An insider claims only the iPhone 17 Pro Max will get 12GB of RAM next year, and that’s good news for Apple Intelligence features in iOS 19.
The iPhone 16 will launch on September 9th and hit stores about ten days later, but we already have the first iPhone 17 rumors out there that go beyond repeating the claim that an ultra-slim iPhone 17 Air device will replace the current Plus model.
A leak from China said earlier this week that Apple will upgrade the RAM of iPhone 17 models to 12GB of RAM. That’s a big bump that I’ve been expecting ever since Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence. On-device AI requires powerful chips with fast Neural Engines and plenty of RAM. The latter is one of the key reasons only the iPhone 15 Pros can support Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.
Well-known Apple insider Ming-Chi Kuo has a new development. He took to X to explain that only the iPhone 17 Pro Max will get 12GB of RAM. The phone will also feature a vapor chamber. Both would be firsts for the iPhone lineup. The RAM upgrade would be great news for Apple’s AI ambitions. It’s also a key detail for Apple Intelligence upgrades in iOS 19.
Google just unveiled the Pixel 9 series, giving its phones a massive memory upgrade. The base model has 12GB of RAM, while all the Pros get 16GB of memory. Each features 4GB more RAM than last year’s Pixel 8 predecessor.
Google explained that some of the RAM is dedicated to on-device Gemini Nano processing. It did not reveal how much memory it allocated to AI. You can’t reclaim that RAM for the system if you choose to disable all Gemini features.
