Apple’s new, shiny iPhone 17 boasts the equally new Apple-designed A19 chipset – but what’s the difference between it and the A18 chip that powered last year’s iPhone 16?
While there are more obvious changes between the chipsets, namely when it comes to elements like performance and efficiency, there are more nuanced upgrades from this year’s chipset that extend beyond pure power.
Here are all the key differences between the Apple A19 and last year’s Apple A18 chipset.
The Apple A19 has a more powerful CPU and GPU
The headline difference between this year’s Apple A19 and the A18 found in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus is, rather unsurprisingly, better performance. This is practically a given in the world of chipsets – otherwise, there would be no real point in releasing an update.
That said, this year’s A19 features the same combination of six CPU clusters and five GPU clusters as the A18, albeit with an additional 20% power. That means that both regular apps like Instagram and intense, GPU-heavy console-level games like Subnautica should run flawlessly on Apple’s new hardware.
It’s also set to be more power-efficient than the outgoing chipset, which should have a knock-on effect on battery life. It’s still built on a 3nm process like its predecessor, but it’s now into its third generation and, as such, more refined.
The Apple A19 has better support for on-device AI
Since the release of Apple Intelligence last year, it’s clear that Apple is going all-in on AI where its flagship smartphone range is concerned – so it should come as no surprise that this year’s A19 chipset is better equipped to handle the host of on-device AI functions that iOS 26 offers.
More specifically, Apple has redesigned the GPU cores within the A19 chipset. Like its A19 Pro sibling, each of the five GPU cores within the cluster features a dedicated Neural Accelerator, specifically to handle the job of powering generative AI models on the phone.
When combined with the upgraded 16-core neural engine, it essentially means that you can use features like real-time translation and text rewriting tools in iOS 26 on the new iPhone without an internet connection while still being lightning-fast.
The Apple A19 has an upgraded display engine
One of, if not the biggest upgrade, to come to the iPhone 17 is the 120Hz ProMotion display tech. 120Hz refresh rates are commonplace on Android smartphones – even budget phones that cost less than £200/$200 come with either a 90- or 120Hz screen, and that made previous iPhones, which were all capped at 60Hz, feel sluggish in comparison.
Well, Apple finally gave the people what they wanted and this year’s iPhone boasts the same ProMotion tech as its Pro siblings, meaning it can reach as high as 120Hz when playing games and scrolling through apps, as well as dropping down to 1Hz on static pages. The latter also enables the new always-on display tech, present in the iPhone 17.
But with new display tech to power, the old A18 architecture just wouldn’t do. That’s why the A19 features an updated display engine, similar to that in existing Pro-level chipsets, that lets it handle the high refresh rate of the new screen.
