Last month, Apple held its WWDC event where it unveiled the highly anticipated iOS 18 update, which will launch alongside the new iPhone lineup.
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A big part of iOS 18 is the integration of artificial intelligence into Apple, or as the Cupertino company calls its version of AI: Apple IntelligenceThis integration will take the form of many features designed to improve the user experience and make voice communication much more natural.
These improvements in software functionality require a little more power under the hood, as Apple states on its website that Apple Intelligence will be available on devices with the M1 processor and above, as well as on the iPhone 15 Pro models. Not even on the iPhone 15, a device that only launched last year.
At first glance, it may seem like Apple is trying to replace its devices with planned obsolescence to boost next-generation sales, but the locking down of Apple intelligence on its high-end iPhones is the result of a RAM limitation – at least according to Apple.
3Apple explained during WWDC that Apple Intelligence requires a powerful NPU and significant RAM capacity, which are only found in the Pro models of the iPhone 15 line. More specifically, the A16 Bionic chip found in the standard iPhone 15 models has an NPU that is twice as slow as the A17 Pro chip found in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
For these reasons, we can expect Apple to increase the iPhone 16’s RAM capacity from 6GB to 8GB to make it meet the Apple Intelligence requirements. On an even more technical level, an AI prompt that is processed on the device is stored in RAM, and if there is not enough RAM headroom, the overall performance of the device starts to degrade. If this turns out to be true and the iPhone 16 is upgraded to 8GB RAM, we can expect all future iPhone generations to adopt the same minimum requirement.
