Tipster says iPhone 15 Pro line to add additional GPU core but keep 6GB of RAM

A message on X first spotted by 9to5Mac and posted by tipster "Unknown21" (@URedditor) gives us some more detail about the specs of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max and some information about the A17 Bionic chipset that will be powering those two models. Getting rid of the low-hanging fruit (probably an apple), let's start off by stating that the A17 Bionic will be produced by TSMC using its N3B process node which will make the two models the only phones to be powered by a 3nm chip this year.

Once again the chipset will feature a six-core CPU. But there is a change to the GPU as we will see the number of cores rise from the five employed by the A16 Bionic's GPU to six on the A17 Bionic's GPU. Additionally, the fastest clock speed on the A17 Bionic will be 3.70GHz, up from the maximum clock speed of 3.46GHz on the A16 Bionic. Keep in mind that the 4nm A16 Bionic SoC, currently found in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, will be powering the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus this year.

Despite rumors that the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will both feature 8GB of RAM, "Unknown21" says that the A17 Bionic, like the A16 Bionic, will be paired with 6GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The tipster concedes that 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM for the 2023 Pro models is "unlikely, but maybe not impossible." Due to the different ways that iOS and Android run, you cannot compare RAM on the two platforms apple to apple.

The smaller feature size inherent with the new 3nm node means that more transistors should fit inside the A17 Bionic. Considering that 16 billion are used with each A16 Bionic chipset, we could see 18 billion to 20 billion transistors used by the A17 Bionic. The larger the number of transistors on board, the more powerful and energy efficient a chip is.

Still, Apple will have to decide whether to focus on improving the battery life and making the new iPhone 15 Pro models more efficient and give up some of the gains in performance that the chip will bring, or focus on bringing more performance to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max at the expense of some energy efficiency.

The iPhone 15 line could be unveiled on September 12th or 13th with pre-orders starting three days later. The release date is rumored to be September 22nd.