Apple has officially unveiled the iPhone 17 series, packed with cutting-edge technology and features. The new iPhone 17 features the Apple A19 processor, while the iPhone 17 Pro models and iPhone Air come with the more powerful Apple A19 Pro chip. Both processors power the brand’s latest flagship phones and stand out with their impressive performance and AI capabilities. Here’s a summary of these two chips and their key differences.
Apple A19 and A19 Pro: What’s the Difference?
Both chips are built on TSMC’s 3nm (N3P) architecture. This provides both efficiency and performance improvements over previous generations. The Apple A19 and A19 Pro feature the same 6-core CPU configuration, consisting of two performance cores and four efficiency cores. The powerful performance cores operate at a clock speed of 4.26GHz, making them virtually identical in terms of CPU architecture and power efficiency.
However, one of the biggest differences lies in the GPU. The standard Apple A19 chip features a 5-core GPU, while the A19 Pro features a 6-core GPU. Interestingly, the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Air, like the standard A19, has a 5-core GPU. This allows the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max to offer a better experience for gaming and graphics-intensive applications. Both chips also support hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
Thanks to the new vapor chamber cooling system, the Apple A19 Pro can run its processors at high performance for longer periods. This thermal management solution plays a critical role in maintaining the chip’s peak performance, especially during intense gaming sessions or high-resolution video editing.
Memory differences are noticeable. The Apple A19 comes with 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM, while the A19 Pro has a larger 12GB of LPDDR5X memory. Furthermore, the A19 Pro has 6MB of L2 cache, compared to 4MB in the standard A19.
Some features are exclusive to the Pro models. ProRes RAW is one of these. This feature is supported in hardware on the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
One of the most significant upgrades in the new A19 and A19 Pro chips is their AI capabilities. Thanks to the updated 16-core Neural Engine, the new iPhones now support on-device AI processing. This feature processes features like real-time photo enhancements, live translations, and predictive text in iOS 26 directly on the device, providing increased speed and privacy.
On the wireless side, both chips feature a new Apple-made N1 wireless networking chip specifically designed for the A19 series chips. This chip supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 technologies. For 5G connectivity, the iPhone 17 Pro models use a Qualcomm modem, while the iPhone Air features Apple’s in-house developed C1X 5G modem. While this chip offers better power efficiency, it is limited to sub-6GHz bands.
So, which one do you prefer? You can share it in the comments.
