128GB iPhone 6 Plus Issues Reportedly Linked to Faulty Controller

IPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

Apple may face a potential iPhone recall due to technical defects iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners have reported. According to a growing thread in Apple Support Communities (via MacRumors) the freshly released devices frequently inexplicably crash or enter a reboot loop.

The exact cause of the problem is yet unknown, but an industry specialist speaking to Business Korea (via GforGames) suggests that this could be related to the controller IC or TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash used in the latest iPhones.

Some in the industry point out that considering that technical defects mainly occur in the 128GB version of the iPhone 6 Plus, there might be a problem in the controller IC of triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash.

TLC flash is a type of solid-state NAND flash memory that stores three bits of data per flash media cell. It can store two to three times as much data as a single-level cell (SLC) that stores one bit of data and a multi-level cell (MLC) solid-state flash memory that stores two bits of data. Moreover, TLC flash is more affordable. However, TLC is slower than SLC or MLC in reading and writing data.

To reduce cost, Apple reportedly used TLC NAND flash in the 128GB version of the iPhone 6+ and some other models. Previously, TLC NAND was used in some iPads, whereas more expensive but more stable MLC NAND was used in most of the iPhone series.

Although the report claims the recall would be huge, there are too many unknowns for this to take place, starting with the fact that root cause of the problem is yet to be found.

Apple is on track to make the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus available in 115 countries by the end of the year. While there have been reports of unexpected crashes, many of them were caused by backups, so setting up the devices as new resolved the issue.

This time, however, it seems to affect only the high-end version of the “high-end iPhone”, the 128GB iPhone 6 Plus. Have you had issues with your device?

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