iPhone 15 series was unveiled more than a month ago and while the launch of the iPhone 16 series may be months away, leaks have started pouring in for the models in the series. To be specific, we have leaks for the Processor that would be employed under the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus and it could be the A18 chip.
According to a research note by analyst Jeff Pu, the iPhone 16 family including the iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Plus will all use the A18 chips. This would be a deviation from the trend Apple has been following since past two years where the lower end models get the previous generation chip and the new chip is reserved for the Pro devices.
Apple has received some criticism from users regarding the move considering all the iPhones that used to launch in a particular year till 2021 had the same chip across the board. The company could be bringing that strategy back, but in a different way and not the one you may be thinking of.
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There’s a possibility that Apple could just rebrand the A17 Pro chipset, which it is currently using in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, as the A18 processor in iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. Meanwhile, the Pro and Pro Max devices could equip a brand new processor called A18
Pro, which will succeed the A17 Pro. However, all these A18 series chips will use the TWMC N3E process which is less expensive and has improved yield compared to N3B.
The A17 Pro chips are based on the N3B process, which is TSMC’s first-generation 3nm process. How much of this information is true remains to be seen once the A18 processor actually launches next year and the Benchmarking tests come in. However, we can say that the rebranding technique could work for well for Apple as it would show that the base models have similar if not identical power as the Pro models.
