Earlier this week a private account on X posted which iPhone and iPad models will be supported for this year’s iOS 18/iPadOS 18 release, respectively. Now, that same source posted more technical information about which Apple Silicon chips are going to be used for iPads and iPhones this year. The alleged chip specifications used for the upcoming devices are the following:
- A14 Bionic: iPad (11th generation) or potentially, a HomePod with a display
- A17: iPad mini (7th generation)
- A18 or A18 Pro: iPhone 16 / iPhone 16 Pro
- M2: iPad Air (6th generation, 10.9-inch/12.9-inch)
- M3: iPad Pro (2024), Mac mini (2024), MacBook Air (2024)
The current iPad (10th generation) already has an A14 Bionic, so if the next generation iPad has the same chip as before, then this will be the second time that a next-generation base iPad doesn’t see a chip upgrade. When Apple introduced the iPad (7th generation) in 2019, it retained the same A10 Fusion chip as its predecessor, but it gained a few improvements like a larger 10.2-inch display. So it’s likely that we’ll see other hardware improvements for the iPad 11 such as Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, or even a P3 color display for the first time on a base iPad.
The current iPad mini uses the A15 Bionic chip, so having an A17 chip will offer huge gains in performance, especially for gaming. The iPad mini has the same chip as the one found in the latest iPhone. When Apple introduced the iPhone XS with the A12 Bionic chip, the iPad mini 5 that followed that release gained the same chip. Apple introduced both the iPhone 13 series and iPad mini 6 in 2021 at the same time. However, it’s worth noting that the iPad mini 6’s A15 chip is an underclocked version of the one found in the iPhone 13 Pro despite having the same CPU/GPU count. With that in mind, we could see the standard A17 chip on the upcoming iPad mini that is different than the A17 Pro chip found in the iPhone 15 Pro.
The current iPad Air uses the M1 chip that was found in the previous iPad Pro. Since we expect the redesigned iPad Pro to feature the M3 chip, Apple will update the iPad Air with the M2 chip to still differentiate it from the higher-end iPad Pro and to avoid possible product cannibalization. The M3 chip is also expected to make its way to both the Mac mini and MacBook Air 13-inch/15-inch.
For this year’s iPhone 16 lineup, the source told MacRumors that the next-generation of iPhone models is expected to feature the same A18 chip, which will mark the first time that Apple goes back to this parity. But if you think about it, the current iPhone 15 Pro features the A17 Pro chip, so we could see the iPhone 16 Pro having the A18 Pro chip and the iPhone 16 having the standard A18 chip. That base A18 chip could be a binned variant with fewer core counts to differentiate from the A18 Pro.
