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Why Apple Still supports the A5 Chip

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I thought I would go through all of the iPads and give a fairly complete comparison of the current iPads that are available today. Also for comparison I am including the iPads that are no longer available. This table shows some information of each of the iPads.

no longer soldcurrently sold
iPad
Model
iPad iPad 2 iPad
3rd Gen
iPad
4th Gen
iPad
Mini
iPad
Air
iPad
Mini 2
iPad
Air 2
iPad
Mini 3
Released Mar. 2010 Mar. 2011 Mar. 2012 Oct. 2012 Oct. 2012 Oct. 2013 Oct. 2013 Oct. 2014 Oct. 2014
Processor Apple A4 Apple A5 Apple A5X Apple A6X Apple A5 Apple A7 Apple A7 Apple A8X Apple A7
Processor Speed 1GHz Single 1GHz Dual 1GHz Dual 1.4GHz Dual 1GHz Dual 1.4GHz Dual 1.3GHz Dual 1.5GHz Triple 1.3GHz Dual
Memory 256MB 512MB 1GB 1GB 1GB 1GB 1GB 2GB 1GB
Screen
Resolution
1024x768 1024x768 2048x1536 2048x1536 1024x768 2048x1536 2048x1536 2048x1536 2048x1536
Retina
Display
No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Pixel
Density
132 ppi 132 ppi 264 ppi 264 ppi 132 ppi 264 ppi 326 ppi 264 ppi 326 ppi
GeekBench
Single Core
522 268 267 786 259 1492 1488 1811 1251
GeekBench
Multi-Core
N/A 505 503 1430 491 2701 2708 4513 2129

So what does all of this really mean? Honestly, the only items in this chart that really mean anything are the Geek Bench numbers. The reason these mean something is because the higher the number, the better the device performs. A good example is to take the difference between the iPad Mini and the iPad Mini 2. The single-core results for the iPad Mini is 259, while the multi-core is 491. The iPad Mini 2 comes in at 1488 for single core and 2708 for multi-core. These are significant jumps in performance. The biggest difference is the processor. It goes from an A5 to and A7. The A7 is two generations newer and just a better chip overall. The one thing that you will notice is that the A5 is used in 2 products, the iPad 2 and the iPad Mini. Neither of these support retina displays. The first retina iPad was the iPad 3rd Generation, which had an A5X, which could support the new retina display. Once we hit the iPad 4th Generation, which is the only iPad to have an A6 chip in it, of any sort (the iPhone 5 and 5C both use the A6 chip).

Developers were hoping that the iPad Mini would have been discontinued and would relieve developers of the burden of supporting the A5 chipset when iOS 9 comes out. But that does not look to be the case. Apple may choose to no longer support the iPad Mini with iOS 9 but only time will tell if this turns out to be true.

Why would Apple keep the A5 chip? Could Apple not upgrade the processor to an A6, to bring better performance. If Apple would have done this, it would have brought better performance and a better experience for users and developers. However, Apple is fabricating the dual-core A5 chips for their iPod Touch and it makes more sense to fabricate the same chip for both devices. Because both of these devices use the same processor, Apple is expecting developers to support the A5 chip.

Because Apple is still selling devices that include the A5 chip, the iPad 2 and iPad Mini are still supported with iOS 8 and iOS 8.1. If Apple is still selling devices that developers can build applications for, that has the A5 in it, Apple will likely support the A5 on iOS 9. I am hoping that they do not do this.

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