Apple ditches TLC for iPhone 16 in favor of QLC flash: lower lifespan/performance

Apple's upgrades are becoming more and more unreadable, with the iPhone 16 series going to slower QLC flash.

According to the latest news from the supply chain, Apple may change the storage capacity by moving away from triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory and instead using quad-level cell (QLC) NAND flash memory on models with storage capacities of 1TB or more.

The advantage of QLC over TLC is that it can store four bits of data per memory cell, storing more data than TLC when using the same number of cells, or more data with fewer cells, which can reduce production costs.

In addition, QLC flash memory is considered less reliable than TLC flash memory, and the endurance of written data is reduced because each cell is written more often, since each cell contains one more bit.

QLC NAND flash memory can store 16 different charge levels, while TLC can only store 8 charge levels. When reading data, the margin decreases due to the increased charge levels, which could potentially lead to an increase in bit errors due to increased noise.

If Apple goes ahead with this plan, some versions of iPhone 16 users may experience lower data write speeds than lower capacity users.