Apple held its annual WWDC event on June 10th this year. Alongside the many software changes they announced, a major one was Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence is Apple’s answer to Samsung’s Galaxy AI and Google’s AI features. In the event, the company displayed various features of Apple Intelligence.
Initially, Apple Intelligence was expected to start rolling out to all supported iPhones in late 2024. Additionally, the iPhone 16 was expected to have Apple Intelligence at launch. However, there has been recent news that suggests the iPhone 16 might not get Apple Intelligence immediately at launch.
iPhone 16 launching without Apple Intelligence
A newly made Power On Bloomberg from Mark Gurman says Apple Intelligence will launch after an update a few weeks after the iOS 18 stable launch. Gurman says the iPhone 16 will launch with iOS 18.0, which does not support Apple Intelligence. Even the Developer Beta of iOS 18 doesn’t support Apple Intelligence.
Apple releases their next generation of iPhone lineup very soon after the stable release of the generational iOS update (which is iOS 18.0 in this case). However, Gurman says Apple Intelligence support will be added with the iOS 18.1 update.
If we go according to leaks and Apple’s traditional launch cycle, the iOS 18.0 stable will be released in mid-September. Following this, the company will launch the iPhone 16 series a few days later, running iOS 18.0. However, the required iOS 18.1 update for Apple Intelligence will come out in October. This confirms that the iPhone 16 will not be launched with Apple Intelligence out of the box.
Lastly, Gurman added that Apple Intelligence would be released to the developers as soon as the iOS 18.1 beta was released. For the older devices, Apple plans to release Apple Intelligence in a staged rollout. This rollout will start in late 2024 and continue till the first half of 2025.
Apple Intelligence: Supported Devices
For the older iPhones, only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will get the support for Apple Intelligence. This is due to the requirement of having a minimum of 8GB RAM, which only these two iPhones fulfill. The upcoming iPhone 16 and 16 Plus will supposedly get an upgrade to 8GB RAM since Apple wants these phones to launch with support for Apple Intelligence out of the box.
We cannot rule out that some features, mostly cloud-based and not heavily reliant on RAM, might eventually make it to other iPhone models. However, Apple may artificially restrict its use to boost the appeal of newer models.
This is unusual for Apple since they’re usually good with deadlines. Only a few AI tools will launch soon, like the Image Playground, Genmoji, and Chat GPT integration with Siri. Unfortunately, all the advanced AI features, like the completely upgraded Siri, will launch over the course of the following year.
We can assume there are plenty of bugs or AI Hallucination issues for Apple to address. They possibly do not want to ship out something half-baked to customers. In yet another unusual move, iOS 18.1 Betas, which features a Beta version of Apple Intelligence, will launch shortly. However, the regular iOS 18 Betas might continue alongside iOS 18.1 Betas.
