Users of Apple’s flagship handsets, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, are reporting performance and functionality defects. The issues are highly found in the 64GB and 128GB variants of both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus handsets.
According to industry sources, Business Korea reported that Apple has decided to stop using triple level cell NAND (TLC NAND) as the chips are reportedly causing functionality issues with 64GB and 128GB variants of both, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The problem has been cited with the controller IC of the TLC NAND chip.
Though TLC can store higher capacity (3 bits per cell) of data as compared to SLC (1 bit per cell) and MLC (1.5 bits per cell) chips, TLC is slower than the latter two, especially in reading and writing data.
The report stated that Apple is planning to switch to MLC chips in the 64GB and 128GB smartphones.
The present handsets, which have TLC NAND chips already shipped are in big question at present. Apple is planning to include a patch in the next software update for iOS (8.1.1) which should be able to address the functionality issues of the TLC chips.
iPhone’s 16GB handset smartphones are using MLC NAND chipsets, but apparently, since TLC reduces the overall cost, the higher capacity variants of the iPhone are using TLC chips.
A growing number of people, especially Korean consumers, are reporting performance drops with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models and are requesting for replacement handsets.
The report further stated that overseas IT media sources speculated that Apple could recall the iPhone 6 Plus 128GB handsets for a replacement. However, Apple has not confirmed anything about the same.
