Whereas it’s impossible Apple’s non-Professional iPhones will get a 3rd digital camera anytime quickly, if early prototype leaks are to be believed, the iPhone 16 might be in line for a big new digital camera function.
A sequence of purported iPhone 16 prototype designs shared with MacRumors means that Apple will, on the very least, be returning to a vertical design, the place the first (large) and ultrawide cameras are positioned in tandem, one above the opposite, somewhat than within the diagonal association that’s grow to be the norm.
This may mark a return to the digital camera format used on the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12. It was the iPhone 13 that first shifted the cameras round, putting them diagonally; Apple’s causes for this have by no means been clear, nevertheless it was seemingly because of some inner {hardware} modifications that might have been associated to the addition of sensor-shift optical picture stabilization (OIS) to the primary digital camera.
Nevertheless, within the case of the iPhone 16, Apple could have one other motivation for shifting the cameras again to their authentic positions.
One of many extra attention-grabbing options introduced for the iPhone 15 Professional lineup this 12 months was Spatial Video Recording, an enhancement that enables customers to seize 3D movies from their iPhone that may ship a full immersive expertise on Apple’s Imaginative and prescient Professional headset.
Though the Imaginative and prescient Professional can seize the identical movies, it makes much more sense to have this function on the iPhone. In any case, you’re way more more likely to have your iPhone available throughout life’s important moments like a birthday celebration, landmark anniversary, or wedding ceremony than be toting round a Imaginative and prescient Professional — a lot much less sporting one at such an occasion.
There have additionally been stories that Apple plans to ultimately launch a lower-cost Imaginative and prescient Professional, and one of many corners it might reduce to deliver the value down are the spatial video cameras. That received’t be an enormous loss if each fashionable iPhone can seize the identical type of 3D movies because the Imaginative and prescient Professional.
Therefore, it’s in Apple’s greatest pursuits to get Spatial Video Recording onto as many iPhones as doable. Whereas it’s an iPhone 15 Professional (and Professional Max) function proper now (having simply landed in iOS 17.2), Apple has not too long ago established a pattern of bringing iPhone Professional options launched in a single 12 months to the usual fashions within the subsequent.
For instance, the 48MP digital camera sensor and Dynamic Island made their approach from the iPhone 14 Professional to the iPhone 15 this 12 months, and there have already been stories that the iPhone 16 will get the Motion Button from this 12 months’s iPhone 15 Professional. Whereas some options like a telephoto lens and always-on ProMotion show will undoubtedly proceed to be unique to the iPhone Professional, there’s no motive that Spatial Video recording must be, particularly if Apple plans to provide a lower-cost “Imaginative and prescient” headset.
Because it at the moment stands on the iPhone 15 Professional, Spatial Video recording makes use of two lenses — the primary (large) and ultrawide — to seize and mix the mandatory element to provide a 3D video. For that reason, Spatial Movies can solely be recorded in panorama orientation, as these two lenses should be positioned side-by-side.
Apparently, this can be the primary motive that Apple rearranged the digital camera format on this 12 months’s iPhone 15 Professional fashions. Previous to the iPhone 15 Professional, the telephoto lens was all the time situated within the prime nook, with the ultrawide lens to the aspect, between the flash and the LiDAR sensor. This 12 months, Apple swapped these two lenses, shifting the telephoto over to at least one aspect; whereas many believed this was to accommodate the brand new 5X tetraprism digital camera on the iPhone 15 Professional Max, it might have been extra about aligning the opposite two cameras for Spatial Video Recording.
The identical would wish to occur for the iPhone 16 to achieve Spatial Video recording, which might clarify why the present crop of leaked prototypes all present the 2 cameras again in a vertical tandem format.
What’s much less clear at this level is that if Apple will protect the usual sq. digital camera bump, successfully returning to the iPhone 12 look. Among the prototypes present a extra iPhone X/XS type tablet surrounding the cameras, though MacRumors notes that “whereas each designs have been thought-about, the iPhone 12-like digital camera format with two distinct lenses has been used extra extensively on Apple’s prototype items,” making it the extra seemingly path.
Sources additionally add that the iPhone 16 is at the moment codenamed “DeLorean” within Apple and that among the prototypes additionally function the Motion button and among the solid-state buttons that have been initially supposed to debut on the iPhone 15 Professional earlier than being nixed because of manufacturing issues.
Whereas these have been anticipated to be a Professional-exclusive function this 12 months, the most recent info means that Apple is pushing ahead with the brand new button design throughout the whole iPhone 16 lineup, at the very least for the Motion button and a brand new Seize button, each of that are anticipated to be capacitative. Nevertheless, the amount buttons are anticipated to stay mechanical at this level.
Nevertheless, even when all of those particulars are correct, they nonetheless contain early pre-production designs for the iPhone 16 and a number of ones that Apple has thought-about. This implies there’s nonetheless numerous time for issues to vary, and due to this fact no assure as to what subsequent 12 months’s iPhone will appear like in its closing kind.