Apple claimed during their media event on March 2, 2011, that the ARM Cortex-A9 central processing unit (CPU) in the A5 is up to two times faster than the CPU in the Apple A4, and the PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics processing unit (GPU) in the A5 is up to nine times faster than the GPU in the A4.

The last operating system update Apple provided for a mobile device containing an A5 (iPad 2 CDMA, iPhone 4S, and first-generation iPad Mini cellular models) was iOS 9.3.6, which was released on July 22, 2019, as they were discontinued with the release of iOS 10 in 2016.

[8] The A5 also directly integrates Audience earSmart technology for removing surrounding background noise and secondary voices during phone calls.

[10][7] The clock rate of the Cortex-A9 in the A5 used inside the iPhone 4S and fifth-generation iPod Touch is 800 MHz (underclocked from 1 GHz).

[11] As of August 2012[update], the A5 was manufactured at Samsung's Austin, Texas factory.

[13] Samsung later invested a further $4.2 billion in the Austin facility in order to transition to a 28 nm fabrication process by the second half of 2013.

[21] The die of this version takes up 37.8mm2 of area,[21] using a new design made specifically for the third-generation Rev A Apple TV.