Next week, Apple will unveil its iPhone 16 series at an event called “It’s Glotime”. Here’s what we know about the new models – here we’ll focus on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, while the two Pro models will be covered in a separate article.
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Apple has officially confirmed that the iPhone 16 series will be unveiled on September 9 (Monday). The event will start at 5 PM UTC.
The more important question is when the phones will be available — according to Mark Gurman, all four iPhone 16 models are set to go up for early pre-order (right after the event) and launch on September 20.
Apple Intelligence is reported to be delayed and will not be available on launch day. Instead, it should arrive as an update in October. However, this delay will not affect the iPhone 16 launch.
Design
There haven’t been any significant changes to the vanilla iPhone design since the iPhone 11, unless you consider the arrival of Dynamic Island “significant.” The overall look of the 16-series will remain the same, but dummies have been photographed showing some changes.
The rectangular camera island will be shrunk horizontally, so that both cameras will be aligned vertically. This will also move the LED flash away from the island and to the back.
apple iphone 16 dummy
The dummy also reveals all the colours at launch. These should be more saturated than the Pro models, which traditionally only get the lightest colours.
Action and Capture buttons
The side view of the dummy shows temporarily named Action and Capture buttons, which will trigger a custom action and act as a camera shutter key, respectively. However, this does mean that the alert slider will be removed.
All four iPhone 16 models will have an action button
and a capture button
Apparently, the capture button will be more like a capacitive trackpad than a physical button, allowing for swiping gestures – for example, it could be used to control zoom.
similar(-ish) display
The iPhone 16 will have a 6.1″ display, the iPhone 16 Plus will have a larger 6.7″ display, just like last year. However, both of these will be smaller than the Pro variants, which have 6.3″ and 6.9″ diagonals. The bezels will be thinner, so we can expect slightly smaller dimensions on the vanilla and Plus models (the Pro will grow by a few millimeters).
The displays will be the same, just the bezels will be slightly thinner
All four models will use a wide dynamic island hole in the display, and this is unlikely to change for the vanilla models next year (the Pro models may start moving the hardware underneath the screen).
And, no, there will be no ProMotion, both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus displays will run at 60Hz like the dark ages. Now this is something that could change for the 2025 vanilla pair, if you can hold out that long.
Apple A18 chipset and AI for everyone
We’ve already reported that Apple Intelligence will be delayed – but, importantly, it will eventually come to the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus. The 15 and 15 Plus are missing out due to their older chipset (A16) and limited RAM capacity (6GB).
However, that won’t be the case for the 16-series. Apple, like every other tech company, sees AI as the next big thing. This means the new phones will have NPUs fast enough to allow for faster processing on the device and enough RAM to hold relatively large AI models.
This doesn’t mean Apple will be changing too much with RAM capacity, at least not yet. While this year’s vanilla and Plus models are expected to get 8GB of RAM, next year’s successors may (or may not) go up to 12GB. Google increased the RAM capacity on the Pixel 9 series, but reserved some of it so that the AI model is always loaded in memory – ready to react at a moment’s notice. Whether Apple does the same remains to be seen.
The non-Pro phones may have fewer GPU cores, but that won’t affect AI performance. And with their 60Hz displays, the extra GPU power isn’t needed anyway.
The same(-ish) cameras
As we already saw, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus will have two cameras – no surprises here. Rumors suggest both phones will use the same 48MP main camera as their 15-series predecessors. The jump from 12MP on the 14-series and older models was pretty big and we can’t expect similar improvements every year.
As for the ultra-wide camera, it will be mostly the same, except for one upgraded lens – it will have a brighter f/2.2 aperture compared to f/2.4 for better low-light performance. Even better, it will have autofocus, allowing it to shoot macro photos.
We’ve heard rumors of other changes, like JPEG XL support in the camera app (as an alternative to HEIC). And we’ve already mentioned the capture button above.
what comes next
A brief overview of what analysts predict will happen in 2025. This could be the end of the road for the larger Plus series, which will reportedly give way to the iPhone 17 Slim. According to analyst Jeff Pu, it will have a slightly smaller 6.6-inch display, which will differentiate it from the Pro Max model (6.9”).
Both the iPhone 17 and 17 Slim will retain the dynamic island, but will have an upgraded 24MP selfie camera. The Pro should have a smaller island, so there will be a noticeable difference between the vanilla and Pro. At least the vanilla pair should finally get a high refresh rate screen.
Anyway, there are a lot of rumors flying around about the iPhone 17 generation right now and their likelihood is quite questionable. For example, we’ve heard that the iPhone 17 Slim will only have a single rear camera but will be more expensive than the 17 Pro Max. One or both of these may not be true. Still, we thought it was important to mention these things in the context of what the iPhone 16 series will represent in terms of upgrades.
Also worth considering is the iPhone SE 4, which would complete Apple’s transition to OLED. The new SE will likely arrive in the first quarter of 2025.
