Speaking of trusting early reports, it seems that the A6 used in the iPhone 5 runs at 1.3GHz rather than 1GHz as previously reported. This comes from the latest build of the iOS benchmarking software, Geekbench, which just released its iOS 6 version today. Earlier builds clocked the iPhone 5 at 1GHz. But now that the software is compiled for iOS 6, it seems the A6 is slightly faster, and both CPU cores run at 1.3GHz.
As Primate Labs’ John Poole states, the latest build of the app includes “a dramatically improved processor frequency detection algorithm, which consistently reports the A6’s frequency as 1.3GHz.”
Early Geekbench tests seemed suggest the A6 ran between 1GHz to 1.2GHz. But per a conversation with Engadget, Poole indicated Geekbench wasn’t properly measuring the clock speed before. “Earlier versions of Geekbench had trouble determining the A6’s frequency, which lead to people claiming the A6’s frequency as 1.0GHz as it was the most common value Geekbench reported,” he stated.
Tests have found the iPhone 5 to be the fastest, most powerful smartphone to date. Teardowns revealed the A6 is a custom chip with dual CPU cores and three GPUs. The A6 also have roughly 33 percent more peak memory bandwidth than the A5 used in the iPhone 4S. However, Apple has yet to, and likely won’t, confirm or reveal many of the nitty-gritty technical details. All that’s known is the iPhone 5 is really powerful. And that’s how Apple likes to keep it.