Originally Posted: September 1st, 2019

What To Expect From A “Pro” iPhone

This past week Apple announced their annual iPhone event, sending out invitations to the Steve Jobs theater on September 10th. Like every year, this comes at the end of a long series of leaks and speculation. This year the rumors point to Apple sticking with a similar formula. They will replace the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max with the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro. The baseline 11 will be replacing the XR's cheaper and more colorful position, using an LCD screen but adding a 2nd lens for 2X optical zoom, like the X and XS lines have. The replacements for the flagship XS line point to them gaining a 3rd, wide angle camera and a few other features. So what's with the rumored "Pro" branding?

Apple has lots of products with the Pro name. In the Mac, Pro gives you more performance - better CPUs, GPUs, screens, and better form - build quality, design and materials. The MacBook and MacBook Pro are two different products aimed at two different markets. With iPads, the Pro name is used similar to how it is on the Mac - additional CPU, GPU, RAM, better build quality and design - but also to enable new peripherals like the Apple Pencil and external keyboard support.

More Performance?

With the iPhone, it's anyone's guess what Apple has in mind for the Pro moniker. Most likely, the performance will be the same between the Pro and non-Pro models. The last time Apple recycled an old CPU was when they put the iPhone 5 in a plastic shell and called it the iPhone 5C back in 2013. It's possible they will give the Pro a better CPU, like the X line of A series processors used in iPads, but that would be a different strategy than we've seen in the past. The Pro could include more RAM or storage - as it should - but overall I don't expect them to follow the same formula as they have for the iPad and Mac lines.

Whatever they are called, the phones will definitely be faster than the A12 in the iPhone XS. Apple has the best chip design team in the business, and we've come to expect that every year we will have something faster and more power efficient. That isn't always the case - look at Intel over the past few years. One thing is for sure, the A13 and the other custom processors will enable new capabilities for the camera, Face ID, and others. There has to be something else to distinguish the Pro, and if it isn’t performance, it’s likely to be features.

Better Cameras

A big focus of the new phones will be the cameras. The rumors point to a wide angle lens being added, which gives us those scary looking renders. If you thought the camera bump of the iPhone 6, 7 and 8 or the camera pill of the 7 plus, 8 plus, X and XS were too big - just wait. With that extra size comes some big benefits. Being able to adjust cropping after the fact, better low light performance and being able to capture pictures you simply weren't able to on past phones might make it worth it. The wide angle camera and everything it enables will be exclusive to the higher end models though, and that will definitely be a big focus of their marketing.

Cameras and performance improvements are guaranteed, but what else? What could Apple offer to make people want to spend an extra couple hundred dollars? The more out there rumors are always the most exciting.

Rumors Are Fun

Rumors point to them adding the ability to wirelessly charge AirPods by putting them on the back of the iPhone. Samsung already has this feature in their Galaxy line. I'm sure Apple will have a better marketing name than "reverse wireless charging", but that's all I can think of. My money is on SmartPower, since AirPower didn't work out well for them last time. Whatever it will be called, it's an interesting technology, especially if you imagine it on something with a bigger battery, like an iPad or a MacBook. The iPhone tends to get new technologies first, however.

There have also been rumors of the iPhone getting Apple Pencil support. Envision a smaller second generation style pencil magnetically attached to the side of an iPhone. Steve Jobs’ stylus musings be damned, it could be a really cool feature. A pencil could enable drawing, note taking, and new methods of UI navigation. They could steal a feature from Samsung and have the pencil bring up contextual menus. There are a lot of possibilities with a stylus, especially as a secondary method of interacting with the screen. I don't think we'll see a first party iPhone stylus yet, but it's interesting to think about. (Samsung Note users everywhere are hitting their heads against their desks in unison.)

The lightning port could be removed and USB C could take it’s place. Mirroring the improvements made to the iPad, external USB C accessories can enable lots of things on the phone as well. 5G is most likely not in the cards for this year. Just like with 4G, Apple will wait for it to be available in more places, and with better and lower power modems. Apple recently bought Intel’s cellular modem division, but we’re not likely to see a custom designed Apple modem until 2020 at the earliest. Another thing we’re not likely to see yet is a change in form factor. Other phone companies have been trying to release foldable smartphones, but they are not ready for prime time yet. Same thing with AR glasses as an iPhone accessory - Apple only releases things when they are ready, and when they can sell millions or 10's of millions of them. That tends to make them conservative when it comes to design changes and feature additions.

There have been some other rumored features, but stepping back and looking at the iPhone as a whole, what would a Pro model mean? We call them phones, but really they are computers. There are tons of progress to be made, even if changes to the physical form have reached the point of diminishing returns. Software can always improve. Cameras, performance, screens, battery life, input methods - there are innovations out there, though they are harder to come by and smaller than they used to be. I can imagine a future where a smartphone is hooked up to an external keyboard/mouse/screen and used as a desktop computer. There have been products like this in the past, but they always fell down in their implementation and software. If anyone could pull it off, it would be Apple.

A few revisions from now, the "Pro" model could become even further integrated into your computing life, able to live in your pocket and on your desk. Maybe it will be the same iPhone we had last year in a fancier case, with a big stupid camera on the back. We'll have to wait until September 10th to see.