Apple is putting brand new chips in every iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro model instead of using last year’s hardware in its cheaper phones. The company unveiled the A18 and A18 Pro chips at the iPhone 16 launch event today, and as you’d expect, they’re built with Apple intelligence in mind.
The chips offer more memory and a new 16-core Neural Engine, in addition to some incremental performance boosts over older models. Compared to the past few years — where you could point to new camera lenses or hardware tweaks as a reason to pick up a new iPhone — this chip is the main selling point for the iPhone 16 lineup.
Apart from last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, older iPhones can’t run Apple intelligence features like the revamped Siri, Genmoji, and integrated ChatGPT search. (Anyone who shells out the money for a high-end iPhone has chosen wisely, because there’s no reason to upgrade.) AI workloads require a lot of RAM to handle large language models, so this alone disqualifies the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, which only had 6GB of RAM on an A16 chip (a holdover from the iPhone 14 Pro).
The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, on the other hand, had 8GB of RAM with an A17 Pro chip. According to Apple, the A18 chip with thermal design optimizations helps the iPhone 16 achieve 30 percent faster sustained gaming performance. And like the A17 Pro last year, the new chip supports hardware accelerated ray tracing, which helps it deliver more realistic lighting in certain titles.
Apple also revealed that Honor of Kings: World will come to iPhones next year. Apple’s A18 Pro is a step up from the A18, offering up to 15 percent faster speeds than the A17 Pro, as well as 2x faster hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Notably, the A18 Pro uses 20 percent less power than the A17 Pro. All this hardware isn’t just for Apple intelligence, it also powers complex new photography features in the iPhone 16 Pro’s cameras.
Apple’s old strategy of using last year’s chips on the iPhone and iPhone Plus makes sense. Those devices didn’t need the same camera processing as the Pro models, which were geared solely towards power users. Apple can cut manufacturing costs and still deliver a solid user experience for iPhone owners with older chips. (Even though it debuted in 2022, the A16 chip in the iPhone 15 is still very capable today.)
But now that Apple is centering the iPhone experience around Apple intelligence, a family-wide spec bump isn’t too surprising. And even if you’re not excited about Apple’s AI offerings (which they’ll never actually call AI), it’s nice to have some more RAM in the base iPhone line.
“Which iPhone should I buy?” is a question you’ve heard many times over the past few years. Most of the time, the answer is simple: Buy the best iPhone you can afford. If you’re happy with your current iPhone, in the meantime, don’t feel like you need to make any changes. But if you’re ready to upgrade, let us help. We’ve reviewed nearly every iPhone ever released, so we’ve picked all nine models in Apple’s current smartphone lineup and highlighted the models that might satisfy most people below.
Before we go any further, note that we’ve based our guide on the MSRP of a new, unlocked iPhone on Apple.com. If you find a deep discount from another trusted retailer or a great deal on a refurbished model, that can always change the value equation. With that disclaimer, here’s a list of the best iPhones you can buy until early 2025.