Why The iPhone 18 Pro Is The AI Smartphone Apple Promised Years Ago

Apple’s launch of Apple Intelligence at the Worldwide Developer Conference 2024 was not a success. While recognisable tools were released, they were limited in use cases and fell short of the performance and flexibility of the various Android solutions offered by Google and its partners.

This is Day 30 of 30 Days of iPhone, a look at the moments that shaped the smartphone era.

The Rushed Arrival Of AI On The iPhone

Apple’s strategy around generative AI was (and is) built around maintaining privacy and processing user data locally. WWDC 2024 framed Apple Intelligence as a layer that sat across iOS 18, allowing data to be processed either on Apple’s servers, where its Private Cloud Compute solution could anonymize the data, or running on the latest Apple Silicon chipsets with on-device models. Audio transcription, creating summaries and automated photo editing could all be accomplished on a consumer’s device.

Yet the rollout was fragmented and felt more like a defensive update forced on Apple than something it had chosen as the iPhone’s future. The capabilities consumers expected in mobile AI weren’t present when the first builds were released to the public. Context-aware Siri, on-screen awareness and the App Intents framework all faced engineering delays that kept pushing back their practical availability.

Apple’s approach relied on either the highest-tier A17 Pro or the A18 Apple Silicon chipsets. That locked the iPhone 16 and earlier models out of the full capabilities of Apple Intelligence. Meanwhile, Android was pushing forward with its vision of mobile Artificial Intelligence, with Google Gemini at the core.

Apple’s iPhone Is Chasing Google And Android

Only now, with the launch of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, is Apple close to the standard set by Android’s AI solutions. The A20 Pro silicon, alongside unified memory buses, delivers the required performance while preserving battery endurance and controlling the thermal envelope to enable agentic AI.