Skip the iPhone 15 Pro — larger display and periscope camera lens coming to 16 Pro, insider says

a close up of an iPhone camera lens
(Image credit: TheRegisti / Unsplash)

All eyes are on Apple to see what it will announce during the WWDC23 event on June 7 but beyond that there's the small matter of the iPhone 15 lineup. One of those models will of course be the iPhone 15 Pro, but it sounds like buyers might want to consider giving it a miss.

That's because, according to a new report by one well-connected analyst, the iPhone 16 Pro could have a couple of upgrades that are well worth waiting for — although you'll have to wait a whole extra year to get your hands on them.

If Apple follows its usual release cadence we can expect it to debut the iPhone 16 lineup in September 2024.

It's upgrade time

While the iPhone 15 Pro is expected to get a new Dynamic Island just like the best iPhones you can buy today, it sounds like the iPhone 16 Pro could get some upgrades of its own.

That's according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who says that Apple will give the iPhone 16 Pro a feature we're expecting the iPhone 15 Pro Max to debut — a periscope camera. Pair that with existing rumors of a display size increase and things get even more interesting.

According to Kuo, the slight display size increase will give the iPhone 15 Pro more internal space, allowing for the addition of a periscope camera.

"The display size of the iPhone 16 Pro will be slightly larger than the iPhone 14/15 Pro’s 6.1", allowing the 16 Pro to equip with a periscope camera thanks to larger internal space," Kuo said via a Medium post. "It’s expected that iPhone 16 Pro Max and Pro will have periscopes (vs. only Pro Max among the 15 series)."

Periscope cameras allow for an increased maximum level of zoom, potentially increasing the current 3x offering to something around 6x or more.

If that's the case the iPhone 16 Pro could be a big camera upgrade over other non-Pro Max phones. But whether that's enough to wait for is perhaps another matter entirely and will come down to personal choices and how important better zoom capabilities are.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.