All currently supported iPhones will get iOS 18, but most will miss on AI

Peter, 11 June 2024

Apple is bringing major improvements to its smartphone operating system with iOS 18 – it opens the next chapter in AI, enables RCS, brings other communications features (text effects, emoji reactions, etc.), a password manager and improved customization features. And there is some good news: all iPhones that are currently running iOS 17 can be updated to iOS 18.

This means the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max from 2018 remain the oldest models that are still supported (they will turn 6-years old this September). The original iPhone SE was dropped with iOS 16 (to be fair, it’s from 2016), but the 2nd generation (from 2020) and the 3rd one (2022) are still on the update list.

Here is the full list:

Note that only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are getting Apple Intelligence, which will remain in beta even after the full launch of iOS 18. This means no iPhone 15 and 15 Plus and certainly no older models. The two 15 Pro models are the only ones using the Apple A17 Pro chipset and older A-series chips are not supported.

The Neural Engine inside the A17 Pro can deliver up to 35 TOPS, while the A16 Bionic only offers 17 TOPS, less than half the compute power. Keep in mind that while some AI tasks will be performed by a server (Apple’s Private Cloud Compute), others will be handled on the device itself and clearly there is a minimum performance requirement.

Source