Apple to switch faulty flash storage type for iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus

Apple’s apparently got a problem on its hands regarding its two latest smartphones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. And no, it’s not #bendgate. According to rumors out of South Korea, a type of flash storage is causing the company some headaches in two models of the new iPhones.

Only the 64GB iPhone 6 and the 128GB iPhone 6 Plus seem to be affected. These iterations use a type of flash storage called TLC (triple-level cell) NAND.

Apple has allegedly discovered a problem in the controller IC of this TLC NAND flash, which is causing crashing, bootloops, as well as slow reading and writing speeds on some batches of the aforementioned devices. Such issues have first been reported on a few days ago, and now Apple is said to have confirmed them, along with the culprit.

The faulty controller IC is made by Anobit, a company now owned by Apple. For the iPhones in question, there will now be a switch to MLC (multi-level cell) NAND, which is more expensive than TLC but doesn’t come with such problems. TLC NAND flash is a type of solid-state memory that stores three bits of data per cell. MLC stores just two, and there’s another option, which is SLC (single-level cell) NAND flash, which stores one bit per cell. MLC flash is widely used in smartphone storage as well as consumer SSD drives. If you’re wondering why Apple chose TLC flash in the first place, the reason seems to be solely tied to cost cutting.

Apple won’t issue a recall of the already affected phones, rather it plans on fixing the problem through the upcoming iOS 8.1.1 update. On the other hand, new 64GB iPhone 6 units and 128GB iPhone 6 Plus handsets will come with MLC NAND flash, the rumor says. That’s a bit odd – if the issue is fixable via software, then why switch to a more expensive flash type anyway?

Source | Via