3nm chipsets in smartphones is still a pretty new trend, with only a handful of phones actually offering the smaller chips. That’s not stopping TSMC from shrinking those chips down even further, with the Taiwanese chipmaker revealing its first 2nm silicon.
TSMC actually revealed the 2nm chips on April 1, so it’s understandable that some people may not have believed the news. But apparently it’s real, and TSMC is expecting to start mass production in the second half of this year.
This is far too late to include this chip in the iPhone 17. But it means that the rumors claiming iPhone 18 could come with 2nm chips feel a little more believable.
The benefits of 2nm chips
We’re already seeing the benefits of TSMC’s 3nm chips in a variety of phones, thanks to the chips being used in flagship CPUs like Apple’s A18 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Phones like iPhone 16 and Samsung Galaxy S25 have enjoyed major gains in performance and battery life, thanks to the faster and more energy efficient chips.
2nm chips are set to improve that even further, with TSMC promising a 10-15% increase in computing speed, while simultaneously offering a 20-30% drop in power consumption. In other words, these could make your phones even more powerful and extend the battery life even further.
Smaller chips are able to operate faster and more efficiently on account of their increased transistor density. The more tightly packed those transistors are, the better things run, and TSMC’s 2nm chips are roughly 15% denser than the current 3nm chips.
Unfortunately production of 2nm chips is said to be incredibly complex, with high degrees of precision, and therefore expensive. Which is not something we want to hear. Rumors also threaten the possibility of price hikes on new phones, and with tariffs on the way the last thing we need are expensive new components pushing the price tag up even further.
What this means for iPhone 18 and other phones
So far, we have no idea when TSMC’s 2nm chips will actually debut, or which phones will come powered by them. It’s certainly not likely to be this year, so the earliest we’ll see them is next year after mass production is well under way.
If I were to guess, I’d say the later the phone launches, the higher the chances it could come powered by 2nm technology.
Back when TSMC introduced 3nm chips, Apple made waves by buying up all of TSMC’s initial 3nm capacity for the A17 Pro chipset. This meant that rival chip-makers, like Qualcomm, couldn’t utilize TSMC’s 3nm process for the first year — giving iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max a performance advantage.
So the question is, will Apple attempt to do the same with 2nm chips. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. But, perhaps most importantly, are the likes of Qualcomm going to let that happen? I wouldn’t count on it happening without some sort of fight — but we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out.
Let’s just hope that prices don’t increase by too much. Or ideally, not at all.
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