One hardware consistency with the iPhone 16 series is that all of them feature a chipset that takes advantage of TSMC's second-generation 3nm process. In short, Apple is giving the less expensive models the flagship treatment in this regard, but to introduce some contrast between the 'Pro' and 'non-Pro' variants, the company resorted to chip binning, which is a common practice in this industry. The technology giant has followed this approach before, and possibly repeated it this year, as you will soon read about.
If you scroll through the technical specifications of the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max and attempt to learn what CPU and GPU core count set apart the A18 and A18 Pro, you will be surprised to see that there is one difference separating the two SoCs. Both feature a total of six CPU cores, with two of them focused on performance and the remaining four designed for power efficiency. Based on a new benchmark leak, the performance core's clock speed is no higher than 4.04GHz, hinting that Apple has likely stuck with the same architecture.
Another similarity is that the A18 and A18 Pro feature a 16-core Neural Engine designed for machine learning and running generative AI features under the Apple Intelligence banner. What sets apart the two SoCs is the GPU side of things, with the chip powering the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max sporting a 6-core GPU, while a 5-core part is found inside the less premium models. For those surprised to hear about this, remember that this is not the first time that Apple has attempted this, as even the iPhone 13 series featured the same A15 Bionic between all four models.
The difference was in the number of GPU cores, with the Pro variants featuring a 5-core version, while the non-Pro treated to a 4-core one. The performance result could reach up to a 55 percent difference when compared with the iPhone 12 Pro, whereas the 4-core GPU could only obtain a 15 percent delta. While we have to wait and see how big of a performance gap we get this year, it is likely that the A18 Pro was mass produced thanks to chip binning. As manufacturing wafers on cutting-edge technologies becomes a more complex endeavor, it is often difficult to produce a pristine chip.
What Apple probably did is re-purposed the lower-binned A18 Pro and re-branded it to the A18, saving on production costs and still incorporating a highly capable chipset in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. Several technology firms follow this route as a means to re-use existing chips, and nothing that Apple has done is out of the ordinary.