Next week, Apple will introduce the iPhone 16 series at an event called “It’s Glowtime”. Here’s what we think we know about the new models – here we’ll focus on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, the two Pros will be covered in a separate article.
The launch
Apple has officially confirmed that the iPhone 16 series unveiled on September 9 (Monday). The event starts at 17:00 UTC.
The more important question is when the phones will be available – according to Mark Gurman, all four iPhone 16 models are on track for early pre-order (right after the event) and a September 20 launch.
Apple Intelligence is reportedly delayed and will not be available on launch day. Instead, it should arrive as an update in October. This delay will not affect the launch of the iPhone 16.
The design
There hasn’t been a significant evolution in vanilla iPhone design since the iPhone 11, unless you consider the arrival of the Dynamic Island to be “significant.” The overall look for the 16-series remains the same, but dolls have been photographed showing some of the adjustments.
The rectangular camera island is squeezed horizontally, aligning the two cameras vertically. This also moves the LED flash from the island to the back.
Apple iPhone 16 Dummies
The dummies also reveal (all?) the launch colors. These should be more saturated than the Pro models, which traditionally only get the lightest shades.
Action and capture buttons
Side views of dummies show the provisionally named Action and capture buttons, which respectively trigger custom actions and act as a shutter button for the camera. However, this does mean that the Alert Slider will be removed.
All four iPhone 16 models get an Action button
And a capture button
Apparently, the Capture button will be more of a capacitive trackpad than a physical button, allowing you to make swipe gestures. This could be used to control zoom, for example.
The same views
The iPhone 16 will have a 6.1” display, the iPhone 16 Plus display will be larger at 6.7”, just like last year. However, both will be smaller than their respective Pro variants, which will have 6.3” and 6.9” diagonals. The edges become thinnerso we can expect slightly smaller dimensions on the vanilla and Plus models (the Pros will be a few millimeters taller).
The displays will be the same, aside from slightly thinner bezels
All four models use the wide Dynamic Island hole in the display. This is unlikely to change on the standard models next year (the Pros could move hardware under the display).
And no, there will be no ProMotion, both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus will have a screen run at 60Hz like in the dark ages. That’s something that might change for the 2025 vanilla pair, if you can hold out that long.
Apple A18 chipsets and AI for everyone
We’ve already said that Apple Intelligence will be delayed , but it will eventually come to the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus. The 15 and 15 Plus miss out due to their older chipsets (A16) and limited RAM (6GB).
That won’t be the case for the 16-series, though. Apple, like every other tech company at the moment, sees AI as the next big thing. That means the new phones will have a fast enough NPU for speedy on-device processing and enough RAM to house the relatively large AI models.
That doesn’t mean Apple is going crazy with RAM capacities, at least not yet. Vanilla and Plus models are expected this year 8 GB RAMnext year’s successors could go up to 12GB (or not). Google increased the RAM capacity on the Pixel 9 series, but reserved some of it so that the AI model could always be loaded in memory – ready to respond at a moment’s notice. Whether Apple does the same remains to be seen.
The non-Pro phones may get fewer GPU cores, but that shouldn’t hurt AI performance. And with their 60Hz displays, the extra GPU power probably won’t be necessary anyway.
Same(-ish) cameras
As we’ve seen, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus will have dual cameras – no surprises here. Rumors suggest the two phones will feature the exactly the same 48MP main camera as on their 15-series predecessors. The jump from 12MP on the 14-series and older models was quite significant and we can’t expect a similar improvement every year.
As for the ultra-wide camera, that will be largely the same, save for an improved 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 take macro photos.
We’ve heard rumors about other changes, for example JPEG-XL support in the camera app (as an alternative to HEIC). And we already talked about the Capture button above.
What comes next?
Here’s a quick rundown of what analysts predict will happen in 2025. This could be the end of the big Plus series, which will reportedly make way for the iPhone 17 SlimAccording to analyst Jeff Pu, it will have a slightly smaller 6.6” display, which will further differentiate it from the Pro Max model (6.9”).
Both the iPhone 17 and 17 Slim retain the Dynamic Island, but get a improved 24MP selfie camera. The Pros should have a smaller Island, so there will be a noticeable difference between vanilla and Pro. At least the vanilla pair should finally get high refresh rate screens.
Anyway, there are currently a lot of rumors going around about the iPhone 17 generation and their credibility is quite questionable. For example, we have heard that the iPhone 17 Slim only one camera on the back but will be more expensive than the 17 Pro Max. One or both of these points may not be true. Still, we felt it was important to mention them as context for what the iPhone 16 series will mean in terms of upgrades.
There’s also the iPhone SE 4 to consider, which is Apple’s transition to OLEDThe new SE will likely be released in the first quarter of 2025.