While the iPhone 16’s big launch is just a couple of weeks away, the first rumors surrounding next year’s upgrade are already circulating. New details suggest that the iPhone 17 is getting more RAM to support on-device AI features, leaving the upcoming flagship looking a little lackluster.
According to both a Weibo leaker and analyst Jeff Pu, the iPhone 17 will have 12GB of RAM, which is 4GB more than the 8GB inside the iPhone 16. The leak suggests that those who want a premium AI-ready phone should get next year’s iPhone 17, despite Apple billing the iPhone 16 as its first AI smartphone. The increase in RAM could also make the 17 series the best gaming iPhones yet, enabling faster loading and on-device file saving.
The reason for the increase in RAM is that 2025’s iPhone 17 will have native Apple Intelligence instead of the cloud-based app on the iPhone 16. The Weibo leak also suggests that more “edge AI applications” are coming, which means we’ll likely see new generative AI features on the phones rather than the baseline AI apps in the iPhone 16.
With the alleged iPhone 17 camera upgrades and overall better iPhone 17 specs, more potential users are debating overlooking the iPhone 16 and waiting for the 17. However, the 2024 range does have consistent RAM and the same chipsets across the whole range, which makes for a change from the usual discrepancy between the Pro and normal models. There’s also the small matter of the iPhone SE 4 arriving next year, with Apple once again ready to take on the best mid-range phones at their own game.
If rumors are to be believed, it looks as though Apple could take another year to catch up to the AI innovations of some of the best Android phones of 2024, such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 and Google Pixel 9 Pro. Google’s latest phone also has more RAM than its predecessors purely for AI apps, so we could see other brands follow suit over the next year and boost the memory to power the smartphone AI revolution.