The highly anticipated launch of the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro takes place on September 9, but new details on next year’s iPhone 17 ask some difficult questions of Apple’s AI strategy. Multiple sources, including supply chain analyst Jeff Pu and reliable Weibo leaker “Phone Chip Expert” have highlighted that next year’s iPhone 17 family will all ship with 12 GB of RAM to support on-device generative AI software. That’s 4 GB more than the limited memory shipping with next month’s cohort. Apple may be ready to pitch the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro as the first AI-focused iPhones, but the memory restrictions on the upcoming model suggest that Tim Cook and his team will heavily promote Apple Intelligence, even if the ground has not been fully prepared for local processing. Apple is expected to equalise most iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro specifications. This includes the Apple Silicon, where the vanilla models have been pushed to be a generation behind the Pro models. That won’t be the case for the iPhone 16 family. Apple’s push toward generative AI demands the latest A18 silicon across the four handsets. However, the two Pro models are expected to have more GPU capabilities in the chipset than the vanilla models. This also includes the memory. Where the vanilla models have shipped with less memory than the pro models (recently by 25 percent), the current thinking is that the iPhone 16 range will be 8 GB across all four models. And for many Apple watchers, that amount of memory will be a problem.
Full report : Apple may not be able to fulfill its super intelligent AI smart phone promise with iPhone 16.
