With the next generation of iPhone due to arrive in just one month with the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max, a piece of information has come from a rather unexpected place.
tvOS, used exclusively for Apple TV, has accidentally given away a few details of new phones in its code base. As Apple needs to make sure new devices are running well with all current apps, they need to maintain them regularly and part of this maintenance allowed a particularly vigilant Apple fan to spot some interesting details.
It might be worth an upgrade
Aaronp613, an Apple reporter and code delver, shows that the following iPhone denotations were found in tvOS 17 beta 1:
- iPhone 15,4
- iPhone 15,5
- iPhone 16,1
- iPhone 16,2
To explain why this is important, you need to know Apple’s naming conventions in tvOS code. The 15 number was originally spotted for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models, referred to as iPhone 15,2 and iPhone 15,3 respectively. These represent the chipset it uses — being an A16 chip.
This means that the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus model will be using some form of the A16 chip, in line with the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max from last year. Following on from this, we can assume that the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be using an A17 chip.
If it is not using an A17 chip, it seems to be advanced enough to justify differentiating it from the more budget friendly options with a new number. Before this, a reference was found to iPhone 14,1 and iPhone 14,9 in tvOS Beta 5 — numbers that have not yet been accounted for.
Apple often uses little names and references to other devices that the eagle-eyed use to identify new tech, and this is just the latest example. As popular apps continue to get updated ahead of the launch of iPhone 15 next month, we can anticipate more code analysing. The numbers above were removed in tvOS beta 5.
