September is ways off yet, but that hasn't stopped us from hearing about possible details for the iPhone 14. Now there's a new rumor claiming that the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max could have 8GB of RAM, the most memory ever in an iPhone.
This rumor comes from an account on the Korean blog Naver by the user yeux1122. Supposedly citing supply chain resources, the user stakes the 8GB claim. Allegedly, the specification has already been set and the production process has picked up steam. The account previously predicted some changes to the iPad Mini 6, most of which came true. So take this claim with a hefty grain of salt.
But that lines up with something we heard earlier from analyst Jeff Pu (via MacRumors). This is actually where we first heard about the potential for 8GB in the iPhone 14 Pro models. We're not entirely sure on Pu's reliability, but 8GB of RAM in the new Pro iPhones is pretty plausible.
So what would 8GB of RAM actually mean? For you, that would basically more apps could sit in memory without the system having to shut them down. On the best Android phones, many of which have 8GB or more, that means the OS can be less aggressive about closing older apps.
On iOS, things work similarly, but 8GB would just mean that opening apps, some of which you might have touched for a little while, could theoretically happen faster than they do now on the current iPhones. For reference, the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max have 6GB and they're the most powerful phones you can possibly buy right now. So just imagine what 8GB could mean, especially when combined the upcoming A16 Bionic system-on-chip.
Even the Android king right now, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, struggles to match the iPhone 13 Pro in our Galaxy S22 Ultra benchmarks. The iPhone 14 Pro will probably continue to widen the gap between Apple and the best Android has to offer.
Android and iOS handle memory very differently, and many Android phone makers taking the approach of throwing more RAM at the problem of memory management (insert Moon Knight meme here), whereas Apple is very particular about how iOS controls everything. From ensuring there's enough memory for the system to regulating the battery usage, Apple takes a very heavy-handed approach. That's basically true for all of its operating systems.
An iPhone 14 Pro with 8GB of RAM could spell bad news for any Android phone this year when it comes to raw performance — and we don't even know much about the A16 Bionic yet. Unless Google's second-generation Tensor chip really blows the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 out of the water, it looks like Apple will once again win the phone performance crown for 2022.
