Want iOS 18’s AI features? You could have to buy a new iPhone to use them
Unsplash: Sophia StarkiOS 18 will likely be announced by next week, and it’s primed to offer new AI features. However, a report suggests many of these AI features will only run on certain iPhone models.
If past leaks are to be believed, Apple is betting big on AI to catch up with rivals like Samsung and Google. The upcoming iOS 18 is expected to showcase Apple’s AI progress with loads of new features. The company is expected to use a combination of on-device and cloud for AI processing for these features, and they might not run on every iPhone.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in his newsletter on Thursday that “many of the on-device AI capabilities will require an iPhone 15 Pro or later to work. Macs and iPads, meanwhile, will need at least an M1 chip.”
To put it simply, you’ll need to either have an iPhone 15 Pro, Pro Max, or one of the upcoming iPhone 16 models to run many advanced AI features. It’s unclear if all iPhone 16 phones will support these features, as Apple might keep them limited to the latest Pro iPhones.
The requirement here seems to be at least the Apple A17 Pro chip. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus get the Apple A16 chip, so don’t expect them to run all the AI features. The reason behind this requirement seems simple and reasonable: AI features, which are likely driven by an LLM, have high technical requirements.
The A17 Pro is currently Apple’s most advanced mobile platform, featuring much faster CPU and GPU cores, and a new 16-core Neural Engine capable of 35 trillion operations per second. It also has more integrated RAM at 8 GB, up from 6 GB on the previous chip.
In the same newsletter, Gurman mentioned that Apple plans to upgrade Siri with AI features gradually. The first version of the new Siri is expected to launch in September with the iPhone 16, but it might not be as powerful as you’d hope. The most advanced AI features are set to be added by 2025.