iOS 18 is expected to bring several new AI features to iPhones when it lands at WWDC 2024 next month, but rumors have also hinted at an important detail: exactly which iPhones can and cannot get these new tricks.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested in his latest Power On newsletter that iOS 18’s new AI features – including a more natural Siri and voice memo transcriptions – may be limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, plus the new iPhone 16 and 16 Pro series.
Referring to the new AI features, Gurman stated that “most of the features on the device will be supported by iPhone, iPad and Mac chips released within the past year.” For the iPhone, that would mean the A17 Pro, which landed in September 2023, but likely excludes the A16 Bionic, which arrived in September 2022.
Naturally, these rumors only concern AI features handled on the device. We also expect cloud-based AI features as Apple has reportedly partnered with OpenAI. Cloud-based features could presumably be available to any iPhone that can run iOS 18. That would be ideal, as iOS 18 is now expected to support the same models as iOS 17.
For AI features on devices, there will likely be a limitation on software support – and these latest rumors suggest that even recent models like the iPhone 15 or iPhone 14 Pro could see some restrictions on which iOS 18 features they can fully support.
That’s probably because the A17 Pro chipset in the iPhone 15 Pro made a big jump in the number of operations it could perform per second (twice as many as the A16 Bionic). We’ve also heard rumors that the iPhone 16 series could get a significantly improved neural engine. A neural processing unit (NPU) powers AI and machine learning tasks on the device, although it’s possible the rumored A18 Pro chipset could be limited to an iPhone 16 Pro series.
In any case, it sounds like AI features will be the next big reason for Apple to get us to upgrade our iPhones – although thankfully the rumors about the features don’t sound so eye-watering as to lure you into a premature upgrade…
Advice: AI is probably not a reason to upgrade
I plan to upgrade to an iPhone 16 Pro this year, but not for AI features. Instead, it’s the latest camera rumors and the fact that I skipped the iPhone 15 Pro last year to wait for a more refined version of Apple’s optical zoom on a smaller phone than a Pro Max.
So far, I’m not super excited about iOS 18’s rumored AI features. Apple’s focus will likely be on-device AI, which is by definition much more limited than cloud-based AI, which OpenAI reportedly will partially deliver.
The rumored features on the device include minor quality of life upgrades, including Safari improvements, some photo retouching tools, and AI-generated emojis. I don’t know about you, but I could probably live without AI emojis for a few years.
Of course, Apple could come up with a great new AI feature in iOS 18, but I doubt it. Mark Gurman’s newsletter suggests that iOS 18’s new AI tricks may come with “preview” labels to indicate that “the technology is not yet fully developed.”
From the rumors so far, it seems like AI features will take at least another year to fully develop and become upgrade-worthy enticements, as Apple’s camera hardware has been in recent years. That said, it could still be a good year to upgrade your iPhone, with Apple likely to lay the hardware foundation in the iPhone 16 series for future AI features.
I’d like to future-proof my iOS garden with an iPhone 16 Pro this September, but the reason will likely be camera hardware rather than new AI tricks.