iPhone 16 Pro tipped for an eye-popping display upgrade

The future's looking bright for the next generation of Apple's Pro iPhone

iPhone 15 Pro

The iPhone 15 Pro

(Image credit: Apple)
Carrie Marshall
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It looks like the future's bright for the iPhone 16 Pro, and we mean that literally: a new report says that the display on the Pro version of the iPhone 16 will have a significantly brighter display.

Although the maximum brightness of the Pro is expected to stay the same, what's different this time around is the brightness level of content that isn't produced with high dynamic range (HDR). If you're an iPhone owner you're probably very familiar with the dramatic jump in brightness that occurs in apps such as Instagram when the content is in HDR. This change would make the non-HDR brightness higher.

What does the report say about iPhone 16 Pro brightness?

This latest tip comes from the Weibo leaker Instant Digital, as spotted by MacRumors. And according to the leaker, the brightness for standard dynamic range content is going up by 20% in the Pro. The iPhone 14 Pro currently delivers 1,000 nits of brightness for SDR content; the iPhone 16 Pro will apparently get a 20% boost to 1,200 nits.

That's still less than the peak brightness of HDR, which is currently 1,600 nits and isn't expected to be changing. But the difference between the two will be significantly reduced.

As ever with leaks it's wise to take this one with a pinch of salt. But this particular leaker has been accurate before, with previous leaks revealing the existence of the yellow iPhone 14, the back glass of the iPhone 15 and Plus, spatial video on iPhone 15 Pro and so on. So this leak is worth taking more seriously than if it were some random user on a far-flung messageboard.

If true, the increased brightness isn't the only upgrade we'll see in the iPhone 16 Pro later this year. We're expecting a new camera capture button on the right hand edge of the phone (so it'd be on top if you're shooting in landscape), a slightly larger display and the inevitable next generation of Apple's A-series silicon. As with the current iPhone 15 range we'd expect the Pro and Pro Max to get the best processors, which will then move down to the standard iPhone and Plus model the following year.

Carrie Marshall
Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

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