Next week, Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, where it will introduce several AI-based tools that will power the iPhone 16 family when the handsets are launched in September. Many of these tools will be available to older iPhones, but only the iPhone 15 Pro will make full use of them.
Writing in Bloomberg, long-time Apple watcher Mark Gurman notes that only the current iPhone 15 Pro will be able to leverage the full suite of AI tools.
The likely reason is the A17 Pro chipset inside the Pro models. This is Apple’s latest Axx mobile chipset, and it is notable that Apple weakened the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models by using the then-year-old A16 chipset. The extra power of the A17 Pro’s Neural engine, alongside the faster CPU and GPU cores, will be needed to run the on-device LLMs and generative AI routines.
Even then, the iPhone 16 Pro models will see the updated A18 Pro chipset; and if Apple has made the same decisions as Qualcomm and Samsung, the A18 will have silicon specifically designed to support the intensive AI routines. While the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max may have just enough power in the A17 to match the A18, the lower specced vanilla models will likely be left out in the cold.
There may be an option to offload some AI routines into the cloud. This is the approach taken by several Android manufacturers looking for more extensive AI processes or offering AI capabilities to lower-spec hardware. If this is the case, expect Apple to lean heavily into the privacy implications of AI in the cloud and how Apple will be able to mitigate this risk.
I’m sure Apple would prefer that users consider the other option, buying a new handset specifically to upgrade to an AI-capable handset.
AI means many things to many people, but one of the biggest benefits for the smartphone industry is the need for new hardware to deliver competent solutions. Apple will no doubt put its spin on AI—a spin that is likely to focus on supporting the user with summaries, better images, natural responses from Siri, and more accurate image processing—but the underlying drive will echo the competition… if you want one of the first AI smartphones, you’re going to need to buy a new handset.
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