A new report from BusinessKorea suggests that Apple may be planning to change the type of NAND flash chips it uses for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, following reports of various users problems with higher-capacity models. Citing industry sources, the report states that Apple has decided to discontinue use of triple-level-cell (TLC) NAND as it believes the NAND controller IC contained in the chips to be the cause of recent problems with the 128GB iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models. Although TLC flash memory is the more cost-efficient option, it is also slower than single-level-cell (SLC) and multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash, and Apple is allegedly looking to switch to MLC NAND flash in the 64GB iPhone 6 and the 128GB iPhone 6 Plus at some point in the future, although it reportedly plans in the meantime to address problems with TLC NAND versions in a coming iOS 8.1.1 update. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the first two iPhone models to use TLC NAND flash; previous-generation models used MLC NAND flash chips. [via MacRumors]
Apple planning to switch NAND Flash chips in new iPhones due to reported problems?
Jesse Hollington
Jesse Hollington was a Senior Editor at iLounge. He's written about Apple technology for nearly a decade and had been covering the industry since the early days of iLounge. In his role at iLounge, he provided daily news coverage, wrote and edited features and reviews, and was responsible for the overall quality of the site's content.