The cheapest iPhone will reportedly be powerful enough to run Apple AI
Since its inception, the idea behind the iPhone SE has been to provide a much more affordable way into the Apple phone family – although it wouldn’t be correct to call the SE ‘cheap’. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that tradition will continue with the upcoming fourth generation iPhone SE in « the beginning of 2025 » – but the new model will also pack enough punch to run Apple’s on-device AI smarts, aka Apple Intelligence.
While it perhaps shouldn’t be shocking that a new iPhone will include one of Apple’s biggest marketing points, the demanding hardware requirements of Apple Intelligence made it anything but certain. This year’s iPhone 16 will obviously have enough horsepower to drive the new AI, but only two older handsets will be compatible: the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.
While speaking at WWDC 2024, Apple’s Senior VP of Machine Learning, John Giannandrea, said that you « could in theory run these models on a very old device », but due to the bandwidth, size of the ANE (Apple Neural Engine) and « oomph in the device », « it would be so slow it would not be useful » – which is why Apple Intelligence is exclusive to the most powerful iPhones.
