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(Image credit: Future) |
Anyone hoping that Apple will break with tradition and disclose technical details like RAM size or battery life on new iPhones was let down by the recent Glowtime event.
All four of the iPhone 16 family's members will, for the first time, have 8GB of RAM, according to reports, which an Apple official has now verified and provided an explanation why.
8GB of RAM has already been verified for all four models via the Apple development tool Xcode 16, with the understanding that this is the very minimum needed for the device's AI feature set, or Apple Intelligence, to work. That would account for the iPhone 15 Pro's inclusion and the standard iPhone 15 with its 6GB RAM's exclusion.
In an interview with the YouTube channel Geekerwan, Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware and Technologies, Johny Srouji, affirms that this is, at minimum, a component of the computation. This was initially noticed by 9to5Mac.
When asked if the 8GB RAM jump was only due to Apple Intelligence or if there were other factors involved, Srouji did not refute the forthcoming generation's specifications adjustment.
He said, "Our mission is to create the greatest products while providing the best possible user experience." "DRAM is one component of Apple Intelligence." Furthermore, we want to avoid being wasteful in a number of ways whether it comes to the silicon, hardware, or software that we are developing.
"We want to enable Apple Intelligence because it's one of those really, really important features, and we have a ton of data that tells us what will enable it," he said. And we examine several configurations for memory capacity, bandwidth, and computing. After that, we balance and make the appropriate trade-offs based on what truly makes the most sense. Thus, one of the main factors that convinced us that we needed to upgrade to 8GB was Apple Intelligence.
However, this does not negate the fact that other enhancements are, at the very least, a welcome bonus.
Notwithstanding, Srouji continued, "the 8GB will be very helpful for other applications, such as gaming, high-end gaming, AAA-titled games, and high-end gaming on device." Thus, I believe it will be quite advantageous.
He claims that one major benefit of Apple producing its own software and hardware simultaneously is that the software development team may maximize the newly discovered RAM "so they don't end up also wasting memory."
"After weighing all the trade-offs, we decide what makes sense, and 8 gigabytes was the best option for us," Srouji said in closing.
The A-series chipset, which drives the iPhones, is one area where Apple is being a little more open in its presentation. Geekerwan also used this as an occasion to question why the firm hasn't tried to raise the A18 chip's core count, as it has done with the M-series CPUs for the Mac and iPad.
To put it briefly, there is a trade-off between battery capacity, power delivery mechanism, thermal envelope, and real-world consumer use cases. For this reason, the 2024 iPad Pro's M4 CPU has four performance cores compared to the iPhone 16 Pro's two.
"We determined that 2P4E, or two performance cores and four efficiency cores, meets the needs of what that device requires for the phone," says Srouji. "Because that configuration works, we have the best single-thread available, and the efficiency cores are excellent for other tasks."
You can "push the frequency and performance to a different point" with the M4 in the iPad Pro because it has "larger thermal envelopes [and] different power delivery."
The iPhone 16 phones will be on sale on Friday, September 20. If you're still undecided, you can read our in-depth hands-on assessment of the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max phones here. A comprehensive review will be available shortly.