Key Takeaways
- iPhones need longer battery life
- Enhance the iPhone’s durability
- Include ProMotion on base model iPhones
By now, many people have their hands on an iPhone 16 or 16 Pro, including myself — I’ve got a 16 Pro in “Desert Titanium,” Apple’s slightly more subdued take on gold. While the products have been well-received, there’s also a common criticism that they’re an incremental evolution, at best. Apple Intelligence won’t be available on them until October, so what we have now are devices with faster chips, more RAM, a few camera upgrades, and a slew of even smaller improvements.
I think even Apple is aware that it needs to do more to move the needle. One or more of these changes could be coming to the iPhone 17 — but since one of Apple’s rumored plans is an ultra-thin “iPhone Air,” it’s clear that the company is avoiding some of the obvious changes that would attract upgrades.
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Apple iPhone 16
This year’s iPhone 16 line blurs the line between the “Pro” and the base-level iPhone by offering a new camera button and the Action Button, alongside the A18 chip.
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Apple iPhone 16 Pro
Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro line features a few notable upgrades over last year’s iPhone 15 Pro, including a dedicated camera button, a new A18 Pro chip, a bigger screen, and several AI-powered Apple Intelligence features.
1 Extend battery life to two days or more
No more scrambling for a charger
Some people will tell you that Pro iPhones already last more than a day, but that’s with light use. I guarantee that with a mix of video, podcasts, music, gaming, reading, email, and/or social media, you’ll still end up charging overnight if you want to wake up with usable power. There’s a reason Apple only gauges battery life in hours of video playback — it sounds more impressive than any real-world scenario.
A truly “pro” phone should be able to carry someone through a cross-country flight.
I’m not expecting multi-day batteries in entry-level iPhones anytime soon, but a truly “pro” phone should be able to carry someone through a cross-country flight — including watching a movie — without needing a portable battery or a quick top-up at the gate. It should at least be able to last through prolonged power outages, or weekend hikes through those California parks Apple likes to showcase in its marketing.
We don’t need an ultra-thin iPhone — I’d gladly sacrifice improved pocketability for a device that leaves me less anxious on the go.
2 A rugged design out of the box
Make cases genuinely optional
Modern iPhones can be surprisingly durable, but for all of Apple’s bragging about “Ceramic Shield” technology, glass is glass — it still gets scratched. The company doesn’t even bother with that technology on the backs of its devices, so a naked iPhone 16 may crack if you drop it from head height onto rock or concrete. Ask yourself, would you take a caseless iPhone on a week-long camping trip in the mountains? Probably not, unless perhaps you’ve got money to burn.
Heck, even the most casual iPhone buyer tends to need
some
sort of case.
Reinforcing the backs of iPhones would go a long way, but that’s just a start. The titanium Apple uses on Pros seems to be prone to scratching too, and a perfectly flat front makes it more likely that objects will impact the display. Apple needs to step away from fashion for a minute and consider designs that don’t force us to buy a case from Catalyst or Otterbox if we have semi-adventurous lives. Heck, even the most casual iPhone buyer tends to need some sort of case.
Dynamic refresh rates aren’t ‘pro’ anymore
iPhone 15 Pro home screen
Marques Brownlee is right — in 2024, it’s inexcusable for a $799 smartphone to be stuck with a 60Hz screen. Cheaper phones have had smoother refresh rates for years, so it comes across as greedy that we can’t get 120Hz ProMotion on a base iPhone 16. Without ProMotion’s dynamic adjustments, iPhones also can’t take advantage of seemingly minor features like StandBy. Sure, StandBy technically works on non-Pro models like my old iPhone 13, but without an always-on display, there’s no point.
The good news here is that Apple is rumored to be making this concession with the iPhone 17. I mention it here mostly because it’s overdue, and because it might keep pressure on the company in a small way.
4 Give every iPhone a telephoto lens
Who’s shooting sweeping vistas at their kid’s birthday party?
I come from a photography background, and one of the most basic rules of composition is to fill the frame with your subject unless you’re intentionally exploiting dead space. That’s one of the reasons I chose to go Pro this year instead of buying a regular iPhone — if I’m going to have a phone as my only camera in some situations, I consider a telephoto lens a basic photographic tool.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at an event or tourist attraction and wished my iPhone could zoom further.
Apple apparently thinks it’s a luxury worth paying several hundred dollars for. There’s no reason, though, that Apple couldn’t swap out the ultra-wide shooters on base iPhones with telephotos, and I imagine it would be very welcome. The 26mm main camera on iPhones is plenty wide for most purposes, and I suspect people are more often trying to get closer to their subjects, not push them away and distort them. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at an event or tourist attraction and wished my iPhone could zoom further.
5 Bring back low-cost plastic iPhones
The ‘premium’ market isn’t that big
Apple / Pocket-lint
Over a decade ago, Apple’s first experiment with a budget iPhone (apart from refurbs) was the iPhone 5c. One change was the replacement of the usual metal and glass exterior with a plastic shell, but that was, ironically, an upgrade. It made the phone more durable, as well as more colorful, since it’s a lot easier to tint plastic than it is aluminum.
We’re not sure why Apple stepped away from plastic, but it’s presumably because executives prefer to target the lucrative “premium” market. There’s only so far you can take those sales, though — most of the world can’t afford an iPhone 16, let alone a 16 Pro, and even the people who can afford one may want to be a little more cautious with their money. iPhone sales are inevitably going to stall if the closest we get to a budget product is an iPhone SE or three-year-old devices.