Tag Archives: iPhone 16

Apple’s Big Mistake with the iPhone 16 Series is Focusing TOO MUCH on the Camera

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When Jobs took the stage to announce the iPhone back in 2007, he used three terms to describe the revolutionary device – a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device. However, ever since the iPhone 7 introduced a dual-lens main camera system on the phone, the Apple team has sort of obsessed with making sure the iPhone has a great camera first, and phone-adjacent features later. Almost like a handheld camera with an App Store, the iPhones now are just a shadow of what they could be. No foldable technology, no AI-based enhanced features, and not even a damn-near decent voice assistant. In fact, it took Apple YEARS to get 5G to their iPhones. Apple spends nearly 30-40% of each iPhone keynote talking about the camera and screen, and now rumors are indicating that the iPhone 16 will introduce a dedicated ‘capture’ button that lets you click photos like you would with a professional camera. The problem with this is that it’s diluting the very definition of a smartphone… and I feel like it might be deliberate.

Earlier this week, leaks showed a new hardware feature coming to the iPhone – a Capture Button that would sit on the top right corner of your phone if you held it in landscape mode. Surprising as it is, considering Apple has been trying to go buttonless and portless for a while now, the Capture Button seems like an odd addition to a phone. Not a single other smartphone has a camera shutter button. In fact, the de facto position is to turn your volume button into a capture button while the camera is running… so what’s driving Apple to add YET ANOTHER button to their phone, following the addition of the Action Button last year?

Leaked images of iPhone dummies used for case designs

Last month, I pointed out that the iPhone 16 is just going to be one of those boring phones worth missing, and this Capture Button seems to reinforce that fact. Every 3 years, Apple launches a ‘boring’ iPhone with a minor design upgrade just to keep things moving before a radical change and it’s been 2 years since the Dynamic Island, so this is probably Apple’s boring year. But why a Capture Button? Nobody said we needed it, not a single Android competitor has a Capture Button, heck if anything we’d appreciate bringing the 3.5mm audio jack back. So why is Apple going ahead with this hardware change?

There are two ways to look at it. The first is a simpler explanation – Apple’s run out of ideas. This is just one of those years where Apple pushes out something so it can tick that annual release box and make a few sales before something bigger and better in 2025. It’s a theory that holds merit given that the iPhone 8 was the ‘boring’ phone for the iPhone X, the iPhone 13 hardly had any extra features (unless you count Cinematic Mode as a game-changing upgrade) before the iPhone 14 ushered in the Dynamic Island. This basically means it’s business as usual and 2024 is just going to be a boring year for iPhones… but there’s yet another explanation.

Close-up of the purported Capture Button

The second explanation is a little more layered and vague, considering there’s no concrete proof to the fact. The explanation is that Apple’s pretty much resigning the iPhone to its fate – the camera. With the Vision Pro becoming Apple’s new breakthrough device, the iPhone will eventually take second place, quite like the iPod did 12 years ago. There are multiple rumors that Apple’s building a cheaper Vision headset (without the ‘Pro’ title) for the mass market to immerse in spatial computing… and when that happens, the iPhone won’t be anything except for a glorified photography device. It still doesn’t explain why Apple’s adding a Capture Button to their phone, given that people already use the volume button to capture photos… but that’s the vague part, because we really don’t ever know what’s going on inside the heads of Tim Cook and the Apple team until and unless they tell us. But as far as the iPhone 16 goes, I’d recommend you give it a miss unless you were long due for a smartphone upgrade.

Renders by Sarang Sheth

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The iPhone 16 might just be a snoozefest… History tells us why.

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Historically, every three years, the iPhone’s design gets a ‘boring’ upgrade. Do you remember the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 13’s most exciting features? Neither do I.

The iPhone X and 11 had radical new designs with the notch, the iPhone 12 introduced 5G and MagSafe… but after two consecutive years of exciting features, the iPhone 13 barely had anything worth talking about (unless you consider ‘Cinematic Mode’ to be a game-changing feature). Skip to the next year and the iPhone 14 Pro had the Dynamic Island and Satellite Connectivity. The iPhone 15 had the Action Button, the USB-C port, and a titanium construction. All indications show that the upcoming iPhone 16 won’t really dazzle much. Aside from a few hardware upgrades and perhaps one or two extra camera features (probably tied to the Vision Pro), there isn’t any thrilling rumor regarding the upcoming iPhone 16’s design. Not that there needs to be – Apple’s entitled to taking a short break every few years and just focusing on fine-tuning the product rather than wowing people. If you’re thinking of upgrading to the 16 this year, I’d probably give it a miss and go for the 15 instead. The iPad, on the other hand, is due for a BIG refresh with rumors of a glass-back, MagSafe, and perhaps some more camera upgrades to support the Vision Pro.

The rumor mill for the latest iPhone often begins around a year prior to its release. Once a model of the iPhone launches, analysts and experts begin speculating what the next year’s model could look like. Speculations turn into rumors by January. Rumors turn into leaks by April or May. And renders emerge online by July or August, approximately a month before Apple announces its newest iPhone. So far, the rumors have been rather underwhelming at best, with some minor upgrades being touted for the iPhone 16.

So far, outlets like MacRumors haven’t specified any ‘game-changing’ new features for the iPhone 16. Sure, you have a chipset upgrade every year and the 16 Pro will run Apple’s latest A18 Bionic chip. Cameras get upgraded too, and there’s speculation that the Ultrawide camera could get a 48MP bump this year. The new iPhone 16 series will apparently have larger displays (so maybe smaller bezels), better 5G, WiFi 7 capabilities, and a new stacked battery architecture for better battery life. Visibly, the iPhone 16 might have a different camera layout, defaulting to the original vertical orientation seen with the iPhone 11 and 12 (although the bump around them may be capsule-shaped instead of square like older models). There’s also speculation about a new physical ‘capture’ button for clicking photos or recording videos… although all indications show that this might just be one of those rumors that end up staying a rumor. Apple’s famously trying to move away from buttons and ports, so adding an extra button to the new phone just doesn’t sound like something the company would do. Moreover, the volume buttons already work as capture buttons when the camera app’s active… so a dedicated capture button feels rather redundant.

The iPhone 16 Pro might see some extremely small incremental changes, with barely any visible differences. The rendering below shows a possible iPhone 16 Pro with a design that’s indistinguishable from last year’s 15 Pro model. Apple will almost certainly stick to titanium for the Pro series, potentially with newer colors to help differentiate them from last year’s models.

All eyes, however, are on Apple’s software development team this year. The company famously canceled its rumored Apple Car project, moving the entire Project Titan team to work for the in-house AI development department. Analysts like Ming-Chi Kuo speculate that Apple might announce AI-based features like a next-gen Siri powered by Apple’s own LLM, or other generative AI capabilities. These announcements, however, may just come with the iOS 18 debut during WWDC in June. To push the latest iPhone series, Apple may also limit these AI features only to the iPhone 16 range, forcing consumers to make the upgrade. However, until these speculations are confirmed, the iPhone 16 may just be worth a miss this year.

Images via MacRumors

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Small iPhone 16 camera design change could have important implications

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Apple is known for moving slowly but surely, changing things only when it really makes sense and after numerous tests. That can be especially seen in the iPhone’s cameras, which don’t change year after year, unlike the general trend in the mobile industry. Whether it’s the hardware itself or the design of the camera bump, Apple has been careful and meticulous in introducing changes. That’s why it’s a bit of a big thing that Apple is rumored to be changing the iPhone 16’s camera design for the first time in three years, but it’s a change that will bring a significant change in functionality, at least for the base iPhone models, and possibly a very different aesthetic as well.

Designer: Apple (via MacRumors)

Apple has traditionally been modest with its camera hardware because it is able to pull off great images even with sensors that look outdated on paper. It also doesn’t change the design of the camera island as often as other brands, introducing a pill-shaped bump in the iPhone 8 Plus in 2017 and only switching to a square enclosure in the 2019 iPhone 11. In the 2021 iPhone 13, it moved the position of the lenses so that they’d be diagonally opposite to each other, creating a visually more interesting composition than the plain vertical arrangement of the iPhone X.

According to rumors, however, Apple is switching back to a vertical design for the iPhone 16 cameras, and it’s unlikely just on a whim. There is a chance that this change will enable the Spatial Video function that’s only available on the iPhone 15 Pro models, a feature that allows recording video in three dimensions. This, however, requires using both the main wide camera and the ultrawide shooter in tandem, in which case these two sensors have to be aligned vertically or even horizontally.

What’s a little more interesting is that Apple is reportedly testing a different design for this new camera as well. There is one that looks exactly like the iPhone 11 and 12, with the cameras vertically arranged. Another potential design, however, places the vertical pill shape of the iPhone X on top of the square bump of the iPhone 15. As interesting as that may look visually, it’s a rather distracting design and would be a bit complicated and inconsistent with the current iPhone design language.

Changing the camera arrangement to enable Spatial Video recording is another sign that Apple is aiming to bring Pro features to the base iPhone 16. An earlier leak claimed that a redesigned Action Button will be available on all iPhone 16 models. That button will supposedly switch from a mechanical button to a pressure-sensitive capacitive surface, a feature that could expand what the button is capable of doing.

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