iPhone 15 Pros may not be bumped to 8GB of RAM after all

The iPhone 15 Pros will use Apple’s upcoming A17 Bionic chip equipped with 6GB of RAM, the same as the iPhone 14 Pro models, a leaker claims.

Earlier rumors said the A17 could boost the RAM to eight gigabytes, but a leaker known as Unknownz21 on X says that’s “unlikely, but maybe not impossible.”

Micron and Samsung should supply LPDDR5 DRAMs for the A17. For context, the iPhone 14 Pros are Apple’s first smartphone equipped with faster LPDDR5 RAM.

The iPhone 15 Pros may only have 6GB of RAM

Extra RAM would make using multiple iPhone apps at once a smoother experience, but Apple rarely adds more RAM just to speed up multitasking in iOS.

Nearly every time a new iPhone brought more RAM was because of some new photography features, such as the introduction of Portrait Mode shooting on the iPhone 7 Plus back in 2017. The iPhone 15 Pros are expected to bring a periscope lens and other imaging improvements that might require more RAM.

The iPhone 12, introduced in 2020, is Apple’s first iPhone with 6GB of RAM.

A February 2023 report from Taiwanese research firm TrendForce said Apple would “bump up the capacity and specifications” of the RAM in the iPhone 15 Pro models.

The A17 Bionic may pack an extra GPU core

The same leaker shared other claimed specifications, saying the A17 will one-up the A16 in terms of graphics cores, adding an additional core for a total of six.

The number of processing cores in the A17 should stay the same as in the A16 (six), but the clock frequency is said to be a bit higher at 3.70 GHz. By comparison, the maximum CPU clock rate of the A16 is 3.46 GHz.

Apple A17 – t8130 – Coll

6 CPU Cores + 6 GPU Cores
3.70 GHz
6GB LPDDR5 DRAM – Micron/Samsung
TSMC 3nm Process

LPDDR = Low Power Double Data Rate SDRAM

The A17 is used by both the D83 and D84, also likely planned for D47 and D48 (16 series), as the D9x will use t8140 (A18).

— Unknownz21 🌈 (@URedditor) August 9, 2023

For comparison’s sake, the current A16 Bionic packs a 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU. Combining an extra GPU core, a higher CPU frequency and a new fabrication process should result in significant speed gains for the A17.

The world’s first 3nm chip

As expected, the new processor will be the first chip fabricated on TSMC’s new three-nanometer process technology.

Apple’s dual-chip strategy that started with the iPhone 14 lineup is expected to continue, as the iPhone 15 Pros should get the forthcoming A17 chip while the non-Pro models should use 2022’s A16 found in the iPhone 14 Pros.

In 2024, the regular iPhone 16 models will get the A16.