It has been over a month since Apple released the iPhone 15 and yet, it continues to stay in the limelight. Hailed as one of the biggest upgrades to the iPhone since 2020’s radically designed iPhone 12, the iPhone 15 ticks all the right boxes for smartphone buyers this year. The Lightning charging port, which was once an Achilles heel for an iPhone user, has finally been replaced with the universally available USB-C charging port. The dated display notch makes way for the more interesting Dynamic Island while the revised design impresses as well.
However, all of these upgrades seem to be overshadowed by the big changes rumoured to be coming to next year’s iPhone 16.
Even though it is a year away from its official release, the iPhone 16 leaks have revealed a lot of exciting upgrades in store for us. Among the many changes that could be deemed revolutionary, the iPhone 16’s chip will be one of the key talking points for the months to come. A freshly brewed leak now suggests that Apple could get rid of the differences in the chipsets between the standard and Pro models from next year onwards. The A18 chip could now power all of the iPhone 16 variants, thereby offering the latest performance enhancements one expects from a brand-new iPhone.
Will this new chipset be the sole driving force urging people to upgrade to the newer model next year? To answer that question, we take a look at all the anticipated iPhone 16 features that make it worth waiting for.
Apple iPhone 16’s rumoured features
Even though it’s quite early for the iPhone 16 rumours to hold any substance, we hope Apple is working behind the scenes to make them come true.
1. Solid state button
One of the biggest upgrades on the iPhone 15 (other than the USB-C port) was supposed to be the introduction of solid-state buttons. Surprisingly, Apple retained the old buttons but replaced the Mute slider with the highly customisable Action button. Hence, it is the iPhone 16 that is now expected to get rid of physical buttons and rely on solid-state keys. This new technology is expected to replace the power, volume and Action buttons with capacitive touch keys that were in fashion on Android smartphones of the early 2010s. Apple had also used this technology on the iPhone 7’s Home button.
To mimic a button press, Apple is expected to, once again, rely on its impressive Taptic Engine for haptic feedback. The benefits of using a solid state button include a clean side profile and better protection against water and dust ingress.
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2. 120Hz display as standard
iPhones feature some of the best displays you can find on any smartphone. However, the standard iPhone 15 features a 60Hz OLED display that doesn’t feel as smooth as a 120Hz refresh rate display.
For 2024, Apple is rumoured to offer a high refresh rate OLED panel as standard on all the iPhone 16 models. While details are sparse about this development, speculation hints at Apple reserving the LTPO OLED panels for the Pro variants only. In simple terms, this means that the iPhone 16 would only be able to alter its refresh rate between 60Hz and 120Hz. Nevertheless, it would still be better than the refresh rate of the iPhone 15’s display.
3. A18 chip
This is the big one.
After depriving buyers of the vanilla iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 models of cutting-edge Apple chipsets for two years in a row, Apple is considering upgrading all the iPhone 16 models to the latest chipset. The iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are rumoured to use the 3nm A18 chipset for faster performance and better efficiency. Theoretically, this should provide a huge performance boost over the iPhone 15’s A16 Bionic chip.
However, there’s a likelihood that Apple will offer an A18 Bionic chip with reserved performance on the vanilla iPhone 16 models and an A18 Pro chip with a performance boost on the iPhone 16 Pro models. After all, Apple has to offer additional incentives to buy the Pro models.
4. Under-display Face ID
In the iPhone 15, Dynamic Island offers a huge leap over the dated display notch, making efficient use of what is otherwise dead space.
However, according to the grapevine, Apple is willing to hide the TrueDepth camera sensors under the display in the iPhone 16. As a result, the iPhone 16’s forehead could end up looking no different than the Samsung Galaxy S23‘s. The Dynamic Island could also be reduced in size and Apple could simply retain the punch-hole camera cutout until it figures out a way to hide it under the display as well.
5. Vertically stacked rear cameras
Do you remember the iPhone 12’s design? It was the last iPhone to feature a vertically stacked rear camera design before Apple updated it with a diagonally stacked camera layout. With the iPhone 16, Apple is now rumoured to go back to the vertically stacked rear camera design. Although the reasons behind this move are unclear, there’s a possibility that Apple could either use new camera sensors or enlarge the camera hump to accommodate the sensor-shift camera modules next to each other.
Hence, Apple’s big design change for the iPhone 16 will revolve, once again, around shifting the camera lenses to its older spot. We can only imagine the memes that will flood your X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram feeds when that happens.
iPhone 16’s likely release date
Based on Apple’s usual timeline, we can expect the iPhone 16 range to be announced in early September 2024, just ahead of the festive season.
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(Hero and Featured Image Credits: Courtesy Onur Binay via Unsplash)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
– Which Apple chip will the iPhone 16 use?
The iPhone 16 is now expected to use the A18 Bionic chip that will be based on the 3nm process.
– What are the specifications of A18 chips?
The A18 chips from Apple are expected to be manufactured using the 3nm process. They are rumoured to rely on TSMC’s new N3E node that guarantees slightly faster performance at the expense of power efficiency.
