When the iPhone 16 series is released in September—read about the exact release date here—it will come with an upgraded design feature which nobody had predicted, a new report claims.
The next iPhones will have a new capture button on the right-hand edge, designed to work with the camera, the report in The Information says.
That chimes with previous rumors, as does the claim that replacing the battery in the iPhone 16 will be easier than it is today. All very good, but it’s the next part of the report that offers something properly new.
The iPhone 16 series, that’s all four phones expected this September, will include a “larger graphite sheet within the chassis,” the report says.
Now, I hear you as you point out that a sheet of graphite isn’t exactly sexy. I mean it’s not going to make the iPhone look cool in the way the titanium casing made the iPhone 15 Pro stand out, is it? It’s not as cool as the all-new color predicted to be coming to the iPhone 16 Pro is.
But looks aren’t everything, as we’ve always been told, and this sheet is on the inside of the iPhone, so nobody will see it.
The purpose of it is to add to the thermal capabilities of the next iPhones. This may be designed to address the problem that arose when the iPhone 15 series was released and was quickly found to be overheating.
This was fixed by a software update and it may not have been limited to the latest brace of phones. For sure, though, Apple wouldn’t want another iPhone release to be bothered with the words “overheating issue”, even though it solved it without needing to throttle the phones.
So, an internal sheet of graphite may be an effective solution to the problem or improve thermal efficiency. This can have knock-on effects for the way the battery performs or how quickly the processor responds.
There are plenty of other upgrades coming to the iPhone 16 series if the reports prove true. These include different displays on some models, wider implementation of the latest tetraprism camera, a new strategy for its new-generation processors, more advanced camera lenses, noticeably more efficient OLED displays, a new microphone to improve Siri, and an improved main camera sensor.
It’s the internal upgrades like this which can quietly transform what the next iPhone could do.