
With the iPhone 15 and 15 Professional nonetheless 4 months from launch, the rumors are actually coming in thick and quick for the next technology of Apple telephones. The latest titbit is that whereas the iPhone 15 will retain the diagonal rear digicam lens configuration used on the 13 and 14, the iPhone 16 will return to the vertical association from the 12. Clear?
Maybe an image will make issues clearer.

Apple
When Apple first gave one among its smartphones twin rear digicam lenses–this may be the iPhone 7 Plus in 2016–the corporate’s designers organized these two lenses in a horizontal configuration, like a pair of eyes. However the very subsequent 12 months the corporate launched the iPhone X with the cameras organized vertically, one above the opposite. It’s by no means been totally clear why, nevertheless it evidently wasn’t a drastic necessity as a result of the iPhone 8 Plus launched solely a month earlier had retained the horizontal configuration. Name me cynical nevertheless it’s doable that Apple merely wished the iPhone X to look totally different from the again in addition to the entrance, in order that clients had a badge to indicate they’d the latest mannequin.
The vertical structure survived for a number of years. (On the usual fashions, not less than. The brand new Professional line, starting with the 11 Professional in 2019, had three rear cameras proper from the beginning, and these have at all times been organized in a triangle with two on the left and one on the correct.) However in 2021 the iPhone 13 switched to a diagonal configuration. This has some benefits, most clearly which you can make the 2 circles tessellate extra intently and thus slot in bigger sensors with out taking over an excessive amount of house on the chassis, however once more Apple didn’t reveal the particular rationale behind the change.
Regardless of the rationale could have been, it seems to carry much less significance now than it did in 2021, as a result of a good leaker claims Apple goes to modify again to the vertical structure in 2024. The leaker is the Twitter consumer @URedditor, who additionally goes by Unknownz21. As AppleInsider notes, they’ve a reasonably quick however very strong observe document, with not less than one main coup previously.
Because the leaker factors out, this may once more serve to distinguish the 16 from its predecessor, though it’s uncommon for Apple to do that by going again to an previous design, on this case that of the iPhone 12. (The squared-off chassis design of the iPhone 12 did itself hark again to the look of the iPhone 4, however that was a positively classic mannequin that just about nobody could be carrying round any longer. Loads of individuals nonetheless have iPhone 12s.) Nevertheless, in different respects the iPhone 16 will retain a extra trendy look, because the leaker clarifies in a follow-up tweet.
In fact, this being an iPhone 16 rumor within the 12 months 2023, we can’t take something without any consideration. We’ve but to listen to corroboration from one other supply, and the supply concedes that Apple’s plans could change earlier than the system comes out.