iPhone 17 to have 12GB of RAM, compared to only 8GB in the iPhone 16

Apple is announcing the iPhone 16 series on September 9, and a new rumor claims all four models will get 8GB of RAM. In contrast, the iPhone 17 family coming next year will jump to 12GB of RAM.

That is a pretty significant jump and it"s apparently all to do with AI - this time around the Apple Intelligence features will be mostly cloud-based, but once the iPhone 17 models launch, a lot more AI will be on-device, hence the need for more RAM.

Google has already upped the RAM of its devices with the Pixel 9 family that launched earlier this month, and it"s even using a chunk of RAM only for AI applications and nothing else.

So while Apple has traditionally outfitted its iPhones with way less RAM than the Android competition, that is seemingly about to change in 2025 thanks to AI. That is, of course, if this rumor pans out.

Source (in Chinese)