Oliver Haslam on October 29, 2022, 1:42 pm

Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Rumored To Be Ditching Its Buttons In 2023

Apple’s expected to announce a new range of iPhones in 2023 and a new report by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggests that the company is getting ready to change a fundamental feature of the iPhone.

According to a series of tweets from Kuo, Apple is getting ready to remove the physical clicky power and volume buttons from next year’s iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, choosing to replace them with Taptic Engines instead.

The theory appears to be that Apple will replace real buttons with fake ones. It’s something it already did with the Home button on the iPhone SE and there hasn’t been a physical Home button since the iPhone 7’s debut many years ago. Apple’s trackpads similarly don’t actually click, relying on vibration to simulate movement.

It now seems likely that Apple will do the same thing with the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, if Kuo is correct. He says that new Taptic Engines will be added to the iPhone, one either side, to join the existing one that handles vibrations currently.

If Apple follows its tried and tested release schedule we can expect it to announce new iPhones in or around September of 2023, with more details likely to leak over the coming months.

Apple’s iPhone 14 series has only been on sale for a matter of weeks, but attention within the industry is already turning to what’s next and expectations are already high for what Apple might have to share in 2023. We’re also expecting the iPhone 15 to be the first one with USB-C, too.