of performance, but the performance upgrades between each generation have become smaller and smaller. This is certainly due to technical constraints on the one hand, and another important reason is the exodus of many executives and engineers from Apple’s chip department.

The A16 Bionic chip was designed with ray tracing capabilities early on, but was too power hungry to be used in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. That’s probably why there’s evidence that Apple’s latest top iPhone SoC uses a GPU architecture similar to the A15 Bionic.

And the talent drain outside of technology has become a big problem, with more and more chip engineers jumping ship, such as designer Gerard Williams III. He left in 2019 to found Nuvia, which was acquired by Qualcomm, which then launched Oryon.

In an effort to prevent more engineers from leaving the company, Apple has made internal presentations to try to convince its employees that a career at Apple is more rewarding and stable and that jumping ship to other startups carries significant risks to growth. Given that many industry experts and economic observers are predicting a severe economic downturn, many of these engineers may prefer to work at Apple.

The gap in performance between Apple’s A-series chips and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips is already narrowing, and The Information says Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has closed the gap, and if next year’s A17 Bionic continues to disappoint in performance, Qualcomm and MediaTek’s successor model, due out in late 2023, could outperform Apple.

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It is reported that 3nm is currently TSMC’s most advanced process. Compared to 5nm, the chip density based on the N3E process is 1.3 times higher, the logic gate density is 1.6 times higher, and the speed is increased by 15-20% at the same power consumption, or reduced by 30-35% at the same speed.

The innovation of the 3nm series lies mainly in its use of FINFLEX technology, which allows for maintaining a balance of speed and power consumption while increasing density. The related logic test chip and 3nm 256Mb SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) yields reached around 80%, and the initial yields are expected to be better than the initial 5nm N5 process.

It is worth noting that Samsung aims to catch up with TSMC by 2025 and overtake them by 2027. It is rumored that Samsung will mass produce 2nm in 2025 and 1.4nm in 2027, while hoping to get orders from Apple.

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This year, he says that Apple currently has 40 million A17s (N3E) for next year’s (2023) iPhone 15 series processors, and it’s safe to assume that next year’s iPhone 15 series will also be the only high-end model to switch to the new processor.

Tipster’s accuracy is indeed very high in some aspects, such as being the first to expose Huawei’s sale of Glory on the entire network, the first to say that Huawei is purchasing Qualcomm chips and so on, but in general, it should still be a catch-22 for internal supply chain rumors, with specific data aspects right for reference.

He previously predicted that Apple iPhone 14 only Pro Series high-end models will use the new generation of A16 chips, while the basic version is still A15 chips, Apple’s first batch of 100 million chips to TSMC orders for stock, of which A15 and A16 each 50 million.

Available information suggests that Apple’s next-generation A17 chip will be mass-produced using TSMC’s latest 3nm iteration of the N3E process, which is an improved version of the N3 process, with some improvements over the N4 process currently used in the A16, but probably not as much as previous generations.

TSMC’s PPT shows that N3E can reduce power consumption by 30-35% for N5 nodes or achieve a 15%-20% frequency increase with the same power consumption, with a density of 1.6X for the logic circuit part and a possible 1.1X increase for other parts such as cache and analog circuits.

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