There’s more to this year’s smartphones than AI
Illustration: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos: Getty Images
Apple revealed its iPhone 16 lineup on Monday, and the big selling point was Apple Intelligence. Apple’s on-device AI system offers splashy features like the ability to rewrite emails, generate custom emoji, and a significantly upgraded Siri. But underneath it all, AI is delivering one other big change to the iPhone: more RAM.
Although Apple never talks about RAM in its smartphones, MacRumors discovered that every iPhone 16 model now has 8GB of RAM, up from 6GB in the base models from last year. And it’s not just Apple making changes like that. Last month, Google made similar changes to its AI-heavy Pixel 9; both the standard and pro models saw an increase in RAM, making 12GB the least you can get this year.
The impetus behind these RAM…
