New Apple leak reveals problems with the iPhone 16 Pro

The highly anticipated launch of the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro will take place on September 10, but new details about next year’s iPhone 17 raise some difficult questions about 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 12GB of RAM to support on-device generative AI software. That’s 4GB more than the limited storage that will ship with next month’s cohort.

Apple may be ready to tout the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro as the first AI-focused iPhones, but the upcoming model’s memory limitations suggest Tim Cook and his team will push Apple Intelligence hard, even if the ground isn’t fully prepared for local processing.

Apple is expected to match most of the specs across the iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro. This includes the Apple Silicon, where the standard models are a generation behind the Pro models. That won’t be the case with the iPhone 16 family. Apple’s push toward generative AI requires the latest A18 silicon for all four handsets. However, the two Pro models are expected to have more GPU capabilities in the chipset than the standard models.

This includes storage. While the standard models were delivered with less storage than the Pro models (most recently by 25 percent), it is currently assumed that the iPhone 16 series will have 8 GB on all four models. And for many Apple watchers, this amount of storage will be a problem.

The proposed larger 12GB storage for the iPhone 17 family will be needed to run a significant amount of AI routines on the handset, meaning more personal data will be processed on the device rather than in the cloud. However, these handsets will not be launched for another 12 months.

Since each of the 16 iPhone models has only 8GB, the more intensive Apple Intelligence features will be outsourced and handled by Apple’s cloud-based servers. Far from delivering generative artificial intelligence, the iPhone 16 family will be an interesting interim solution as Apple tries to achieve the Android experience on iOS.

Despite all the rumors that the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro are Apple’s AI smartphones, the specs tell a different story. The iPhones will launch without any generative AI on board; only a basic AI implementation will appear in October; and when the full package hopefully arrives in the first quarter of 2025, the top-end iPhones won’t have enough memory to run as many services on the device as privacy-conscious Apple might hope.

While the iPhone 16 family will feature AI, it is only a first step towards AI. The full answer to Android’s dominance in this space will not come until 2025.

Read now which Apple device offers more value for money than the iPhone 16 Pro…