New details have emerged regarding specs of the new iPhone 6s and they may give a clue to some of the major changes in store for iOS 9.
A new report revealing the amount and type of RAM in Apple's upcoming iPhone 6s and 6s Plus hints at major changes in store when iOS 9 is released. The report states that the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus will each contain 2GB of LPDDR4-based RAM as opposed to the 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM contained in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
DDR4 RAM doubles the speed of the DDR3 RAM now used not only in Apple's current iPhones but also in almost all high-end smartphones from Android competitors like Samsung, Google, and HTC. Doubling the amount of RAM as well means a potential quadrupling of the performance, with the new RAM able to open apps quicker and provide improved multitasking abilities.
This points to potentially radical changes in iOS 9, because Apple purportedly would not add such a significant performance upgrade to its devices unless it actually has usefulness. That means iOS 9 may indeed be an extensive upgrade along the lines of iOS 7, whereas iOS 8 provided more minor tweaks and additions.
The higher quality RAM comes at a price premium of 35%, so along with doubling the amount of RAM, which means a higher cost for Apple. Again, if major changes weren't expected, there would be no need to increase manufacturing costs by significantly increasing the amount and quality of memory. Whether Apple will absorb these costs and lower its margins, or will pass them along to the consumer in the form of higher retail prices remains to be seen.
The significant memory increase also points toward a restriction of some of some of the most powerful key features of iOS 9 to only the newest models of iPhone. This could be in line with Apple's marketing strategy in attempting to convince iPhone users who recently bought an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus to upgrade once again, especially if the hardware changes on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are minimal as they were in Apple's IPhone 5s upgrade.
