Earlier this week, Weibo suggested that next year’s iPhone 17 lineup could see the upgrade to 12GB of RAM across the board. However, Ming-Chi Kuo recently claimed that that upgrade will be exclusive to the highest-end iPhone 17 Pro Max.
If we take a look at the current iPhone lineup, the iPhone 15 models come with 6GB of RAM, but the iPhone 15 Pro models come with 8GB of RAM. We’re expecting 8GB to become the standard on both the regular and Pro models for next month’s iPhone 16 lineup, and this memory upgrade will be essential because it will allow the iPhone 16 base models to support the upcoming Apple Intelligence for the first time whereas the iPhone 15 models don’t.
The iPhone SE 4 that’s expected to be introduced this coming spring is expected to come with 8GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence as well, and the rest of the iPhone 17 lineup (sans the Pro Max) will retain that amount as well.
This isn’t the first time that the Pro Max model will have an exclusive feature over the smaller Pro model before it becomes the standard on next year’s Pro models. The sensor-shift stabilization was exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro, and the tetraprism telephoto lens is exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. So it’s likely that the future iPhone 18 Pro models will feature 12GB RAM standard.
Apple will introduce the iPhone 16 lineup at the “It’s Glowtime” event on September 9 at 10 a.m. PDT. You can watch it live on Apple.com.
