iPhone 18 Pro Chip Leak Indicates Major GPU and Memory Bandwidth Improvements

[1BadManVan]

I still have the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and it still performs cool party tricks such as making the absolute dog of an OS that is iOS26 look smooth. So I'm not feeling any particular sense of urgency, especially if, as rumored, 27 is faster. I can do on-device AI with my M5 Max laptop.

We'll see what the 18 holds in store. I'd rather Apple had better judgment in the matter of dealing with the government and dealing with regulators. Maybe I'll sit this one out too.

AT&T also slightly to blame; I'd probably have gone for the 17PM, but just as I was considering whether or not to buy it AT&T slashed the trade-in credit on the 13PM from $1100 to $700 over 36 months, so I passed. At such point as I do upgrade, it will likely be an out of pocket phone and a switch to an MVNO.

Yea, my 14 pro max is the longest ive ever held onto a phone before. I was almost doing yearly upgrades since the 3gs came out. But once i went to the 13 pro max to my 14, it was really setting in that there was barely any difference anymore for my basic usage. I use to game on my phones a lot but havent done that in years

The only thing at this point tempting me to upgrade is for the better battery life and the extra ram. Certain work sites i use that have more secure log ins, will constantly kick me off the site and make me log back on on my phone as soon as i switch over to another app and it kicks safari out of the ram cache to make room for whatever app I'm using. That's definitely becoming an annoyance as i log into those sites several times a day while I'm on the go lol

 

[deconstruct60]

Most people wonder what use it is for a smartphone to "run faster" each year, as the manufacturers claim, when the everyday tasks that most people use a smartphone for don't need to be any faster, or at least don't seem to be faster with a newer model. But these yearly speed increases aren't just to make things run visibly faster, but also to get the processes the circuitry performs done faster so that the circuitry can go back to a lower-power state sooner. You may not see the difference, but the circuitry does, and this allows it to draw less battery power, generate less heat, etc.

The problem is that Apple sometimes does something like:

"Here is John Bigboote from Yoyodyne Gaming to demo the new Overthruster game on the iPhone Pro ... "

Some part of the Apple marketing will brag about the big leap in gaming experience which is not a 'race to sleep' context for many games that can leverage the better GPU.

As the Pro phones get more expensive some folks are treating them as a PC and a phone but blew their budget for both on a single device. So there is a slippery slope for some.

P.S. last year at iPhone 17Pro introduction ( about 59:30 into timeline)

" can deliver 40% more sustained performance ... you can play games .. at higher frame rates ... for hour after hour ..."

 

[johnsawyercjs]

The problem is that Apple sometimes does something like:

"Here is John Bigboote from Yoyodyne Gaming to demo the new Overthruster game on the iPhone Pro ... "

Some part of the Apple marketing will brag about the big leap in gaming experience which is not a 'race to sleep' context for many games that can leverage the better GPU.

As the Pro phones get more expensive some folks are treating them as a PC and a phone but blew their budget for both on a single device. So there is a slippery slope for some.

P.S. last year at iPhone 17Pro introduction ( about 59:30 into timeline)

" can deliver 40% more sustained performance ... you can play games .. at higher frame rates ... for hour after hour ..."

Yeah, I don't know why Apple PR sometimes emphasizes the gaming performance increases on new higher-end iPhones when most people would relate more to the improvements in battery life and lower heat generation. Apple does include those improvements too in its presentations, but they sometimes seem to mention those in passing. Apple is notorious for not catering much to the gaming community anyway, so occasionally touting the relatively few AAA games available on iOS seems more like a series of sponsored tech demos instead of a thriving library.

 

[lewchenko]

Other than high end games (dont play on my phone anyway) I can't think of many use cases where this extra power would even be noticeable.
Post camera processing perhaps. Even more unnatural photos!
If the 17 Pro series is around for much cheaper, might be hard to justify an 18 Pro model at the new prices.