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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Scott Younker

Apple finally upgrades RAM for entire iPhone 16 lineup — what we know

Apple iPhone 16 & 16 Plus hands-on.

Similar to Apple's aversion to publicly acknowledge battery size, the company also refuses to relay how much RAM is included in their iPhones.

The iPhone 16 series was just announced during the September 9 Glowtime event, and MacRumors has confirmed that the lineup is seeing a RAM upgrade from 6GB to 8GB in every iPhone 16 model. Thanks to help from iSWUpdates on X, MacRumors found the RAM information in the newest version of Apple's developer tool, Xcode 16. 

Mostly, the upgrade appears to affect the standard and Plus models of the iPhone 16. Those two models will be upgraded from 6GB of RAM to match the Pro models with 8GB RAM. Last year's iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max had 8GB, and this year's models look to retain that, bringing more uniformity across the phone line.

Here's how much RAM each new iPhone 16 model will have:

  • iPhone 16: 8GB
  • iPhone 16 Plus: 8GB
  • iPhone 16 Pro: 8GB
  • iPhone 16 Pro Max: 8GB

The same Xcode correctly predicted the RAM for the iPhone 15 series, revealing that the Pro models would upgrade to 8GB of RAM compared to 6 in the iPhone 14 Pro versions. 

Combined with the new A18 and A18 Pro chipsets, the upgraded RAM will most likely help smoothly run Apple's version of artificial intelligence, which it dubbed Apple Intelligence. AI requires more power to run and is probably a battery eater. Our AI Editor, Ryan Morrison, tested Apple Intelligence and found it to be quite impressive even with all the AI he works with regularly.

The newest iPhone 16 series will be available for pre-order on Friday, September 13 and officially in retail on Friday, September 20. We've tried the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max and were optimistic about the latest models.

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