Apple just revealed exactly how much active memory (RAM) the iPhone 16 series models will have. The company never normally does this – we usually have to find out through third-party hardware teardowns.

All four iPhone 16 models will have 8GB of RAM, according to Johnny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, in an interview with Geekerwan, picked up by 9to5Mac. Last year, only the Pro models had that much RAM, while the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus had to make do with 6GB. Of course, all iPhones have shown good and fast performance, but the extra RAM is needed for Apple Intelligence.

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“Apple Intelligence is one of the very, very important features that we want to enable. And we’re looking at different configurations, both for compute power and for memory bandwidth and storage capacity. And then we make the right trade-off and the right balance of what actually makes the most sense. So Apple Intelligence was a key feature that made us believe that we need to get to 8GB,” Srouji said.

Apple is known for not including components until they are needed: I’ve tested several Android phones with NFC chips that were never used before they reached end of life. Apple didn’t install NFC until Apple Pay went live.

Srouji said the increased RAM isn’t just for Apple Intelligence: “The 8GB is going to help tremendously with other applications as well, including gaming, high-end gaming, AAA title games, high-end gaming on the device. So I think it’s going to be really, really useful.”

It’s a great interview and it shows that Apple expects exceptional performance from the iPhone. Srouji says that the performance of Apple silicon chips is industry-leading.

“When we look at configuration, whether it’s silicon that goes into the iPhone, the iPad or the Mac, we have a lot of simulation and performance modeling tools and we look at actual data. And then we consider things like the battery size of a product, the power system of a product, the thermal envelope of the product, because oversizing is, again, wasteful.”

Overheating was initially an issue with some iPhone 15 models, so Srouji could be saying that the issue will be resolved with the new phones. And the choice of 8GB of RAM could also explain why Apple Intelligence on the iPhone is limited to the new models and the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.

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