Hoping for a huge design overhaul for the next iPhone? Don't hold your breath.
The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people "familiar with the matter," reports that Apple is planning "only subtle changes" for the models coming this fall. Upcoming models will likely be thinner, but will keep the same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes used for the past two years.
"The biggest planned change in this year's phones is the removal of the headphone plug, which will make the phone thinner and improve its water resistance," according to the report. Going forward, you'll be able to use the phone's Lightning connector to not only juice up your phone, but also plug in headphones. All in all, the next iPhone should be 1mm thinner than current models, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told the Journal.
Those waiting for a huge design change will need to practice their patience until next year. The report notes that Apple is planning bigger changes for 2017, which will mark the iPhone's 10th anniversary.
"Those changes could include an edge-to-edge organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, screen and eliminating the home button by building the fingerprint sensor into the display," the Journal's sources said.
Until now, Apple has given its flagship iPhone a big makeover every two years. The departure from that pattern comes at a dicey time for Apple, which in April posted its first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales, and first revenue drop in 13 years. Looking forward, iPhone shipments are expected to total 210 to 220 million this year, "falling as much as 8.6 percent from 2015" thanks to less-than-stellar demand for a new model, according to a recent Nikkei report.