iPhone 18e Rumored to Feature Increased RAM

The iPhone 18e is shaping up to get more RAM, but exactly how much depends on which leak you trust. A recent report claims Apple’s next budget iPhone will jump to 10GB, up from 8GB on the iPhone 17e but that number sits at odds with an earlier, more widely corroborated leak from a well-followed supply chain analyst putting the figure at 9GB instead.

That conflict is worth sitting with before treating either number as settled. The 9GB figure has been repeated across multiple outlets for over a month now, and it comes with an unusually specific technical explanation: rather than using four 2GB memory dies like the current iPhone 17 generation, the base iPhone 18 and 18e are expected to use six 1.5GB dies instead, landing on an odd 9GB total that Apple has never used in an iPhone before. That kind of granular detail tends to hold up better than a round number like 10GB, which reads more like a rough estimate than a verified spec.

Either way, the direction is the same: Apple’s cheapest iPhone is getting more memory to keep up with Apple Intelligence, and the reason is bigger than the phone itself. Apple has reportedly said its most advanced on-device AI features, including expressive Siri voices and system-wide dictation improvements, require a full 12GB to run a threshold the iPhone 18e won’t hit under either leaked configuration. The Pro models and the rumored foldable iPhone are expected to keep that full 12GB using eight 1.5GB dies on the more capable A20 Pro chip, meaning the base and Pro tiers would run genuinely different versions of Apple Intelligence rather than just a faster or slower version of the same one.

Nothing here is confirmed by Apple, and the iPhone 18e itself is still roughly nine months from an expected spring 2027 launch alongside the standard iPhone 18. Given the gap between competing leaks, the safer bet for now is that RAM is going up, not staying flat but anyone banking on double-digit AI performance out of the budget model should treat that expectation as unresolved until Apple’s spec sheet settles the question everyone else hasn’t.