Apple announced one new iPhone chip this year and gave it a Pro suffix. The A20 Pro ships in three products, the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro Max and the iPhone Duo, and Apple has announced no chip called A20 without it.
That is a consequence of what Apple did not launch. There is no standard iPhone 18, no iPhone 18e and no iPhone Air 2, so the tier that would normally carry a non-Pro A-series chip does not exist in 2026, and the rest of the lineup keeps the silicon it already had.
Key facts on the 2026 iPhone chip ladder
| Item | What Apple publishes |
|---|---|
| New chip this year | A20 Pro, described as Apple’s first 2-nanometer chip |
| Products with A20 Pro | iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone Duo |
| A chip named A20 | Not announced |
| New non-Pro iPhone | None. No iPhone 18, no iPhone 18e, no iPhone Air 2 |
| iPhones on Apple’s Apple Intelligence list | 15 models, from iPhone Duo back to iPhone 15 Pro |
| iOS 27 compatibility | iPhone 11 and later, plus iPhone SE second generation and later |
| Node figures for older chips | Not published |
The three products with an A20 Pro
Apple lists the same silicon for all three: a six-core CPU with two performance and four efficiency cores, a seven-core GPU, a dual 16-core Neural Engine totalling 32 cores, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
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The performance figures Apple publishes are split across the product pages rather than the chip. iPhone 18 Pro gets a GPU up to 40 percent faster than A19 Pro, a Neural Engine with double the AI processing power of A19 Pro and 50 percent more memory bandwidth, and Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro page adds a six-core CPU up to 20 percent faster and up to 40 percent better sustained performance than iPhone 17 Pro. Apple’s iPhone Duo material gives the CPU as up to 20 percent faster than A19 Pro and sustained performance as up to 35 percent better than iPhone 17 Pro.
All of those are Apple’s own comparisons between its own generations, published without test conditions. They are not benchmark results.
Every chip on Apple’s Apple Intelligence iPhone list
Apple publishes this device list with the chip beside each model on its Apple Intelligence page. It is the clearest statement of the current ladder.
| Chip | iPhones Apple lists |
|---|---|
| A20 Pro | iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone 18 Pro |
| A19 Pro | iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone Air |
| A19 | iPhone 17, iPhone 17e |
| A18 Pro | iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro |
| A18 | iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16, iPhone 16e |
| A17 Pro | iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro |
Two details are worth pulling out. Apple has discontinued the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, so the A19 Pro continues in the lineup through the iPhone Air. And the A18 Pro is not only an iPhone chip on this list: Apple names it as the chip in MacBook Neo.
Why there is no plain A20 this year
In a normal cycle Apple introduces a Pro chip for the Pro phones and a standard chip for the rest. This year the rest did not arrive, and Apple’s event coverage confirmed the absence rather than a delay to a date.
The practical effect is that buying any new iPhone Apple launched in September 2026 means buying an A20 Pro. There is no cheaper new model with a newer standard chip to weigh it against.
What the chip name does not tell you
- A shared chip does not mean identical claims. Apple gives iPhone Duo up to 35 percent better sustained performance than iPhone 17 Pro, against up to 40 percent for iPhone 18 Pro.
- Core counts vary within a chip name. Apple lists the A19 Pro with six GPU cores in iPhone 17 Pro and five in iPhone Air.
- Apple Intelligence is not gated on the newest chip. Apple’s list reaches back to the A17 Pro in iPhone 15 Pro.
- iOS 27 reaches far further back than the chip list. It runs on iPhone 11 and later plus iPhone SE second generation and later, and arrives free on Monday September 14.
What Apple has not said
Apple has not announced an A20 without the Pro suffix, has not published clock speeds or transistor counts for any of these chips, has not named the manufacturer of its 2-nanometer process, and has not published the process node of the older chips still in the lineup. Our A20 Pro explainer collects what is on the record.
Pre-orders for iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max open today, Saturday September 12, at 5 a.m. PT, which is 12:00 UTC, with availability on Friday September 18 in more than 65 countries and a second wave on Friday September 25. iPhone Duo, the third A20 Pro product, is orderable on Friday October 16 and ships Friday October 23.
