CUPERTINO, June 14 -- When Apple unveiled the iPhone 16 Pro last September, the pitch was straightforward: this was the phone for people who wanted the best of Apple Intelligence. The chip was new. The memory was sufficient. The AI features were front and center. A year later, the iPhone 16 Pro cannot run Apple's most advanced on-device AI model. A line Apple did not draw when it sold that phone has now been drawn, and the 16 Pro sits on the wrong side of it.

Apple confirmed in a press release accompanying the iOS 27 public beta that its most powerful on-device AI model - the one powering certain Siri AI capabilities including expressive voices and more advanced dictation - requires at least 12 gigabytes of unified memory. Three iPhones ...