Barclays: 2020 flagship iPhones will have 6GB of RAM with iPhone SE 2 production starting in Feb

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iPhone and HomePod
iPhone and HomePod (Image credit: Joseph Keller/iMore)

What you need to know

  • iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max expected to have 6GB of RAM.
  • iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max have 4GB.
  • iPhone SE 2 is thought to be ready to enter production in February 2020.

Barclays analyst Blayne Curtis and other members of his team recently made a trip to Asia in order to speak with firms that are currently part of Apple's iPhone supply chain. Based on those conversations Barclays has released a new research note which MacRumors was able to get its hands on.

In that note Barclays analysts say that they expect next year's iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max to pack 6GB of RAM, an increase on the 4GB this year's flagship models posess. The mid-range iPhone 12 is expected to ship with 4GB, however.

While all three 2020 iPhones are expected to feature 5G radios, Barclays believes that iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro will sport mmWave support for higher throughput. It isn't clear whether that will be in play in iPhone 12, however. My guess is that it won't.

They also expect both models to feature rear-facing 3D sensing and mmWave support for higher-performance 5G.

Rounding out the research note we have the belief that the much rumored iPhone SE 2 will go into mass production as soon as February 2020. That would allow Apple to announce it in March, as has been suggested before.

While supply chain murmorings and analyst reports aren't always a great way to judge these things, Barclays does have a better track record than most. I'll reserve judgement on the iPhone SE 2 news in particular. At least until we get closer to February.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.