iPhone 17 may finally match Samsung flagships in RAM capacity

Apple has never really made a big deal of the iPhone's RAM capacity. It typically doesn't even get mentioned during the company's launch events, not is it mentioned prominently on the product listings of the iPhone on its website.

The company has also never really strived to strike RAM parity with Android flagships, particularly with those from Samsung. That may finally be changing, though, as the iPhone 17 is expected to match the Galaxy S25 Ultra's RAM capacity.

Ming-chi Kuo, an Apple analyst with a decent track record, predicts that Apple is making efforts to ship every single model of the iPhone 17 series with 12GB of RAM. Previous iPhone flagships have had 8GB of RAM.

The company wants to ship all iPhone 17 models with 12GB of RAM, including the slim iPhone 17 Air that would rival Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge, but it may have to contend with supply chain issues. It may be forced to use 8GB RAM for the base iPhone 17 model to work around the supply chain limitations.

It's further claimed that Apple is fully committed to ensuring all iPhone 18 models have 12GB of RAM next year. Apple's argument for being conservative with RAM capacity has always been that the synergy between its hardware and software provides greater efficiency, eliminating the need to go all out on RAM.

As it begins to further expand the capabilities of Apple Intelligence, it may have become inevitable for the company to bump up the RAM on its iPhones, to ensure the consistency of the user experience that customers have come to expect from its devices will also ensuring enough memory availability for its AI experiences.

An iPhone 17 with 12GB of RAM would be on par with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but only just. All Galaxy S25 Ultra models come with 12GB RAM, with some markets even getting 16GB, a number Apple may not hit for a couple of years.