After making its first appearance in the iPad 2, the next stop for Apple’s A5 chip could be in the next version of the iPhone, where it would bring a significant boost in graphics and application performance without compromising battery life, analysts said.
The A5 microprocessor, announced by Apple at the iPad 2 launch on Wednesday, would provide the next iPhone with better-quality FaceTime videoconferencing, and gaming capabilities that could allow it to compete with handheld gaming consoles, those analysts said.
“What it would bring to smartphones is increased [processing power] for computationally intensive applications,” such as photo and movie applications, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. “Those do require more horsepower under the hood than you would get with a single-core processor.”
The A5 chip, designed by Apple and based on an ARM design, has two cores running at 1GHz, versus a single 1Ghz core in the A4 processor, which was used in the first iPad and the current iPhone 4. The A5 provides twice the CPU performance and nine times the graphics power of its predecessor, according to Apple.
Apple hasn’t announced the next version of the iPhone or disclosed its specifications, but the company has released new models in the middle of each year since the first iPhone came out in 2007.
The A5 adds “a lot more speed to things you do everyday, like surfing the Web, sending e-mail and multitasking,” said Bob Mansfield, senior vice-president of hardware at Apple, in a video on Apple’s website.
More significant is the graphics boost, which falls in line with Apple’s goal of improving the video capabilities on its devices, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. “If you’re trying to do heavy media-intensive apps, it does matter,” he said.
Brookwood said the A5 could be a step forward in Apple’s efforts to bridge the gap between tablets and Macbooks. Like Motorola’s Atrix smartphone, the next iPhone could be plugged into a dock with a screen and a keyboard to give it laptop-like functionality.
