Leaker claims Apple will downgrade the iPhone 18’s display quality and A-series chip (potentially reducing GPU cores) to keep pricing aligned with the 18e, with EVT testing planned for June and a split launch strategy across the iPhone 18 lineup.
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are rumored to feature a new A17 chip designed specifically for standard models, with a different manufacturing process than the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro. Apple plans to switch to the lower-cost N3E process for the A17 chip, marking the first time the company has designed a chip specifically for its standard iPhone models. The A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus is a higher binned variant with one additional GPU core than the A15 used in the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini. The Weibo user who first floated the rumor also mentioned that the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will feature 8GB of memory, up from 6GB on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.