The ‘vanilla’ iPhone 18 has long been rumored to miss its traditional September launch window this year. It’s instead said to land next spring at the same time as the iPhone 18e, leaving only the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the iPhone Fold (or is that iPhone Ultra?) to be unveiled at Apple’s annual event in September.

Now, a leaker from China claims that not only will the iPhone 18 launch alongside the iPhone 18e, but it will be more similar to the affordable model than you may expect. That’s because Apple is allegedly going to cut some costs in the iPhone 18, we assume due to the rapidly rising chip prices.

iPhone 17

The iPhone 18 will apparently have a downgraded manufacturing process for its chipset, downgraded chip specifications, and downgraded memory (which could mean a lesser memory amount or a slower type of memory). Thus, the ‘vanilla’ model will be closer to the ‘e’ affordable iPhone in specs than ever before.

Unfortunately, the source of this rumor hasn’t detailed what the downgrades are compared to – but it’s obviously either the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, or the iPhone 17. In the former case, it’s less of an issue, but if these are downgrades compared to the iPhone 17, then that device is definitely now looking like an even better deal than it did when it launched – provided, of course, that this rumor is accurate.

Apple iPhone 17

Source (in Chinese)