We’ve been expecting Apple to introduce the upcoming iPhone 16 lineup in about two months, and Apple’s backend code suggests that all of those models will feature the next-generation A18 chip as discovered by Nicolás Alvarez, who has also reported several code references for upcoming Apple products in the past.
The code refers to the following iPhone identifiers:
- iPhone17,1
- iPhone17,2
- iPhone17,3
- iPhone17,4
- iPhone17,5
As we can see, we have five upcoming iPhone models; however, we still expect four of them to be announced at Apple’s upcoming fall event. It’s possible that the last model is referencing a future generation of the iPhone SE as it has been rumored for several years with an alleged launch sometime in early 2025.
Each identifier corresponds to the chip an iPhone model uses. If we take a look at today’s lineup of iPhones, we’ll see that the standard iPhone 15 models with the A16 Bionic chip use the iPhone15,x identifier while the iPhone 15 Pro models with the A17 Pro chip use the iPhone16,x identifier.
- iPhone 15 (A16 Bionic): iPhone15,4
- iPhone 15 Plus (A16 Bionic): iPhone15,5
- iPhone 15 Pro (A17 Pro): iPhone16,1
- iPhone 15 Pro Max (A17 Pro): iPhone16,2
With that said, those code references suggest that the incoming lineup of iPhone models will bring back the system-on-a-chip parity between regular and Pro iPhone models for the first time in a few years. The SoC imparity started with the iPhone 14 lineup where the regular models stuck with the A15 Bionic chip, and the Pro models stuck with the A16 Bionic chip*. Since the iPhone 15 Pro models feature the A17 Pro chip, it’s also possible that the regular iPhone 16 models will use a binned variant of the A18 chip branded as “A18 Bionic”, and the iPhone 16 Pro models will use a full-fledged variant of the A18 chip branded as “A18 Pro”.
Apple will certainly announce the iPhone 16 lineup at its annual Apple Event in the fall along with the public release of iOS 18.
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