Apple’s plans for its subsequent high-end iPhone fashions are beginning to come into focus as provide chain sources and different leakers glean new details about what the corporate has in retailer for the iPhone 16 Professional.
Whereas it’s protected to imagine subsequent yr’s iPhone Professional fashions will probably be an evolution of what we’ve already seen within the iPhone 15 Professional lineup — options just like the titanium body and Motion button are undoubtedly right here to remain — the iPhone 16 Professional might also get a slight redesign, with stories that Apple plans to bump the display dimension to six.3 inches.
Whether or not that will probably be achieved by smaller bezels across the show or a rise within the dimension of the body isn’t but clear; nevertheless, the latter looks as if the almost definitely state of affairs, as it might be essential to make room for the tetraprism lens system that was launched on this yr’s iPhone 15 Professional Max to energy the next 5X optical zoom.
Whereas pushing the bigger iPhone Professional forward of its smaller sibling wasn’t totally unprecedented — Apple made an identical transfer with the two.5X zoom on the iPhone 12 Professional Max in 2020 — it hasn’t been the norm. The iPhone 11 Professional, iPhone 13 Professional, and iPhone 14 Professional had the identical options as their Max counterparts, with the one benefits of the bigger fashions being a much bigger display and barely higher battery life because of the bigger cell inside.
Nonetheless, it’s broadly believed that the iPhone 15 Professional merely didn’t have room for the brand new tetraprism lens know-how, which compelled Apple to depart it behind with the identical 3X zoom as its predecessor. Nonetheless, Apple would seemingly desire to maintain its two iPhone Professional fashions aligned, and transferring to a barely bigger body stands out as the solely technique to accomplish that.
Nicely-known Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo already went on report in September to foretell that each iPhone 16 Professional fashions will acquire the brand new tetraprism digicam system. Now he’s doubling down on that in a latest Medium publish that predicts that Apple’s orders for the brand new tetraprism digicam, developed by provider Largan, will improve by 130 % in 2024.
Apple is anticipated to incorporate a tetraprism digicam within the iPhone 16 Professional, resulting in a 160% YoY progress in iPhones with this digicam in 2024.Ming-Chi Kuo
Kuo provides that “Apple’s pressing spec upgrades” for the iPhone 15 Professional Max resulted in a manufacturing yield of “solely about 40%” for the brand new lenses, leaving provider Largan in a poor monetary place. Nonetheless, the corporate has since improved the yield to at the very least 70%, which ought to each enhance its profitability and guarantee it may well produce sufficient of the lenses to satisfy the necessities of each the iPhone 16 Professional and iPhone 16 Professional Max.
In the meantime, Apple reportedly plans to extend the scale of the display on the iPhone 16 Professional Max to six.9 inches. This can be partially to take care of an inexpensive dimension hole between the 2 fashions. Nonetheless, there are different rumors that Apple may push that even additional forward with a “Tremendous Telephoto” digicam, with a focal size equal of 300mm or extra. That will counsel at the very least a 12.5X optical zoom.
To be clear, the stories of such an enhancement are speculative at finest proper now and equally sourced from studying the tea leaves throughout the provide chain. Since Apple strains up its suppliers many months prematurely, this might simply as simply be one thing the corporate is planning for a 2025 iPhone 17 Professional Max or past.
A Cooler Battery?
Whereas it’s not practically as thrilling as a brand new digicam system, it seems that Apple might also be taking a look at methods to enhance the thermals contained in the iPhone 16 Professional.
This yr’s launch of the iPhone 15 Professional and iPhone 15 Professional Max was suffering from quite a few stories that the brand new professional fashions had been nearly too sizzling to deal with. Though the pinnacle buildup wasn’t sufficient to start out fires and even burn pores and skin, it was an uncomfortable and worrying scenario for a lot of new iPhone house owners.
Ming-Chi Kuo pointed to thermal design compromises as a attainable offender, suggesting that it wasn’t the A17 Professional’s 3nm course of inflicting the warmth however quite the way in which Apple designed the titanium body. Nonetheless, this principle was confirmed unsuitable when Apple solved the warmth bug in iOS 17.0.3 with out compromising the iPhone 15 Professional’s efficiency.
However, Apple undoubtedly needs to proceed guaranteeing that its highest-performance iPhone fashions don’t change into the victims of extreme warmth, particularly because it prepares for what’s going to nearly actually be an much more highly effective “A18 Professional” chip in subsequent yr’s iPhone 16 Professional lineup.
To that finish, it seems that Apple is engaged on a brand new battery design with a metallic shell and a redesigned connector, as proven in a collection of leaked photographs shared by Kosutatmi on X (the social media community previously referred to as Twitter).
The photographs supposedly depict a battery from an early iPhone 16 Professional prototype. The cell reveals a capability of three,355 mAh, which is roughly on par with the three,274 mAh battery on this yr’s iPhone 15 Professional, and has an identical bodily design.
Whereas it’s too early to inform if this would be the remaining design, the metallic shell on the skin would seemingly assist with warmth dissipation, which might additionally seemingly enhance the long-term well being of those batteries. Whereas warmth is among the worst issues for shortening the lifespan of your battery, it’s the warmth that’s trapped contained in the battery that’s the issue; permitting it to flee correctly retains the internals cooler, leading to much less put on and tear on the interior lithium-ion chemistry.
However, whereas Kosutami does have a fairly good monitor report, that is nonetheless a really early leak of an “early stage” prototype, so it ought to be taken with a sizeable grain of salt.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]