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Uzone.id – Apple uses a new chipset on the iPhone 16 Series. As leaked and predicted, the iPhone 16 Series quartet is powered by the Apple A18 for the regular and Plus models, and the A18 Pro for the Pro and Pro Max variants. How does it perform?
According to Sribalan Santhanam, Apple’s VP of Silicon Engineering, both chipsets are made using the latest generation 3nm architecture which is very small, offers high performance, and has better power efficiency than previous chipset models.
“The performance is 30 percent faster than the iPhone 15 and 15 percent faster than the A17 Pro chip,” he explained, at the Apple Event 2024.
Let’s discuss the Apple A18 Pro first. This chipset consists of 2x performance-core and 4x efficiency-core which when combined, performs faster than the A17 Pro with 20 percent lower power consumption.
“This is the fastest CPU of any smartphone today,” said Sribalan.
Improvements are also given at the graphics level and handling of artificial intelligence (AI). For the graphics card or GPU, Apple uses a desktop-class architecture which is said to be 20 percent faster than before.
This GPU also has ray tracing with 2 times faster performance. That means, AAA quality games will be displayed in more realistic graphics. In fact, Apple is adding a series of high-quality games that can be played smoothly by users of the latest iPhone, namely Honor of Kings: World.
The game will be released next year, where iPhone 16 Series users can play it on Ultra graphics. In addition, there are also Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Resident Evil Village that can be played. Plus, there is a Game Mode feature in iOS 18 that maximizes the frame rate when playing games.
Meanwhile, for AI processing, Apple has inserted a 16-core Neural Engine optimized for Apple Intelligence. This chip can handle high-level computing with the most efficient power possible, totaling 35 TOPS or trillion operations per second.
In terms of performance, Apple believes that the Neural Engine on the A18 Pro has 17 percent better performance than before, claimed to be the highest ever in iPhone history. That means, when users try AI features – including Apple Intelligence such as Writing Tools and Image Playground, they get a faster and more efficient experience.
The A18 Pro also comes with a new image signal processor (ISP) chip. This chip improves camera performance and data processing for video encoding, allowing devices to record ProRes videos, even up to 4K at 120 FPS, the first in the industry.
Other features of the A18 Pro include support for 120Hz ProMotion screens, Always-on Display support, and faster USB 3 data transfer speeds. These features are not available on the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus with the Apple A18 chip.
Now let’s dissect the Apple A18.
As Sribalan said, the regular Apple A18 has 30 percent faster performance than the A16 Bionic on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus. Apple has made several adjustments – of course to differentiate it from the A18 Pro.
For example, the GPU, Apple uses a 5-core chip which is claimed to be 40 percent faster and 35 percent more power efficient than the A16 Bionic. The ray tracing speed is also accelerated, so that the graphics of the AAA games played are even more realistic.
Now, about games, this is what’s interesting. Not only is the A18 Pro capable of playing various AAA game titles, the regular A18 can too. And, this is the first time Apple has brought AAA games to the regular iPhone series.
And for the first time too, Apple is presenting a new game title, namely Honor of Kings: World which can be played by iPhone 16 Series users in the highest graphics mode. This mode has been optimized for the iPhone 16 Series, which will be available starting next year.
The Neural Engine chip has been upgraded. The A18 carries a 16-core Neural Engine chip that has been optimized for generative AI – Apple Intelligence, and runs machine learning models 2 times faster than the A16 Bionic.
Both processors are paired with storage memory from 128 GB to 512 GB for the regular and Plus models, and 1 TB for the Pro and Pro Max versions. Especially for the Pro Max, the lowest memory is 256 GB.
