Analyst who claimed iPhone 17 would use A18 backtracks

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in Future Apple Hardware

The iPhone 17 is again rumored to ship with an A19 chip as an analyst not known for accuracy catches up with other leakers on the processing and memory rumors.

Pink smartphone with dual cameras and flash, reflected on a glossy black surface, placed against a gradient background.
Render of a possible iPhone 17 design - Image Credit: AppleInsider



Apple currently uses a two-tier approach when it comes to iPhone chips, with the Pro models getting the Pro version of the system-on-chip for that year. However, after claiming Apple will shake things up with its chip strategy for 2025, an analyst has returned to the fold.

In May, GF Securities analyst Jeff Pu recanted an earlier report and went against practically every other leaker on the core iPhone 17. Pu believed that the base model will use the A18 chip, the same one used in the iPhone 16 lineup.

Less than two months later, Pu has changed his tune. Instead, he cites supply chain reporting that is probably not his own to reverse the claim, and now believes that the A19 will be used by the iPhone 17.

Pu now joins practically the rest of the rumor mill in believing that the A19 generation of chips will be used by the iPhone 17 family of smartphones. Notably, Fixed Focus Digital said on July 9 that the iPhone 17 Air will use a chip-binned A19 Pro instead of the A19.

Memory difference



Pu's comments didn't just discuss the change in chip being used by the iPhone 17, he also talked about the memory it will use. According to Pu, the iPhone 17 will be the only model using 8GB of LPDDR5 memory.

The iPhone 17 Air will reportedly use 12GB of LPDDR5, while the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are set to use 12GB of LPDDR5X.

This too is a modification of his previous claim, which had the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Air using 8GB of memory and 12GB for the Pro models. Before that, he had put the iPhone 17 Air at the 12GB level.

It's also a "me too" report, after other leakers have provided information. Pu's new memory comment also matches that of Fixed Focus Digital, who said the iPhone 17 will be the only model on 8GB. They added that the others will use 12GB.

Pu doesn't have the greatest track record in the Apple rumor space. Tuesday's back-track is a further indication of that.

Rumor Score: Likely

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    snookiesnookie Posts: 170member
    But what about the commenters who freaked out as if rumor was fact?
    williamlondontht
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 6
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,485member
    These rumors have gotten far more ludicrous over the past ten years with a big drop in believability after the pandemic. And not just Apple rumors, pretty much any sort of rumor. We've seen countless silly rumors about upcoming products, the whole Apple Car thing, the just-won't-die Apple Television Set thing.

    There are rumors about Jonny Ives's device, iPhone cases, folding phones, the "HomeHub panel", HomeHubs with robotic arms. A lot of this has veered into satire, like an SNL parody of rumors.

    And the people who agree with many of the most ridiculous rumors go out of their way to concoct absurd scenarios to back up the rumor.

    A lot of this can be blamed on today's social media analytics methodology and monetization policies. It's worth spewing farcical nonsense because you make money, even if what you are spouting is twaddle. These rumors were far more reliable 15-20 years ago before smartphones became ubiquitous. Smartphones democratized the Internet but online content quality didn't get any better. Smartphones gave everyone a voice and with today's monetization schemes, shouting out preposterous nonsense is more profitable than carefully written, thoughtfully considered analyses.

    It's a shame that legitimate media sites have to regurgitate this nonsense, even go into in-depth analyses about some of these "reports."

    And remember that these finance industry professionals have been long referred to as ANALysts for a reason. It's not just the knuckle dragging vloggers and tweeters who are at fault here.

    Rumor mongers don't have any qualms or embarrassment about circulating garbage. Even if what they are saying is worthless, they are still making money and if someone points out their mistakes, the online world quickly moves on to the next Rumor Of The Day. These online rumors (and social media in general) are really like digital junk food in 2025.
    edited July 15
    Mike Wuerthelewilliamlondontht
     2Likes 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 6
    Mike Wuerthelemike wuerthele Posts: 7,178administrator
    mpantone said:
    These rumors have gotten far more ludicrous over the past ten years with a big drop in believability after the pandemic. And not just Apple rumors, pretty much any sort of rumor. We've seen countless silly rumors about upcoming products, the whole Apple Car thing, the just-won't-die Apple Television Set thing.

    There are rumors about Jonny Ives's device, iPhone cases, folding phones, the "HomeHub panel", HomeHubs with robotic arms. A lot of this has veered into satire, like an SNL parody of rumors.

    And the people who agree with many of the most ridiculous rumors go out of their way to concoct absurd scenarios to back up the rumor.

    A lot of this can be blamed on today's social media analytics methodology and monetization policies. It's worth spewing farcical nonsense because you make money, even if what you are spouting is twaddle. These rumors were far more reliable 15-20 years ago before smartphones became ubiquitous. Smartphones democratized the Internet but online content quality didn't get any better. Smartphones gave everyone a voice and with today's monetization schemes, shouting out preposterous nonsense is more profitable than carefully written, thoughtfully considered analyses.

    It's a shame that legitimate media sites have to regurgitate this nonsense, even go into in-depth analyses about some of these "reports."

    And remember that these finance industry professionals have been long referred to as ANALysts for a reason. It's not just the knuckle dragging vloggers and tweeters who are at fault here.

    Rumor mongers don't have any qualms or embarrassment about circulating garbage. Even if what they are saying is worthless, they are still making money and if someone points out their mistakes, the online world quickly moves on to the next Rumor Of The Day. These online rumors (and social media in general) are really like digital junk food in 2025.
    Good post. We covered all of these points in two pieces, very recently!

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 6
    williamlondonwilliamlondon Posts: 1,545member
    snookie said:
    But what about the commenters who freaked out as if rumor was fact?
    Sadly, absent a massive maturation or a simple “growing up” of citizens on a grand scale, that’s very unlikely ever to happen.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 6
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,485member
    mpantone said:
    These rumors have gotten far more ludicrous over the past ten years with a big drop in believability after the pandemic. And not just Apple rumors, pretty much any sort of rumor. We've seen countless silly rumors about upcoming products, the whole Apple Car thing, the just-won't-die Apple Television Set thing.

    There are rumors about Jonny Ives's device, iPhone cases, folding phones, the "HomeHub panel", HomeHubs with robotic arms. A lot of this has veered into satire, like an SNL parody of rumors.

    And the people who agree with many of the most ridiculous rumors go out of their way to concoct absurd scenarios to back up the rumor.

    A lot of this can be blamed on today's social media analytics methodology and monetization policies. It's worth spewing farcical nonsense because you make money, even if what you are spouting is twaddle. These rumors were far more reliable 15-20 years ago before smartphones became ubiquitous. Smartphones democratized the Internet but online content quality didn't get any better. Smartphones gave everyone a voice and with today's monetization schemes, shouting out preposterous nonsense is more profitable than carefully written, thoughtfully considered analyses.

    It's a shame that legitimate media sites have to regurgitate this nonsense, even go into in-depth analyses about some of these "reports."

    And remember that these finance industry professionals have been long referred to as ANALysts for a reason. It's not just the knuckle dragging vloggers and tweeters who are at fault here.

    Rumor mongers don't have any qualms or embarrassment about circulating garbage. Even if what they are saying is worthless, they are still making money and if someone points out their mistakes, the online world quickly moves on to the next Rumor Of The Day. These online rumors (and social media in general) are really like digital junk food in 2025.
    Good post. We covered all of these points in two pieces, very recently!

    More useful than a couple of articles would be a true quantitative scoring system -- like the investment world's StarMine -- for analysts and rumor spreaders. I've mentioned this repeatedly over the nearly 20 years I've been a registered AppleInsider community member.

    Hell, there are advanced analytics for fantasy sports and a lot of this is used to build out stats for videogame characters (sports titles).

    For 15+ years, Apple news sites happily regurgitated made-up nonsense from Digitimes while many savvier readers started assuming that anything predicted by Digitimes would actually end up being wrong. It became a complete joke about 10 years ago. Gene Munster was a complete joke yet this site and many others referred to him as "legendary". Same with notorious Apple-bear Katy Huberty of MorganStanley who naysayed pretty much anything about Apple for 15+ years. God only knows how many MorganStanley investors missed out on Apple's biggest years of shareholder returns.

    This leads us to highlight one actual realworld usage: the inverse Cramer strategy which is to do the opposite of what CNBC's stock picker Jim Cramer suggests:

    https://topdollarinvestor.com/does-the-inverse-jim-cramer-strategy-actually-work/

    This site finally introduced an extremely primitive rumor score which seems to be at the whim of whoever writes the article in question; no methodology or explanation is given. I often end up questioning the rumor score just as much as the rumor itself.

    Ultimately, there really needs to be a StarMine-like rating. And yes this rating can and should change. The score should be weighted toward more recent activity and rumor accuracy. It should also be time sensitive. Making a product prediction a day before launch and posting a rumor a year before are two separate things. An accurate long-term prediction would be weighted more heavily than something last minute.

    There are rumor spreaders who end up losing their inside source, moles, tipsters, etc. and whose current rumors are really just guesstimates rather than anything based on insider/supply chain information. In the same way, you wouldn't give Clayton Kershaw or Justin Verlander the same MLB fantasy score today as they had back in 2015.
    edited July 15
    muthuk_vanalingam
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 6 of 6
    Mike Wuerthelemike wuerthele Posts: 7,178administrator
    mpantone said:
    mpantone said:
    These rumors have gotten far more ludicrous over the past ten years with a big drop in believability after the pandemic. And not just Apple rumors, pretty much any sort of rumor. We've seen countless silly rumors about upcoming products, the whole Apple Car thing, the just-won't-die Apple Television Set thing.

    There are rumors about Jonny Ives's device, iPhone cases, folding phones, the "HomeHub panel", HomeHubs with robotic arms. A lot of this has veered into satire, like an SNL parody of rumors.

    And the people who agree with many of the most ridiculous rumors go out of their way to concoct absurd scenarios to back up the rumor.

    A lot of this can be blamed on today's social media analytics methodology and monetization policies. It's worth spewing farcical nonsense because you make money, even if what you are spouting is twaddle. These rumors were far more reliable 15-20 years ago before smartphones became ubiquitous. Smartphones democratized the Internet but online content quality didn't get any better. Smartphones gave everyone a voice and with today's monetization schemes, shouting out preposterous nonsense is more profitable than carefully written, thoughtfully considered analyses.

    It's a shame that legitimate media sites have to regurgitate this nonsense, even go into in-depth analyses about some of these "reports."

    And remember that these finance industry professionals have been long referred to as ANALysts for a reason. It's not just the knuckle dragging vloggers and tweeters who are at fault here.

    Rumor mongers don't have any qualms or embarrassment about circulating garbage. Even if what they are saying is worthless, they are still making money and if someone points out their mistakes, the online world quickly moves on to the next Rumor Of The Day. These online rumors (and social media in general) are really like digital junk food in 2025.
    Good post. We covered all of these points in two pieces, very recently!

    More useful than a couple of articles would be a true quantitative scoring system -- like the investment world's StarMine -- for analysts and rumor spreaders. I've mentioned this repeatedly over the nearly 20 years I've been a registered AppleInsider community member.

    Hell, there are advanced analytics for fantasy sports and a lot of this is used to build out stats for videogame characters (sports titles).

    For 15+ years, Apple news sites happily regurgitated made-up nonsense from Digitimes while many savvier readers started assuming that anything predicted by Digitimes would actually end up being wrong. It became a complete joke about 10 years ago. Gene Munster was a complete joke yet this site and many others referred to him as "legendary". Same with notorious Apple-bear Katy Huberty of MorganStanley who naysayed pretty much anything about Apple for 15+ years. God only knows how many MorganStanley investors missed out on Apple's biggest years of shareholder returns.

    This leads us to highlight one actual realworld usage: the inverse Cramer strategy which is to do the opposite of what CNBC's stock picker Jim Cramer suggests:

    https://topdollarinvestor.com/does-the-inverse-jim-cramer-strategy-actually-work/

    This site finally introduced an extremely primitive rumor score which seems to be at the whim of whoever writes the article in question; no methodology or explanation is given. I often end up questioning the rumor score just as much as the rumor itself.

    Ultimately, there really needs to be a StarMine-like rating. And yes this rating can and should change. The score should be weighted toward more recent activity and rumor accuracy. It should also be time sensitive. Making a product prediction a day before launch and posting a rumor a year before are two separate things. An accurate long-term prediction would be weighted more heavily than something last minute.

    There are rumor spreaders who end up losing their inside source, moles, tipsters, etc. and whose current rumors are really just guesstimates rather than anything based on insider/supply chain information. In the same way, you wouldn't give Clayton Kershaw or Justin Verlander the same MLB fantasy score today as they had back in 2015.
    The juice for a public-facing StarMine system is not worth the squeeze of development or editorial labor, I'm afraid. This all said, there is a method to the BS meter, it is internally consistent, and not dependent on the writer's whims.

    I've been here since July of 2016, and I haven't ever called Gene "Apple TV Set" Munster "legendary." We talk about DigiTimes in the "hype drop" article.

    FWIW, I'd be happy if the rumor-mill turned off completely, and we never had to write a rumor article again. I like our approach, it beats CNN, Fox, and other folks who just spit out what they hear about Apple uncritically and without context, and we do discuss the rumor monger's accuracy briefly in every rumor we write.

    If you have more to discuss on this topic, feel free to DM me. Let's not clutter this thread up with mostly off-topic banter.
    edited July 15
    muthuk_vanalingam
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
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