Various leaks suggest the iPhone 14 will be borrowing a lot from its predecessor instead of showing something new. Given Apple's latest financial results, it might not even need to take risks with the next iPhone, so having a similar approach won't be that far-fetched. Renders of the upcoming iPhone 14 were leaked, showing a very familiar design.
Its predecessor, the iPhone 13, first launched in Sept. 2021. It sported a strikingly similar exterior as the iPhone 12, except for a tighter notch and a more angular rear lens arrangement instead of linear. While the upcoming iPhone 14 is said to follow almost the same exterior design as its predecessor, including keeping some of its internals, its Pro variant will allegedly be getting slightly more significant design changes.
The question now is, will Apple make its next iPhone look pretty much like the last one, albeit with some incremental upgrades? Well, it seems like that scenario won't be much of a stretch. Based on Apple's latest earnings report, the iPhone still generated the most revenue gain over its other products and services. Despite the iPhone 13 coming with relatively modest aesthetic changes, the earnings call revealed it had a "remarkable customer response," leading to a nine percent increase in its year-over-year revenue growth. Although this highlights the iPhone 13's success, it doesn't necessarily mean Apple would have to replicate the same steps in their next model to reach the same results. If the leaks mentioned above are accurate, it still only shows a small part of the picture. Minimal design changes are nothing new for Apple, but it has never debuted a rebranded older model as a successor of any of its major numbered iPhone lineup in the past. Even without a design overhaul, the likely scenario would be the iPhone 14 still being given naturally progressive upgrades, such as better camera lenses, bigger battery, improved display quality and the like. This can be expected since each of Apple's major launch events showcased at least a handful of new features worth mentioning.
Major iPhone 14 Changes Might Not Be Necessary
One of the biggest takeaways from the recent iPhone 14 leaks is that the base models might not have new chipsets. Both the iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 might have had minimal physical differences, even their primary camera hardware remained as dual 12-Megapixel shooters, but at least the newer model had an improved A15 Bionic chip, giving it a noticeable bump in performance. If the same can't be said with the base iPhone 14, some might suggest it won't seem much of a successor. However, this won't be the first time Apple did something similar since the iPhone X also came with the same A11 chip as its predecessor, the iPhone 8, though that one did receive other upgrades.
Despite ending up as the most expensive iPhone launch at the time, CEO Tim Cook claimed that customers still opted for the iPhone X over any other iPhone model, according to a previous report from T3. If the same tried-and-tested formula still works for Apple, then there's little reason for it to make any drastic changes with the iPhone 14, apart from giving it several notable internal upgrades here and there. After all, Apple might already be saving billions by not changing one of its habits, so keeping another wouldn't be that harmful if it continues to show them favorable results.