Are you considering buying an iPhone? Don’t do it

It might seem like a good time to buy a new iPhone. Apple has enjoyed an increased trade-in value for the next two weeks, and many spring carrier deals are still underway. Additionally, rumors of the iPhone 16 arriving this fall make it seem like a relatively minor upgrade, while the iPhone 17 in late 2025 feels more like a major overhaul ( maybe even a seismic shift, like the iPhone

But if you want our advice, we think you should wait anyway. WWDC is less than 2 weeks away and is almost certain to provide critical information that will inform your iPhone purchasing decision.

iOS 18 may change more than usual

Every year when Apple unveils its new iOS at WWDC, we learn about many exciting new features coming to our iPhones in the fall. But when you read the fine print, you’ll see that some of the cool new features don’t work with older iPhones. With iOS 16, for example, you needed a phone with an A12 Bionic processor or newer to use features like removing subjects from photos, selecting text in images, and most functions. Siri features processed locally.

Foundry

Foundry

Foundry

We expect many major changes in iOS 18, including interface improvements and several impressive new features, but the focus will be on AI. Typically, any iPhone made in the last few years will benefit from all the new iOS features, with only older phones missing out. But the push toward more AI could change all that, as AI features can have pretty high hardware requirements. It’s likely that Apple will limit some features to the very new models and it’s possible that the best features will only work on the iPhone 16.

And that’s a great reason to wait to buy an iPhone until we know which cool new AI features coming to iOS 18 will work on which iPhones. You don’t want to buy an iPhone 14 or SE only to learn that some really cool features require an A16 processor.

AI hardware requirements are high

Apple has been offering AI hardware in its iPhones for years. The Neural Engine first appeared in the A11 Bionic chip, in 2017 (iPhone 8 and iPhone X), although it could “only” perform 600 billion operations per second and didn’t do much. But it has become much more powerful and necessary over the years.

It took a big step forward to reach 5 trillion operations per second (TOPS) in the A12. The next big step was moving to 11 TOPS in the A14, then to over 15 TOPS in the A15, and now to 35 TOPS in the A17 Pro. But the A17 Pro is only found in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. The iPhone 15 is equipped with the A16, whose Neural Engine is half as fast, according to Apple.

Apple

Apple

Apple

Then there’s the issue of RAM. Generative AI models like large language models (LLM) and diffusion models are notoriously huge and use a lot of RAM. Most iPhones don’t have a lot of RAM to begin with, and you need to have enough for apps, even when an AI model is used.

Every iPhone supporting iOS 18 up to and including iPhone 13 only has 4GB of RAM. The iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 14 (standard and Pro), and iPhone 15 have 6 GB of RAM. Only the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max have 8 GB of RAM. So it’s quite possible that some iOS 18 features will only work on iPhones with a faster Neural Engine or 6GB of RAM, and some require the iPhone 15 Pro just because it has 8GB RAM and a much faster engine. Neural engine.

If you’re looking to get a new iPhone that will last a few years, this is an important consideration. You may not want to spend hundreds of dollars more on the latest Pro model, but buy a cheaper model today and there’s a good chance you’ll be left out of exciting new AI features coming this autumn.

So it’s best to wait at least until WWDC on June 10, when Apple will unveil iOS 18 and all its new features. We can then look at the fine print that tells us which iPhones support which features, and you can make an informed choice about how much you should spend to get the features you want.