Last month, Apple introduced both the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro. The 15 and 15 Plus are equipped with the Apple A16 chip, and the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max are equipped with the A17 Pro chip, which is the first to adopt the 3nm process. So what’s next for the iPhone 16 lineup?
According to Jeff Pu, he expects all of next year’s models to adopt the next-generation A18 chip, which will be manufactured with the second-generation 3nm process. Currently, we’ve seen several overheating issues with the iPhone 15 Pro based on the first-generation 3nm chip, but this improvement in chip design will surely remedy those issues.
Based on his educated guess, the 16 and 16 Plus will feature the A18 chip while the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max will feature the A18 Pro chip. For a while, both the standard and Pro models featured the same generation chip – the 11 and 11 Pro had the A13 chip, the 12/12 Pro with the A14 chip, and the 13/13 Pro with the A15 chip*. Starting with the iPhone 14 lineup, the standard models have the A15 chip, but the Pro models have the A16 chip. So with the pattern, it’s possible that Apple could market the new chips for the upcoming line as the A17 and A18 Pro instead, so the “Pro” chips will be reserved for the “Pro” phones going forward.
* There are two variants of the A15 chip. The standard iPhone 13 models feature the A15 chip with 4-core GPU; the iPhone 13 Pro models feature the same chip but with an addition GPU core.
