Historically, Apple does not reveal technical specifications like battery capacity or amount of RAM for its iPhones, and the recent Glowtime event once again disappointed everyone who was hoping to buck the trend

However, Apple executives have now confirmed reports that all four members of the iPhone 16 family will feature 8GB RAM for the first time, and have explained their reasoning

Apple's developer tool Xcode 16 has already confirmed 8GB RAM in all four models, which is assumed to be the minimum needed to make the phone's AI feature set - Apple Intelligence - work This would explain why the iPhone 15 Pro makes the cut while the basic iPhone 15 and its 6GB RAM does not

First spotted by 9to5Mac and in an interview with YouTube channel Geekerwan, Apple's senior vice president of hardware and technology, Johny Srouji, confirms this is at least part of the calculation

Asked if the 8GB RAM upgrade was purely for Apple Intelligence or if there were other considerations, Srouji did not rule out a spec change for the next generation

“Our goal is to build the best product and provide the absolute best user experience As it relates to Apple Intelligence, DRAM is one aspect When we look at what we're making, whether it's silicon, hardware, or software, we want to eliminate waste in many ways"

”Apple Intelligence is a way to make sure that we're not wasting any money [Apple Intelligence is] one of the very important features we want to enable,” he continued And we look at different configurations, both in terms of computation, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity And then we make the right tradeoffs and balance what makes the most sense So Apple Intelligence was a big feature that led us to believe we needed to go to 8GB”

But that's not to say that improvements in other areas aren't at least a pleasant bonus [Though, Srouji added, “8GB will also be very useful for other uses, such as gaming, high-end gaming, AAA titles, and high-end gaming on the device Srouji added, “8GB would go a long way in gaming, high-end gaming, AAA title gaming, high-end gaming on the device, and other uses

One of the big advantages of Apple producing its own hardware and software in parallel, he said, is that the software team can optimize this new RAM and “not waste memory”

“We looked at all the tradeoffs and ultimately came to the conclusion that ‘this makes sense,’ but 8 gigabytes was the most perfect choice for us,” Srouji concluded

One thing Apple was a bit more transparent about in its presentation was the A-series chipset that powers the iPhone, and Geekerwan also took the opportunity to ask why the company did not try to increase the number of cores in the A18 chip, like the M-series chips in the Mac and iPad Geekerwan took the opportunity to ask about the following

In short, it is a tradeoff between battery size, power delivery system, thermal envelope, and actual consumer use cases, which explains why the 2024 iPad Pro's M4 chip has four performance cores versus the iPhone 16 Pro's two

“For phones, we came to the conclusion that 2P4E, or two performance cores and four efficiency cores, would meet the needs of that device,” Srouji explained

“Because single-threaded is absolutely superior, and the efficiency cores are very well suited for other tasks

The iPad Pro's M4 has a “larger thermal envelope (and different power delivery)” that “pushes frequency and performance to different points”

iPhone 16 devices will be available for purchase starting Friday, September 20 If you are still on the fence, you can read our hands-on review of the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max here