The image above is your first good look at the iPhone 16, thanks to the well-connected Apple watchers at MacRumors. It's not the real thing but a very accurate mock-up; based on early design details, these mock-ups even show you the colours Apple is apparently planning to offer the iPhone 16 in.
These renders are prototypes, and that means there are several different designs here; the final shipping iPhone 16 is likely to incorporate ideas from some or all of them. Each colour you see is a slightly different configuration, so the yellow one shows the earliest design of Action Button, unified volume and an iPhone X-esque camera setup; the pink one has separate mechanical volume buttons; and the midnight one has a larger Action button and a new Capture button.
So what can we glean from these new mock-ups?
What do these mock-ups tell us about the iPhone 16?
The most obvious change is the shape of the camera, which is vertical: either a lozenge-shaped design or two separate lenses in the familiar square on the pink and black ones. The former looks quite like the iPhone 12, and the latter the iPhone X. The flash appears to be in the same place. According to MacRumors, the iPhone 12-style layout is the one most frequently featured in Apple's own prototypes, but with two distinct lenses rather than one long lozenge.
The presence of the Action Button on all the mockups suggests that the mute switch is gone from the entire range now. It's larger in some prototypes to reflect a capacitive rather than a mechanical button, which appears to be Apple's most favoured option. There's also a new capacitive button whose purpose is currently unclear.
Round the front there's nothing particularly strange or startling: the Dynamic Island is there, and there's a USB-C connector down below.
While these mock-ups are superb (and there are more on the MacRumors website, which you should really check out) it's important to stress that these are based on early designs – so there's no guarantee that anything you see here will make it into the final iPhone 16. But they're excellent indicators of Apple's current thinking, and of the most likely design we'll see in the Autumn of 2024.
