Apple unveiled the iPhone 16 series at its “It’s Glowtime” event on Monday. The smartphone series consists of the iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max and introduces many of Apple’s new hardware features and intelligent integrations. This was the first time that the Cupertino-based tech giant introduced two new system-on-chips (SoCs) to the series called A18 and A18 Pro. The company claimed that the new chipset offers improved performance, better gaming and the ability to run Large Scale Language (LLM) models.
Apple has introduced the A18 and A18 Pro chipsets
At the event, the company confirmed that the base and Plus models will come with the A18 chipset, while the Pro models will come with the A18 Pro chipset. The addition of the A18 processor to the non-Pro models means that the iPhone 15’s successor (with the A16 Bionic) forgoes the A17 Pro chip entirely. Apple claimed that this jump would significantly improve performance on a variety of resource-intensive tasks.
Both chipsets are based on the second-generation 3nm process first introduced in the A17 Pro. It features a 16-core Neural Engine that is said to complete AI tasks 35% faster, as well as a 6-core CPU and a 5-core GPU.
Apple claims that the A18 chipset’s hexa-core processor is 30 percent faster than the previous generation A16 Bionic. Electricity efficiency also increases by 30%. Additionally, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus offer 40 percent faster GPU performance and 35 percent greater power efficiency than the non-Pro models of the iPhone 15. These devices also have hardware accelerator ray tracing capabilities.
In the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the A18 Pro chipset is said to increase system-wide memory bandwidth by up to 17 percent, allowing the device to handle complex AI tasks. Compared to the A17 Pro, the new SoC offers 20% faster GPU performance and 15% faster CPU performance. Energy efficiency is also said to have improved by 20%.
Additionally, the A18 Pro also features improved ray tracing with “realistic light sources and reflections” and “more stable frame rates.” This chipset also supports Always-On and ProMotion technology on the device. Plus, you get faster USB 3 speeds and ProRes video recording.
The new ISP and video encoder processes twice the data volume, speeding up video encoding and professional workflows.
Bhupendra Singh Chundawat is a seasoned technology journalist with over 22 years of experience in the media industry. He specializes in covering the global technology landscape, with a deep focus on manufacturing trends and the geopolitical impact on tech companies. Currently serving as the Editor at Udaipur Kiran, his insights are shaped by decades of hands-on reporting and editorial leadership in the fast-evolving world of technology.