Wondering about Apple’s latest chips? Discover what the A18 and A18 Pro can do for your iPhone!
Apple’s diving deep into AI with their new ‘Apple Intelligence’ initiative. Expect a smarter Siri, custom emoji creation, and some cool photo editing features, all powered by their latest AI technology. To make this all possible, they’ve upgraded their chips. The new Apple A18 and A18 Pro chips are here— the A18 for the standard iPhone and the A18 Pro for the Pro models.Apple Intelligence on iPhone in 5 minutes
So, what sets these two chips apart? If you’re still rocking an older iPhone, these mobile processors could be just what you need to get in on the latest and greatest! Read on to find out which chip might be your perfect match!
Apple A18 features
The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus feature Apple’s latest A18 chip, delivering up to 30% faster performance than last year’s model. According to the Financial Times, Apple is using SoftBank-owned Arm’s latest V9 chip design, which is also featured in their upcoming M4 MacBook chips.
The A18, with its 5-core GPU, offers solid gaming power, while the Pro model includes a 6-core GPU. What really shines is the addition of hardware-accelerated ray tracing, bringing console-quality gaming to the standard iPhone models for the first time. Apple also updated the thermal design. With a recycled aluminum substructure, heat dissipation improves significantly, keeping performance steady during intense gaming sessions with the Apple A18.
Plus, the A18 allows for more AI processing on the device compared to the iPhone 15’s A16 chip. But despite that, Apple is still leaning into cloud-based AI processing, which explains their investment in developing PCC (Private Cloud Computing).
A18 Pro features
The new Pro models come with the A18 Pro processor, featuring an upgraded neural engine that handles AI tasks more efficiently. This chip can tackle high-end games, offering ray tracing support and smoother “console-quality” experiences in games like Assassin’s Creed.
The A18 Pro includes 2 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores, and a new 16-core neural engine. Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro improves on thermal management with a machined chassis made from 100% recycled aluminum. It bonds this chassis to a titanium frame and pairs it with a graphite-clad aluminum substructure. This new thermal design boosts sustained gaming performance by 20% compared to the A17 Pro.
Apple A18 vs. A18 Pro: Performance
The A18 and A18 Pro chips, built with 3-nanometer technology, offer a solid 30% speed boost over previous versions. Thanks to this extra horsepower, Siri can now handle more demanding tasks right on your device. And if it runs into something tricky, it can tap into ChatGPT for help. Apple’s VP of silicon engineering, Sribalan Santhanam, even calls the A18 chip in the iPhone 16 Pro lineup “the fastest CPU in any smartphone.”
When it comes to the A18 Pro, early benchmark results on Geekbench 6 show it’s up to 18% faster than the A17 Pro. This aligns well with Apple’s 15% increase claim from the iPhone 16 event. With a multi-core score of 8,492, the A18 Pro performs similarly to the M1 chip from the 2020 Mac mini.
As for the A18 chip, it has one less GPU core than the A18 Pro—5 instead of 6. But if you’re picking up the regular iPhone 16, you probably won’t miss that core.
Final thoughts
There are certainly good reasons to choose an iPhone 16 Pro over an iPhone 16. But for me, the A18 Pro chip, while impressive, shouldn’t be the deciding factor for most people. The A18 chip in the standard iPhone 16 offers plenty of performance and efficiency for everyday use. Unless you’re a gamer or someone who needs the latest in tech, the iPhone 16 with its A18 chip is more than enough to meet your needs.