With the Apple iPhone 16 and Apple 16 Pro officially launched this morning, two new chips were also introduced by Apple. There is no longer a strategy of using last year's chips, instead both models are offered with the new Apple A18 and Apple A 18 Pro chips.
The Apple 18 Pro is the most powerful chip between the two models with only the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max using it. It maintains the use of 3nm technology and is also equipped with 6 CPU cores – 2 performance cores and 4 power efficient cores. According to Apple, the A18 Pro is equipped with the most powerful CPU on a smartphone processor with a 15% increase in CPU but 20% more efficient in power consumption than last year's A17 Pro.
The GPU is still six cores with the ability to run console-level games directly on the device. Ray-tracing processing power increased by up to 20%. Finally, the included 16-core NPU has artificial intelligence processing capabilities that are twice as efficient as last year's NPU. With high power comes additional support such as ProMotion display, AOD, USB 3 support and even ProRes video recording
The Apple 18 is a chip only used by the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus. It also uses 3nm technology and is also equipped with 6 CPU cores – 2 performance cores and 4 power efficient cores. According to Apple, the A18 is 30% faster on the CPU but 30% more efficient in power consumption than the A16 Bionic.
The GPU is only five cores with an increase of up to 40% but is 35% more efficient in power consumption than the 16 Bionic. Finally, the included NPU is the same as the A18 Pro. The difference between the two chips is that the A18 cannot do ProRes recording and does not support ProMotion display.