iPhone 7 Rumors: What Big Spec Bump Is Apple Planning For The Next Wave Of iPhones And iPads?

Apple is just now barely becoming able to meet demand for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but already the rumor mill is churning regarding the next generation of iPhones, and some are saying that a major spec bump is in the works for Apple’s flagship device.

Apple has never really been one to dwell too much on specifications. While competitors like Samsung and others will crow about quad-core processors and gigabytes of RAM, Apple usually remains content to show off the new Ax processor, say how much faster it is than its predecessor, and keep it moving.

Apple’s iPhones for a while now have had 1GB of RAM installed, while its iPads pack 2GB of RAM. Apple never mentions this when unveiling a new iPhone or iPad. Critics and competitors continually assert that more RAM leads to better performance in apps, but the legions of iPhone and iPad buyers don’t appear to have any complaints so far.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise that the latest rumor about the iPhone 7 – or iPhone 6c, depending on whom you ask – and the successor to the iPad Air 2 will see a boost in the RAM department. A new report out of Taiwan (h/t: TechnoBuffalo) says that Apple will double the RAM in next year’s iPhones and iPads, with iPads getting 4GB of RAM while iPhones get 2GB.

On paper, that would still leave the iPhone 7 well behind competitors in terms of on-board RAM, but the iPhone already outperforms most of its competitors thanks to Apple specifically engineering its mobile OS for its handheld. The memory addition for next year’s iPhones and iPads would be aimed at improving the performance of some of the iPhone and iPad’s more intensive apps, and other apps like Safari would likely run a lot more smoothly.

One possible implication for the spec boost involves the rumored 12-inch iPad Pro. Apple, of course, hasn’t confirmed the existence of such a device, but rumor has it that the multitasking feature that’s already built into iOS 8 is targeted at the iPad Pro. Pushing the on-board memory for an iPad to 4GB of RAM would actually put it on par with a MacBook Air, and that would be a fair amount of memory if one were to, say, try to run two apps side-by-side on an iPad Pro’s screen.

Of course, all of this is just rumor and conjecture until Apple’s Tim Cook takes the stage to show off the next generation of iPads and iPhones next year. Still, there’s a reason Apple rumors get so much attention when they leak: sometimes they turn out to be true.