Inside the iPhone 5: What makes it tick

iPhone 5

(Credit: Apple)

The Apple A6 chip. The combo CDMA-LTE Qualcomm chip is at bottom.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple's revamp of the iPhone included an overhaul of the inside too. So, what new silicon did Apple drop into the iPhone 5's chassis?

A6 chip: It's faster! (duh). Here's a summary of what Apple says. "Up to twice as fast compared with the [iPhone 4S' A5 chip]...The A6 chip also offers graphics performance that's up to twice as fast as the A5."

Problem is, Apple doesn't say much beyond that. So, I asked Anand Shimpi from chip review site Anandtech.

It turns out that Anand's initial guess was wrong. Based on the performance gains, he initially believed the A6 used an ARM Cortex-A15 design. That's the latest and greatest from ARM, the chip architecture that powers virtually all of world's major-brand smartphones.

But in a post on Saturday, he says that's not the case.

"It turns out I was wrong," he wrote.

"Based on a lot of digging over the past couple of days, and conversations with the right people, I've confirmed that Apple's A6 [chi... [Read more]