iPhone 7 and 7 Plus 32GB Models allegedly have slower storage than 128GB models

[Dargenfire]

http://www.redmondpie.com/storagegate-32gb-iphone-7-plus-reportedly-has-slower-storage-than-other-variants/

 

So it turns out that some iPhone 7 32GB and iPhone 7 Plus 32GB phones have slower storage than their 128GB counterparts.

 

In the article above, they reference a synthetic benchmark in which they record a 10 minute 4K video on an iPhone 6S Plus 64GB, a 7 Plus 32GB, and a 7 128GB. The video was then trimmed exactly in half using iOS's inbuilt video editing, and the time it took each phone to create a copy of the new trimmed file was recorded.

 

The iPhone 7 Plus 32GB has been found to actually have a lower overall Passmark Disk Mark than the iPhone 6S 64GB.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Of course it does... They are using a SLC/TLC storage method so the parallelism of the NAND is much worse at lower capacities (and the SLC cache is smaller).

 

I mean anandtech found the 256GB model to be faster than the 128GB model even... 

 

The dies are just so big that parallelism isn't being improved.

 

Not that it matters honestly.

[Dargenfire]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

Of course it does... They are using a SLC/TLC storage method so the parallelism of the NAND is much worse at lower capacities (and the SLC cache is smaller).

 

I mean anandtech found the 256GB model to be faster than the 128GB model even... 

 

The dies are just so big that parallelism isn't being improved.

I won't pretend to know anything about storage methods or anything, but in the test, the 7 Plus 32GB took 52 seconds while the iPhone 7 128GB only took 17 seconds. I just think that difference is a little bit silly.

[79wjd]

Can we place stop with all the gates...

 

 

7 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Of course it does... They are using a SLC/TLC storage method so the parallelism of the NAND is much worse at lower capacities (and the SLC cache is smaller).

 

I mean anandtech found the 256GB model to be faster than the 128GB model even... 

 

The dies are just so big that parallelism isn't being improved.

 

Not that it matters honestly.

 

I've seen benchmarks that put the 16gb 6s's storage significantly faster than the 32gb 7. (Not that I think it really matters for most people)

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, Dargenfire said:

I won't pretend to know anything about storage methods or anything, but in the test, the 7 Plus 32GB took 52 seconds while the iPhone 7 128GB only took 17 seconds. I just think that difference is a little bit silly.

Samsung 960 PRO Specifications Comparison
	960 PRO 2TB	960 PRO 1TB	960 PRO 512GB	950 PRO 512GB	950 PRO 256GB
Form Factor	single-sided M.2 2280			single-sided M.2 2280
Controller	Samsung Polaris			Samsung UBX
Interface	PCIe 3.0 x4
NAND	Samsung 48-layer 256Gb MLC V-NAND			Samsung V-NAND 32-layer 128Gbit MLC
Sequential Read	3500 MB/s	3500 MB/s	3500 MB/s	2500MB/s	2200MB/s
Sequential Write	2100 MB/s	2100 MB/s	2100 MB/s	1500MB/s	900MB/s
4KB Random Read (QD32)	440k IOPS	440k IOPS	330k IOPS	300k IOPS	270k IOPS
4KB Random Write (QD32)	360k IOPS	360k IOPS	330k IOPS	110k IOPS	85k IOPS
Power	5.8W (average)	5.3W (average)	5.1W (average)	7.0W (burst) 5.7W (average) 1.7W (idle)	6.4W (burst) 5.1 (average) 1.7W (idle)
Endurance	1200TB	800TB	400TB	400TB	200TB
Warranty	5 Year			5 Year
Launch MSRP	$1299	$629	$329.99	$350	$200

 

See how the 256GB SSD had almost only half the write speed of the 512GB model? Until a particular level of capacity (which varies based on die sizes), write speeds are basically perfectly scaling with capacity. So I would expect the 32GB to be 3-4x slower or so writing (since 256GB model shows slight improvements over 128GB models).

 

Which it does, apparently.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

Can we place stop with all the gates...

I've seen benchmarks that put the 16gb 6s's storage significantly faster than the 32gb 7. 

That would make sense... The die is probably 4-8x larger.

[Dargenfire]

1 minute ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

-snip-

See how the 256GB SSD had almost only half the write speed of the 512GB model? Until a particular level of capacity (which varies based on die sizes), write speeds are basically perfectly scaling with capacity. So I would expect the 32GB to be 3-4x slower or so writing (since 256GB model shows slight improvements over 128GB models).

 

Which it does, apparently.

Well, thank you for educating me. Do you reckon I should take down the thread if the speed difference is actually not that big of a deal?

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, Dargenfire said:

Well, thank you for educating me. Do you reckon I should take down the thread if the speed difference is actually not that big of a deal?

Nah, it's a good thing to note anyways. Just don't sound so surprised about it haha. And remove the -gate.

[79wjd]

5 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

That would make sense... The die is probably 4-8x larger.

What did the 6s use that the 16gb was faster?

[Dargenfire]

1 minute ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Nah, it's a good thing to note anyways. Just don't sound so surprised about it haha. And remove the -gate.

Okay.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

What did the 6s use that the 16gb was faster?

It was also NVMe, but was probably an older generation (smaller die) of nand and thus had more parallelization to get meet capacity.

 

OH I forgot... Apple is confirmed to be back to using TLC with SLC caching on the 7. I don't remember but the 6s might have used MLC nand.

[NinerL]

Jesus Christ, a similar thread was posted 2 days ago, and it was moved to the mobile section because 

http://www.howtogeek.com/248827/why-are-smaller-ssds-slower/

[MeepLikesToBuildPc's]

Saw this yesterday, and ordered a 128GB Jet Black 7plus lol

[AlTech]

2 hours ago, Dargenfire said:

http://www.redmondpie.com/storagegate-32gb-iphone-7-plus-reportedly-has-slower-storage-than-other-variants/

 

So it turns out that some iPhone 7 32GB and iPhone 7 Plus 32GB phones have slower storage than their 128GB counterparts.

 

In the article above, they reference a synthetic benchmark in which they record a 10 minute 4K video on an iPhone 6S Plus 64GB, a 7 Plus 32GB, and a 7 128GB. The video was then trimmed exactly in half using iOS's inbuilt video editing, and the time it took each phone to create a copy of the new trimmed file was recorded.

 

The iPhone 7 Plus 32GB has been found to actually have a lower overall Passmark Disk Mark than the iPhone 6S 64GB.

People these days......... *Facepalm*.

 

<rant>

Oh no! A smaller storage capacity has worse performance than a larger capacity using the same storage technology. Whatever shall we do?

<rant/>

 

Lol. No shit. Of course 32GB would be slower than 128GB.

[captain_to_fire]

I read some person commented on other tech website that the iPhone 7 may not be using NVMe SSDs but the older eMMC 5.0.  

[Dargenfire]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

Lol. No shit. Of course 32GB would be slower than 128GB.

Well, I'm not that knowledgable about storage, and I just thought the article was worth mentioning for the people that don't have such knowledge already.

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

People these days......... *Facepalm*.

 

<rant>

Oh no! A smaller storage capacity has worse performance than a larger capacity using the same storage technology. Whatever shall we do?

<rant/>

 

Lol. No shit. Of course 32GB would be slower than 128GB.

Look at the price of the iPhone 7 32GB. Also, its write speeds are also slower than my Transformer Prime TF201 64GB SSD (albeit after 2 clean upgrades from Android 4.1 to 5.1) and 6.0.1. And that thing is from 2011 without any of the advances from the last 5 years. Its storage was also slow in comparison to other devices as well at launch.

 

 

 

Also, anyone who thinks that capacity would affect the speed of an SSD that much, your an idiot:

http://techreport.com/review/26905/ocz-arc-100-solid-state-drive-reviewed

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review

http://techreport.com/review/29062/samsung-850-evo-2tb-ssd-reviewed/2

 

This is the kind of thing Apple has pulled:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

[Ryujin2003]

So maybe Apple chose this design to try and force people go purchase the more expensive larger capacity model?

[Dargenfire]

18 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

So maybe Apple chose this design to try and force people go purchase the more expensive larger capacity model?

I reckon it's more about profit (outfitting the lower model with the cheaper storage)

[Ryujin2003]

6 minutes ago, Dargenfire said:

I reckon it's more about profit (outfitting the lower model with the cheaper storage)

All of those poor people who stood in line for hours just to have the new phone. Apples brand new to of the line proprietary technology, and they skimp on the storage. Somehow, not surprised.

[Samfisher]

1 hour ago, Dargenfire said:

I reckon it's more about profit (outfitting the lower model with the cheaper storage)

It's not about cheaper storage.  Because of how SSD's achieve speeds, you need many multiple dies to achieve peak performance.  32GB can fit in a single die, therefore never reaching the storage parallelism needed for high speeds.  Higher storage is faster cos you can write to multiple dies at the same time.

[Dabombinable]

36 minutes ago, Samfisher said:

It's not about cheaper storage.  Because of how SSD's achieve speeds, you need many multiple dies to achieve peak performance.  32GB can fit in a single die, therefore never reaching the storage parallelism needed for high speeds.  Higher storage is faster cos you can write to multiple dies at the same time.

Look at the difference between the SSD in the links I posted-some from the same line. Apple more than likely uses a far cheaper controller in the 32GB model, or entirely different NAND (eg Kingston SSDNow V300). Because there is no way a modern iPhone should have storage any where near as slow as that found in my tablet from 2011-which as mentioned previously was slow even back then. And there is no way the reduced capacity should reduce the speed by that much.

[Samfisher]

Just now, Dabombinable said:

Look at the difference between the SSD in the links I posted-some from the same line. Apple more than likely uses a far cheaper controller in the 32GB model, or entirely different NAND (eg Kingston SSDNow V300). Because there is no way a modern iPhone should have storage any where near as slow as that found in my tablet from 2011-which as mentioned previously was slow even back then. And there is no way the reduced capacity should reduce the speed by that much.

Why not?  Back in the day your tablet probably had many flash dies as well, cos capacity did not scale so highly as it does today.  Right now a single die can fit 32GB, hence the major disparity in speeds.  If it was 8GB x 4, you can bet the speeds will be up there again.

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, Samfisher said:

Why not?  Back in the day your tablet probably had many flash dies as well, cos capacity did not scale so highly as it does today.  Right now a single die can fit 32GB, hence the major disparity in speeds.  If it was 8GB x 4, you can bet the speeds will be up there again.

Look at the links that I posted previously:

2 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Look at the price of the iPhone 7 32GB. Also, its write speeds are also slower than my Transformer Prime TF201 64GB SSD (albeit after 2 clean upgrades from Android 4.1 to 5.1) and 6.0.1. And that thing is from 2011 without any of the advances from the last 5 years. Its storage was also slow in comparison to other devices as well at launch.

 

 

 

Also, anyone who thinks that capacity would affect the speed of an SSD that much, your an idiot:

http://techreport.com/review/26905/ocz-arc-100-solid-state-drive-reviewed

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review

http://techreport.com/review/29062/samsung-850-evo-2tb-ssd-reviewed/2

 

This is the kind of thing Apple has pulled:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

 

There is no excuse at all for what Apple has done-and my tablet just FYI uses only a single package (just like the 32GB model).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5286/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-teardown

And its based using a far larger manufacturing process and overall a far older design.

[captain cactus]

Technically a repost: 

I'll just copy what I said there:

 

That's the case with all flash memory. The lower capacity chips always are slower. Just look at those fancy new NVMe SSDs. It's nice getting 3GB/sec read speeds on the 1TB models, but good luck getting that on a 128/256GB model (same with write speeds).

 

And again, synthetic benchmark. It's the same with that chipgate bullshit we had last year. On paper it showed a difference, but in reality you wouldn't see any difference at all. Same here. You're reading more than writing (unless you're the person installing apps all day every day in which case wtf are you doing), so the read speeds are what matter. Those are still close to 700 MB/sec on the 32GB model, still faster than the 6S, and still miles ahead of any competition in the Android space.