iPhone Fold/Ultra, 18 Pro, and Pro Max will launch as one series. And the iPhone 18 and 18e will arrive later as the second collection in 2027. Why the delay for the vanilla iPhone 18 this time? A leak from Fixed Focus Digital answered the question. It could upset some Apple fans. Here’s what we found.
Specs and manufacturing costs could be lowered for the basic iPhone 18. The device will still be a flagship, but it won’t fill the usual ranks. Apparently, this newcomer has more in common with the iPhone 18e than it does with the iPhone 18 Pro. And that’s a concerning factor.
iPhone 17e has the same SoC as the basic iPhone 17, the Apple A19 platform. But the former has one GPU core missing, so it performs slightly worse. Instead of having five cores like the vanilla model, iPhone 17e actually ships with a four-core GPU. Next year, iPhone 18 and 18e could both have a missing GPU core. For more updates on the Apple iPhone price list, visit our website.
The leaker said Apple is cutting back on manufacturing costs for the vanilla iPhone 18. There have been reports of the basic iPhone sticking with a 3nm silicon. And the Pro models could be the only ones using a 2nm Apple A20 SoC. This creates even more disparity between the ranks.
What’s even more upsetting is the suspected base storage drop. The starter iPhone 18 won’t have a 256 GB module anymore. They’ll probably drop it to 128 GB again as they try to deal with NAND and DRAM supply issues and rising costs. We hear RAM will also take a hit.
Apple had initially thought to put 12GB RAM on the iPhone 18, but the plans have apparently changed. They are now thinking of reusing the same 8GB RAM as last year, which is their minimum for the Apple Intelligence features to work properly.
iPhones have come far enough ahead that the user experience is barely distinguishable across the vanilla and Pro models. So these downgrades won’t bother the average user. But the difference will start showing a few years down the road as the updates pile on. Keep watching the news for more updates.
