Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 AP supports faster memory chip that Apple's A18 Pro AP won't

LPDDR6 RAM is expected to be ready later this year and according to Ajunews (via Wccftech), the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 application processor (AP), which will probably be announced this coming October, could be the first SoC to support the latest version of RAM. That's because it appears that the Apple A18 Pro chipset will not have the same support. As a result, the Galaxy S25 Ultra could be equipped with LPDDR6 RAM while the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will still employ LPDDR5 RAM.

You might have noticed that Android phones are packed with more RAM than iPhone handsets have. This is because iOS and Android use two different architectures. Apple's iOS is optimized to work with Apple's A-series application processors and as a result, iOS uses optimized memory management allowing iOS to get away with using less RAM than Android. For example, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is equipped with 12GB of RAM while the iPhone 15 Pro Max sports 8GB of RAM.

Without LPDDR6 RAM, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max might not be able to efficiently run on-device Large Language Models (LLMs) which could negatively impact any plans Apple has to use AI to improve Siri. On the other hand, Apple is reportedly working on a way to store LLMs on NAND flash memory which could allow those iPhone models carrying a limited amount of RAM to still run AI on-device.

The fastest RAM speed available now is the 9.6Gbps available with LPDDR5T RAM which is made by Korean firm SK hynix. LPDDR6 RAM will be faster although the exact speed is unknown which actually is no surprise since it won't be found on new smartphones until 2025.