Apple doesn’t make too many mistakes when it comes to smartphones. But when it fails, it’s fantastic.
I’ve argued for a while that Apple took a wrong turn when it decided to use different types of chipsets in the phones it releases: the iPhone Pro models get the shiny new silicon, while the standard iPhone turns to chipsets that last one year. older. The drawbacks of this strategy have come up a lot over the past two years, and are now only highlighted by the announcement that the new Apple Intelligence features only work on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max among the current models.
Once again, Apple’s reliance on different generations of chipsets within the same iPhone generation is the gift that keeps on giving.
How do we get here?
As you may recall, Apple used to take an egalitarian approach to system-on-chips: all phones released together would run on the same silicon. Heck, when the iPhone SE (2022) came out, it featured the same A15 Bionic chip found in the iPhone 13 models that came out in the fall.
However, half a year after the launch of the iPhone SE, Apple was singing a different tune. That fall, iPhone 14 models used their own A15 Bionic, even if it was one with an additional GPU core. Meanwhile, the iPhone 14 Pro models get the benefits of a faster A16 Bionic chip, which would later make its way to the iPhone 15 last fall. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have been upgraded to the A17 Pro, the only iPhone system-on-chip that can support the aforementioned Apple Intelligence features.
I’ve made this point before, but using last year’s chipset in this year’s flagship phone presents the device maker with a serious marketing problem. No matter how good your new phone is, you’ve immediately branded it second-hand, as the second option to buy if you can’t move the price of the Pro model and its better chipset. Sure, Apple has been able to distinguish its Pro models better over the past couple of years, but at the expense of making the regular iPhone look like an act of grooming that’s best ignored for the flagship iPhone Pro.
Another problem arose when we started comparing the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 over the past two years. The performance of the best Android phones, powered by new Qualcomm silicon, began to match and eventually surpass iPhones in some tests.
| Samsung Galaxy S24 | iPhone 15 | |
| Processor | Snapdragon 8 Generation 3 | A16 bionic |
| Geekbench (single core/multicore) | 2235/6922 | 2518/6179 |
| Unlimited wildlife (fps) | 120.4 | 72.1 |
| Adobe Premiere Rush (minutes: seconds) | 0:41 | 0:24.9 |
Let’s continue with a comparison between the Galaxy S24 and iPhone 15, as it covers the two most recent flagships from both companies. The Galaxy S24, powered by the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset found across Samsung’s entire lineup, outperforms the iPhone 15 and its A16 Bionic chip in the Geekbench multi-core test and 3DMark’s Wild Life Unlimited test for performance of graphics. All the iPhone 15 has going for it is faster times when transcoding video and better single-core numbers in Geekbench.
Apple intelligence to the rescue?
And now comes Apple’s revelation that the iPhone 15 it paid $799 for last fall doesn’t support some software features that will appear just a few months later. I’m not an iPhone 15 owner, but if I were, I’d feel a bit handicapped regarding Apple Intelligence. I’d certainly be less excited about the Apple Intelligence features coming later this year, as they’ll bypass my phone entirely.
Someone with a more nuanced view on this might point out that the limitation on which iPhones can run Apple Intelligence won’t always be so rigid. Fall should bring new iPhone 16 models and the fact that all four phones are rumored to have some variation of the A18 Pro currently in development. That should mean Apple Intelligence support for the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, not just the iPhone 16 Pro. So if you’re planning an upgrade in the fall, after all, you have reason to be excited about Apple Intelligence and the preview coming up.
Or so the theory goes. I spoke to analysts about the iPhone 16 upgrade prospects, and it seems like no one knows what kind of impact Apple Intelligence will have on iPhone sales this fall. Tuong Nyguen, director analyst at Gartner, is generally optimistic about Apple Intelligence’s prospects, but he told me that he doesn’t think that’s the main driver of iPhone upgrades. “While the Apple Intelligence features announced were significant, the improvements introduced are not really the reason people buy new phones or switch ecosystems,” he said.
I have even stronger evidence closer to home. My wife is almost ready to get a new iPhone, and rather than wait until fall, she’ll probably upgrade sooner rather than later. She doesn’t care what AI-powered features might come to her phone in the fall, as much as she cares now about finding the best iPhone deal.
Perhaps people are still struggling to get as excited about artificial intelligence as tech companies seem to be. But I suspect there would be a little more interest in Apple Intelligence if the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus were also among the first wave of phones to get these AI features with this fall’s iOS 18 update.
If, as expected, this fall’s iPhone 16 launch features the same A18 chips across all models, it will be the final acknowledgment that this is what Apple should have been doing with its phones and chipsets over the past two release cycles. But for me, the lack of broader support for Apple Intelligence is what really drives home the point.
