Apple is now in full control of the most important chips inside the iPhone Air, marking one of the company’s biggest architectural shifts in years. The new phone, which went on sale Friday, debuts Apple’s A19 Pro chip, the N1 wireless chip, and the C1X modem. Together, these components give Apple ownership over the core silicon that powers the device and set the stage for a future where artificial intelligence is central to the iPhone experience.
In an interview with CNBC at Apple Park, Tim Millet, Apple’s vice president of platform architecture, explained the reasoning behind this shift. “That’s where the magic is. When we have control, we are able to do things beyond what we can do by buying a merchant silicon part,” he said. Millet highlighted that privacy, responsiveness, and efficiency are central to why Apple wants more AI handled directly on-device. “We are building the best on-device AI capability that anyone else has. Right now we are focused on making sure that these phones that we’re shipping today, or shipping soon, will be capable of all the important on-device AI workloads that are coming.”
The A19 Pro is the first Apple chip with neural accelerators embedded into every GPU core, pushing performance to near MacBook Pro levels. Millet emphasized that this integration lets developers write programs that can seamlessly switch between traditional rendering and AI processing. “The integration of the neural processing is reaching MacBook Pro class performance inside an iPhone. It’s a big, big step forward in ML compute,” he said.
Arun Mathias, Apple’s vice president of wireless software technologies and ecosystems, also detailed the new N1 wireless chip. He explained how its design improves both performance and efficiency by reducing the need to wake the application processor. “One of the things people may not realize is that your Wi-Fi access points actually contribute to your device’s awareness of location, so you don’t need to use GPS, which actually costs more from a power perspective. By being able to do this more seamlessly in the background, not needing to wake up the application processor as much, we can do that significantly more efficiently.”
On the modem side, Apple has introduced the C1X in the iPhone Air. While Qualcomm remains inside the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max, Apple now has its own modem that runs at lower power and offers up to twice the performance of the first-generation C1. Mathias said the C1X “uses 30% less energy” compared to Qualcomm’s modem in the iPhone 16 Pro, which could provide better battery life even if raw throughput still lags behind Qualcomm.
Apple’s focus on AI is also visible in everyday features. Millet pointed to the new front camera capability that uses AI to detect new faces and automatically switch to horizontal mode. “It’s leveraging a full complement of almost all the capabilities in the A19 Pro,” he said.
With this generation, Apple has not only redesigned its chip architecture but also laid out a clear roadmap. Millet hinted at future Macs and iPads adopting the same approach: “We have a unified approach to architecture.” For now, the iPhone Air stands as the first complete showcase of Apple’s ambition to own its entire silicon stack and prioritize AI at the core of the iPhone experience.
