The iPhone 15 Pros could get a stronger, lighter titanium frame and visibly thinner screen bezels on the sides for an even more seamless display design.
As previously rumored, the iPhone 15 family should also swap Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector for the ubiquitous USB-C for both charging and data.
iPhone 15 Pro could get thinner bezels
“Apple designers have long dreamed of an iPhone that is truly all-screen—with no borders around the display and no cutouts for cameras or sensors,” Mark Gurman writes in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg.
He went on to say that the iPhone 15 Pro displays will use a new production technique, low-injection pressure over-molding (LIPO), that will shrink the side bezels from about 2.2 millimeters on the iPhone 14 Pros down to 1.5 millimeters.
Apple first leveraged LIPO to increase the size of the Apple Watch Series 7’s display. Gurman claims that Apple could use LIPO to shrink the bezels on the iPad.
Titanium instead of stainless steel
The iPhone 15 Pros should be lighter and stronger than the iPhone 14 Pros thanks to a titanium frame replacing the current shiny but heavy stainless steel frame.
“Apple has long sought to bring titanium to the iPhone and using the metal with recent watches was a test for bringing that material to its highest-volume device,” Gurman has it.
“The design of the Pro models retains the frosted glass back of the prior few phones, but the edges connecting the side and front are now less sharp than before.”
Action button, USB-C and other perks
The inbound refresh for the iPhone 15 Pros could also include a customizable Action button replacing the mute switch and a periscope lens for deeper optical zoom.
The iPhone 15 Pros will run Apple’s forthcoming A17 chip that should bring notable speed increases and increased power efficiency by virtue of being manufactured on TSMC’s 3-nanometer process.
By comparison, the current A16 Bionic processor powering the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max is fabbed on TSMC’s 5-nanometer node.
Gurman also touted some of the improvements for the standard iPhone 15 models, which are expected to ditch the notch and embrace the Dynamic Island.