• The iPhone 14 Pro has only be available to purchase for a couple of months, but attention is already turning to next year’s flagship model.
• Noted industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has revealed some potential insights into the iPhone 15 Pro design.
• One element includes the removal of all physical buttons in favour of haptic feedback.

It is time for our weekly future iPhone story and we are looking at next year’s iPhone 15 Pro. The name of the device is yet to be confirmed, or indeed whether it will be Apple’s flagship offering for 2023, but details regarding its design have already surfaced.

The source for the report is noted industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose track record features more winners than losers, so it can be taken with a fair degree of credibility.

To that end, Kuo recently tweeted out a thread regarding the iPhone 15 Pro and the fact that the design of the device will feature no physical buttons, in a move that would certainly put it into the category of Apple out-Apple-ing itself.

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My latest survey indicates that the volume button and power button of two high-end iPhone 15/2H23 new iPhone models may adopt a solid-state button design (similar to the home button design of iPhone 7/8/SE2 & 3) to replace the physical/mechanical button design.

— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) October 28, 2022

Here Kuo explains that the physical buttons will be replaced with solid-state options similar to what Apple uses for the home button, last seen on the iPhone 7. Added to this will be a haptic feedback design that will not physically click when pressed, but rather mimic a click.

“There will be Taptic Engines located on the internal left and right sides to provide force feedback to make users feel like they are pressing physical buttons,” Kuo explained in a subsequent tweet. “Due to this design change, the number of Taptic Engines used in each iPhone will increase from the current one to three,” he added.

Just how effective of a design that will be for consumers remains to be seen, but if anyone can make it seem like a good thing, it’s the Apple marketing team.

A final tidbit mentioned by the analyst is that the iPhone 15 Pro will feature a USB Type-C port instead of a Lightning one. This will likely be the start of a mainstay on future iPhone devices, as the company has confirmed it will comply with recent EU regulations about standardising charging ports on phones.

It has until 2024 to do so, so the iPhone 15 Pro may be the first to switch.