The highest internal storage in an iPhone that Apple has ever shipped is 1TB, but as the AI booms, video requirements, app data updates, and many other categories increase their storage requirements, the company has to find ways to increase that amount. One research firm believes that Apple will be successful in this attempt when it switches to QLC or quad-level cell NAND flash. However, the transition is not expected to happen this early, as the first models boasting up to 2TB storage could launch in 2026.

It is not the first time that Apple has been reported to introduce QLC NAND flash to its iPhones. The technology giant has previously said to bring this technology to the iPhone 14 series, and when these claims did not come true, the company was then reported to be working on QLC flash memory for the forthcoming iPhone 16 family.

Now, TrendForce believes that this storage variant will replace TLC (triple-level cell) currently present in iPhones to allow Apple to bump up that internal memory to 2TB. Unfortunately, while QLC is denser than TLC, it is slower than the latter.

Apple is also exploring how to use NAND flash rather than RAM to store large language models (LLMs), enabling more AI tasks to run locally, so transitioning to QLC NAND could help improve the performance of Apple Intelligence.