iPhone 18 to Use High Performance Six-Channel Memory, Claims Leaker

[Agent007]

iPhone 16 Pro buyers really got burned. We thought we would have AI and we didn’t, we thought our phones were ready for it and they weren’t. Hopefully someone wants to buy it from me at a good price because this feels like the iPad 3 all over again. I can’t believe apple did this twice to their users.

I don't care about AI but I'm frustrated with them on general principle. I got a $1,000 trade-in for my regular iPhone 12 because of an AT&T promotion. I got the 16PM and I'm so happy to be back to the BIG screen - iPhone 12 was dim and I missed the big 8Plus I had before it. The bezels are impressively thin. This is also my first phone with satellite texting capability, and an always-on display that I use with my nightstand charger. Also 10Gbps USB-C - finally I can transfer gigabytes of ill-gotten pirate booty with the speed of a clipper ship! Arrrghhh

 

[iPhoneFan5349]

I don't care about AI but I'm frustrated with them on general principle. I got a $1,000 trade-in for my regular iPhone 12 because of an AT&T promotion. I got the 16PM and I'm so happy to be back to the BIG screen - iPhone 12 was dim and I missed the big 8Plus I had before it. The bezels are impressively thin. This is also my first phone with satellite texting capability, and an always-on display that I use with my nightstand charger. Also 10Gbps USB-C - finally I can transfer gigabytes of ill-gotten pirate booty with the speed of a clipper ship! Arrrghhh

Yeah, most of those things we had on iPhone 15, what we didn’t have was AI

 

[iPhoneFan5349]

That’s not what the reports say.

Apple Plans to Release Delayed Apple Intelligence ‌Siri‌ Features This Fall

Apple plans to release its delayed Apple Intelligence Siri features in the fall, according to a new report by The New York Times. In early March,...

www.macrumors.com

2027 is for the completely restructured LLM based Siri, which (and this is important so pay attention) Apple *has not* announced, Apple *has not* ever publicly spoken about, and has *only existed* in the land of Gurman newsletters.
Let’s focus on the stuff Apple actually *did* delay, and that is personal context, on screen awareness, and app intents. Current reporting is that all of these will arrive in the fall, and there is absolutely no reason to believe they won’t run on the iPhone 16, or the iPhone 15 Pro.

The writing is on the wall. It won’t get released this year, they didn’t even bother to put a release date. They are completely overhauling their hardware to be able to run AI. If you want to believe them again after they lied to all their customers then be my guest

 

[thejadedmonkey]

It feels like there are forces in this thread working to whip up anti-Apple animus

I'm not seeing it. I honestly believe that Apple got up on stage and lied to us. They lied about the state of Apple Intelligence, they lied about the capabilities that existed, and they lied about the 15 Pro/16 with 8gb of RAM being AI ready. This is Apple - they wouldn't add 4gb of RAM just after adding 2gb of RAM the previous generation without a really good reason.

Anyone who upgraded based on these lies has a right to be annoyed, at minimum.

 

[ab2c4]

I don't care about AI but I'm frustrated with them on general principle. I got a $1,000 trade-in for my regular iPhone 12 because of an AT&T promotion. I got the 16PM and I'm so happy to be back to the BIG screen - iPhone 12 was dim and I missed the big 8Plus I had before it. The bezels are impressively thin. This is also my first phone with satellite texting capability, and an always-on display that I use with my nightstand charger. Also 10Gbps USB-C - finally I can transfer gigabytes of ill-gotten pirate booty with the speed of a clipper ship! Arrrghhh

It sounds like you are very happy with your new phone, so what exactly are you so frustrated with Apple about?

 

[MysteriousStain]

Seeing as how phones have become such central devices, anything that can make them work more smoothly and responsively is welcome

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Apple - they wouldn't add 4gb of RAM just after adding 2gb of RAM the previous generation without a really good reason.

Correction, 8 GB of RAM is a two-year running thing. The 15 Pro and Pro Max had 8 GB of RAM, as do all 16s.
It is not unheard of for them to upgrade the RAM after two years, it’s actually their regular schedule anyway.
While I’m sure the RAM upgrade is with AI in mind, I don’t think that necessarily means that without AI RAM requirements wouldn’t have increased anyway, we are literally talking about a device that can record and edit 8K video possibly.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

The writing is on the wall. It won’t get released this year, they didn’t even bother to put a release date. They are completely overhauling their hardware to be able to run AI. If you want to believe them again after they lied to all their customers then be my guest

It’s not about “believing them”, it’s about not believing most of the reporting going around, which seems, at best, contradictory.
One report says that the features don’t exist internally at all, another report says that Walker gave a live demonstration of the features to the entire AI team and that it works 60 to 80% of the time.
So those are two completely contradicting stories, either it exists in some capacity or it doesn’t.
What is clear is that this delay has caused an internal restructuring of the AI teams, and you best believe that priority number one is getting what they promised out the door, if only to avoid the lawsuits.
The last thing they are going to do is tighten the system requirements to… not include the iPhone 16. They would *never* do that, that would turn this into a true historical consumer electronics scandal. They will avoid that at any cost.
It’s very likely that the personal context features will launch this fall in 19.0 and by then people will be so focused on complaining about every change in the new design that this entire saga will get forgotten about in record time.

 

[iPhoneFan5349]

It’s not about “believing them”, it’s about not believing most of the reporting going around, which seems, at best, contradictory.
One report says that the features don’t exist internally at all, another report says that Walker gave a live demonstration of the features to the entire AI team and that it works 60 to 80% of the time.
So those are two completely contradicting stories, either it exists in some capacity or it doesn’t.
What is clear is that this delay has caused an internal restructuring of the AI teams, and you best believe that priority number one is getting what they promised out the door, if only to avoid the lawsuits.
The last thing they are going to do is tighten the system requirements to… not include the iPhone 16. They would *never* do that, that would turn this into a true historical consumer electronics scandal. They will avoid that at any cost.
It’s very likely that the personal context features will launch this fall in 19.0 and by then people will be so focused on complaining about every change in the new design that this entire saga will get forgotten about in record time.

Apple Maps fisco is still remembered to this day and is the reason why nobody uses it. Apple Intelligence is doomed, they are too slow. Look at Musk, he made grok in record time and now is the best AI, surpassing ChATGPT and others. Why hasn’t apple do that? They have more money and people. The reason is leadership or the lack of it. Apple Intelligence will never recover, it will be just an afterthought like Siri.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

These rumors are making my 16 Pro feel like it might not really be AI ready...

Folks, the hardware in the iPhone 16 series is Apple Intelligence-ready, not “full-blown on-device LLM” ready. Apple Intelligence isn’t full on-device ChatGPT, and never was intended or marketed that way—it’s a smartphone-specific implementation of a slimmed-down type of AI assistant that other smartphone makers are also producing. What’s missing is the full version of Apple Intelligence software that Apple promised, which will run as advertised on the 16 series once it's released.

But later, better types of AI on smartphones will require better hardware than is in the 16 series, and that’s just the way progress is.

 

[Reason077]

I wonder if we will see this new memory tech in the M series of chips. It would be a great surprise to see this new 6 channel memory arriving to the M5 Macs first…

All of the M4 chips already use LPDDR5X memory.

The vanilla M4 has 8 memory controllers (channels), each addressing up to 4GB RAM and giving 120 Gbps peak memory bandwidth (compared to ~60 Gbps in todays A18 Pro). The M4 Pro and M4 Max have considerably more!

Still, 6 memory channels in a mobile SoC is impressive, and will presumably also mean the iPhone’s max RAM will go up to 18GB (or even 24GB?!)

 

[Brian_v11]

The additional memory channels may be related to the phone having desktop capabilities and not just to AI. One can dream.

 

[Kirkster]

It feels like there are forces in this thread working to whip up anti-Apple animus

Not that I have a dog in this fight for or against a corporation. It's just strange to me to want to manipulate others, particularly without being able to see a compelling interest in doing so

It’s MacRumors, that is half the replies on almost every article ☠️ lots of people just here to complain.

 

[JohnC1959]

These rumors are making my 16 Pro feel like it might not really be AI ready...

READY is and always has been a sliding scale. Every time a new phone (or any other gadget) comes out one could say "feels like my current device isn't really _____ ready" compared to the newer one. Way back they first came out with lines of computers they called the first "multimedia" computers. They could show photos, videos, etc. as long as they were very low resolution and low frame rate. I'm looking forward to my next phone the 19 pro.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

It's going to have a 0 nm chipset, as well.

 

[KnowsHowItWorks]

It's going to have a 0 nm chipset, as well.

Kuo?

 

[mike2q]

Apple has saved money for years by convincing people less ram is fine and older options are just as good.
Samsungs Galaxy S24 (Last years) & S25 Ultra both already use this memory in their phones.

 

[Populus]

All of the M4 chips already use LPDDR5X memory.

The vanilla M4 has 8 memory controllers (channels), each addressing up to 4GB RAM and giving 120 Gbps peak memory bandwidth (compared to ~60 Gbps in todays A18 Pro). The M4 Pro and M4 Max have considerably more!

Still, 6 memory channels in a mobile SoC is impressive, and will presumably also mean the iPhone’s max RAM will go up to 18GB (or even 24GB?!)

Thank you for the info, I stand corrected, I didn’t know the M series of chips already had 8 memory channels.

If your speculation about the amount of memory is true, that will mean… we’ll jump from 8GB of RAM in the A18 to 12GB in the A19, to 18GB in the A20!!! Although maybe they stay at 12GB of RAM if they use 2GB modules (2*6=12)

 

[dampfnudel]

These rumors are making my 16 Pro feel like it might not really be AI ready...

That’s because it’s not based on the delays Apple is having. Their 12GB equipped 17 Pro models in the lab are probably doing really well with Apple Intelligence, but of course that doesn’t help 16 Pro users.

 

[dampfnudel]

We iPhone 6 buyers really got burned.
The 6S came out a year later with double the RAM and a faster processor, what a rip off.
/s
Like yes, the iPhone 18 will have better specifications than the iPhone 16. Was this news to you?

I think the point here is Apple could’ve upgraded the RAM on the 16 lineup to properly support Apple Intelligence, but because of the penny pinching decided not to because Tim thought the engineers would figure it out. Apparently, they did and the answer is you need 12GB.

 

[profdraper]

https://theshovel.com.au/2025/04/14/new-iphone-to-completely-fold-trump-negotiation-style/

New iPhone To Completely Fold, in Commemoration of Trump’s Negotiation Style​

Apple CEO Tim Cook has unveiled the new iPhone17 which will honour the US President by folding when a small amount of pressure is applied.
Demonstrating the new device, Cook showed how the phone completely flipped 180 degrees with the slightest tap. “A tiny amount of pressure will do it. Or you can even just say ‘We will match your insane tariffs you idiot’ and it will immediately fold,” Cook explained.

He said the company had resisted developing such a product to date, but felt that a flip phone represented the essence of the US President’s style. “With Donald Trump in office we believe the time is right for a phone that pretends to be big but it actually very, very small,” Cook said.
Packed with new features such as an improved camera, updated AI integrations, and a larger screen to read the news about Trump’s latest humiliating capitulation, the new phone retailed for $2,599 for three hours, then fell to $1,299 once Trump **** himself and realised he couldn’t win a trade war with China.
The cheaper iPhone17S will not fold, but will come with a special lock screen depicting Trump’s backdown to China on electronics tariffs.

The iPhone 17S limited edition lock screen.

 

[bLackjackj]

iPhone 16 Pro buyers really got burned. We thought we would have AI and we didn’t, we thought our phones were ready for it and they weren’t.

Stop whinging and just take it back to the Apple Store for a full refund. It can be returned based on the fact that it was sold based on false advertising.

 

[switz]

Apple's "dribble' theory for upgrades is designed to maximize sales as many folks just can not seem to wait out a year or two for the phone to show significant upgrades. Apple has to live with the 16 series hardware for at least six years after the last one comes off the production line. That does not mean it will run the latest operating system of that time period.

Intel CPU support just stopped recently (Spring 2025) so I expect MacOS will not run on any Intel processor starting in MacOS 16.

If the conjectured memory jumps to 12GB next year (model 17 series) and then 16GB (model 18 series), the operating system will be written to take advantage of the ever larger memory capacity. That "progress" could orphan prior generations with less memory as we have seen happen in prior years.

I think we would wait for at least the 18 series before upgrading if anyone can afford to buy a new one at that time.

 

[iPhoneFan5349]

Stop whinging and just take it back to the Apple Store for a full refund. It can be returned based on the fact that it was sold based on false advertising.

You think? Nah, I don’t think so. It has too many scratches.

 

[switz]

Return window is two weeks after sale (or perhaps received date if shipped). After that, it is yours.

One would have to prove fraud in court. I doubt any individual has the funds to take on Apple’s lawyers…,