Apple Insider explains an expensive decision on the iPhone Pro

Updated June 2: Article originally posted June 1

Next week, Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, where it’ll unveil several AI-based tools that may power the iPhone 16 family when the handsets launch in September. Many of those tools might be available on older iPhones, but only the iPhone 15 Pro will find a way to take full advantage of them.

Update: Sunday, June 2nd: Writing for Bloomberg’s Power On newsletterMark Gurman brings up a disturbing detail about Apple’s push to integrate AI into the iPhone 16 family and iOS 18. It won’t be ready by the launch of the brand new iPhone in September.

“Although Apple plans to release several AI features with iOS 18 this fall, the improved Siri features won’t be available until sometime next year. Still, they give a good idea of ​​how broadly Apple is thinking about AI – and how deeply the company hopes to integrate the technology into its products.”

While it gives us some insight into Apple’s considering on the topic, even a generous rollout of the brand new AI features in January will see the iPhone meet the fundamental requirements of what consumers consider AI – about 15 months after Google introduced it on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, 12 months after Samsung introduced its system on the Galaxy S24, 24+ and S24 Ultra, and nearly a yr after the onslaught of Android AI smartphones unveiled at CES 2024.

It’s quite possible that Google, Samsung, OnePlus, Honor and other manufacturers will launch their second generation of AI smartphones before Apple can ship its first generation. Assuming you might have a phone that supports the brand new software; only the present iPhone 15 Pro will find a way to make use of the total range of AI tools.

The likely reason is the A17 Pro chipset within the Pro models. This is Apple’s latest mobile Axx chipset, and it’s notable that Apple weakened the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models by utilizing the then-year-old A16 chipset. The extra power of the A17 Pro’s Neural Engine is required, together with the faster CPU and GPU cores, to run the on-device LLMs and generative AI routines.

Even then, the iPhone 16 Pro models will get the updated A18 Pro chipset; and if Apple has made the identical decisions as Qualcomm and Samsung, the A18 will feature silicon specifically designed to support the intensive AI routines. While the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max may need simply enough power within the A17 to maintain up with the A18, the lower-spec vanilla models will likely be omitted.

There could also be a possibility to outsource some AI routines to the cloud. This is the approach being taken by several Android manufacturers trying to develop more comprehensive AI processes or offer AI capabilities on lower-spec hardware. If that is the case, expect Apple to look closely on the privacy implications of AI within the cloud and take into consideration how Apple can mitigate this risk.

I’m sure Apple would like that users consider the opposite option, which is buying a brand new phone specifically to upgrade to an AI-enabled phone.

AI means many things to many individuals, but certainly one of the most important advantages for the smartphone industry is the necessity for brand new hardware to deliver competent solutions. Apple will undoubtedly put its own stamp on AI – a stamp that may likely deal with assisting the user with summaries, higher images, natural responses from Siri, and more accurate image processing – however the underlying drive might be much like the competition… in case you want certainly one of the primary AI smartphones, you will need to purchase a brand new handset.

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