I personally think Apple strategically held off the RAM upgrade 'til next year's iPhone, so that they could have a "killer feature" to lean on if they don't manage to figure out a more novel^Winnovative one in time.
It doesn't need it, but it certainly helps, as benchmarks and my own development of an app that does live video effects has shown.
so that they could have a "killer feature" to lean on if they don't manage to figure out a more novel
Apple has never marketed, nor revealed (to my knowledge) what amount of RAM is in an iOS device model. This is always determined later by a 3rd party.
I could easily see a situation where a bunch of people were sitting around saying, "y'know, we don't absolutely positively NEED a 64-bit processor, but it doesn't cost much more and there might be some performance gains and if nothing else it might be a good bullet point for marketing. On the other hand, doubling the RAM will double what we pay for RAM, it won't help performance, and it will eat into the power budget, and it wouldn't make a good bullet point for marketing. The only downside is that denim_chicken will think we're being nefarious and will tell the world about it on HN."
I have no idea if that's what happened, but Occam's Razor suggests that it's more likely than the combination of pure evil and pure incompetence that you've been postulating here.
The power consumption angle is a complete and utter non-issue. It generally comes up as an apologetic canard to justify Apple's choice here, but in the holistic sense the power difference between 1GB and 2GB is negligible. Note that the ARMv8 processor, however, is a serious power pig.
However the limited memory should be an issue for people. I personally seriously considered a 5S to replace my GS3, largely for the fantastic camera, but the window of credible life for the 5S is simply too short -- 1GB just isn't enough, and seems especially deficient compared to such a fantastic processor.
It's a significant fraction of total power draw when asleep. You also have to account for PMU efficiency being pretty low when running at low current, so minor changes are an even larger difference. There's plenty of publicly available figures you can find to research this - find the "IDD6" self-refresh current in an lpDDR datasheet. Scale to the size of DDR you want, compare with battery rating adjusted for voltage.
So a device with 2GB should have a significantly smaller standby time than one with 1GB, right, given that, by your claims, it's a significant fraction. Only that isn't true at all, and straight comparisons between, for instance, the GS3 international (1GB) and the GS3 Snapdragon (2GB) shows absolutely no reduction in two-week+ standby time. Of course all else isn't the same (it never is), and there are other power profile changes between them, but it certainly isn't remotely significant of a power draw.
Because in the profile of a smartphone it is absolutely negligible. Your phone is always in radio contact with the cell tower, that absolutely dwarfing all other power consumers. When you turn it actively on, the screen and the CPU absolutely dominate power consumption. There is no case where memory on smartphones is remotely a significant power consumer.
The iPhone has 1GB because that maximizes Apple profits. Every justification are like the hilariously silly claims when the iPhone was 3.5" so many had to justify why 3.5" was the ultimate size and aspect ratio. And it'll immediately shift again once Apple adds 2GB and a 5" screen to the iPhone 6.
The question is, why doesn't Apple try to earn even more money by keeping the same A6 processor as in iPhone 5? Why bother to upgrade to A7 at all? Also, including an extra GB of RAM would cost Apple much less than upgrading to a whole new processor, don't you think?
This is AnandTech's iPhone 5s battery review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/9
The 5s outperforms iPhone 5 in four out of five tests. Regression was only seen in one scenario. The thing is, I don't remember coming across any smartphone review, iPhone or otherwise, that single out the CPU as the source of power consumption change. It's always a combination of different factors.
Now it's totally possible that the new CPU is a power pig as you claimed. Unless you can provide proofs that validate it, though, I have to agree with others that you're making it up.
The same review that notes the increased power consumption of the CPU? That one?
The iPhone wifi, display, and surrounding platform is identical to the iPhone 5. The LTE/3G chipset is improved (not surprising as it's a considerable power consumer, which was why Apple held out on LTE for a while). On the wifi test, where all else is the same as before, the iPhone 5S saw a 10% longevity decline despite a 10% larger battery.
Quite humorous seeing so many so desperately defensive about this, when the original (and completely unsubstantiated) claim was that going to 2GB would be see a marked increase in power consumption. We know from these very results that you provided that the device did see a 20% or more decrease in longevity, mAh to mAh, despite the fact that the CPU is generally a small consumer of power (for the whole device to consume 20% more power, the CPU had to have increased significantly more). Power "pig" is relative, and obviously it's a ridiculously low power processor by any normal metric, but compared to the one they replaced it with...yeah.
What's your point? It's a beefier SOC, and possibly more power hungry. Nobody disputes that.
You've tried to frame rebukes of your posts as "desperately defensive". For me I take issue with what you said below:
> The power consumption angle is a complete and utter non-issue. It generally comes up as an apologetic canard to justify Apple's choice here, but in the >holistic sense the power difference between 1GB and 2GB is negligible. Note that the ARMv8 processor, however, is a serious power pig
You seem to be absolutely sure, with numbers to back it up. You dismiss the OP as "completely unsubstantiated", but ironically you can't prove your points either. Should I take you seriously?
Apple's marketing tends to stick to what users will understand. Saying "Your apps will run twice as fast" people get, "Your phone will have twice as much memory", people don't.
Now, granted, saying 64-bit is somewhat idiosyncratic for Apple, but if you look closely they're saying that it's the first phone with a 64-bit processor. While people probably don't know why they want a 64-bit processor, they do know why they want a phone with cutting edge technology. As for why it's good, they keep referring to speed, which people can relate to. Still slightly unusual though.