The iPhone 15 Pro's solid-state button loss could be the iPhone 16 Pro's gain

Render showing iPhone 15 Ultra in four colors
(Image credit: @Shaileshhari03)

There had been plenty of reason to expect that Apple would give the iPhone 15 Pro all-new solid-state volume and power buttons when the phone is announced later this year, but that now seems not to be happening after all. But don't worry, those fancy buttons will arrive soon enough.

How soon? According to one report, they'll be ready for 2024 which means that the iPhone 16 Pro is the model that we should all keep our eyes peeled for.

The new buttons will do away with the standard clicky setup that we're all so familiar with, but it now looks increasingly likely that we'll need to wait for the best iPhone of 2024 before we get to test them out.

A longer wait

Talk of solid-state buttons has been around for months but it's thought that Apple ultimately decided that it just wasn't ready to use them just yet. The theory was that Apple would use vibration motors to simulate a click, but the company tasked with building the hardware to make that happen has already hinted that it isn't going to be making anything in 2023.

Now, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has backed that up, saying that Apple has chosen to hang fire until the iPhone 16 Pro so that it can deal with the costs and complexity related to the technology. Gurman was responding to a question about the iPhone 15 Pro with MacRumors reporting on his thoughts.

That doesn't mean that the iPhone 15 Pro will be lacking in new stuff for people to enjoy, though. We're still expecting a new Action button to replace the mute switch, giving people Apple Watch Ultra-like levels of customization and automation.

Apple isn't expected to announce the iPhone 15 lineup until September, with the phones expected to go on sale a week or so later.

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.