Unwieldy iPhone 16 Pro Max will drag Apple back into the fat camp

Unwieldy iPhone 16 Pro Max will drag Apple back into the fat camp،

Oh, the days when phones were compact, plastic and light as a feather! We've carried them, dropped them, used them with one palm and no one batted an eye. Mainly because they would miss something on small screens, but still…

Ever-increasing screen sizes led to a corresponding increase in size, while lead designers and engineers replaced plastic builds with sharper aluminum or glass bodies when wireless charging became the norm.

Combined with the increase in camera counts and battery capacities, these trends have only added extra weight to our phones and don't even get us started with those cool but heavy foldables.

Telephone obesity epidemic

Flagship product ≠ toothpaste jar

The first iPhone models kept an almost constant weight, between 133 and 140 grams. This is fascinating, considering that the iPhone 4, with its bold and unique design for its time, incorporated metal and glass into its body without gaining much weight. Samsung, on the other hand, started things much lighter when the first Galaxy S debuted in 2010, simply because its body was plastic and it used an OLED display.

Things have quickly escalated since then, and from the 135g of the OG iPhone, we are now down to the 7.80oz (221g) of the iPhone 15 Pro Max. It's not even the worst offender of an Apple handset in this regard since its predecessor weighs 8.47 oz (240 g).

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In the Android camp, it took Samsung 14 years to nearly double the weight of its OG flagship Galaxy S to the 8.22 oz (233 g) of the Galaxy S24 Ultra now, with its sophisticated periscope zoom camera, its giant 6.8-inch screen and an S Pen stylus silo. These weights don't even count the rugged iPhone 15 Pro cases or the elaborate Galaxy S24 cases that protect the Ultra and add extra features and extra weight.

Titanium won't save the iPhone 16 Pro Max

As our chart shows, for Apple, things intensified when it started adding Plus, Pro, and Max lines of phones to its roster. It all culminated with the chunky glass and stainless steel block of last year's iPhone 14 Pro Max, which measures 6.33 x 3.05 x 0.31 inches and weighs 8.47 oz. (240.0g). For comparison, this is more than the Galaxy S24 Ultra or the Oppo Find X7 Ultra which has a larger screen and two periscope camera kits.

Apple's choice of the titanium frame for the iPhone 15 Pro range has started to slow down the overweight trend a bit, with the iPhone 15 Pro Max weighing 8% less than its predecessor. However, this trend reversal in iPhone weight apparently won't last long.

As Apple's Tetraprism 5x optical zoom camera kit is also expected to land in the iPhone 16 Pro, Apple will need more space inside the 6.1-incher to accommodate the larger module. He would have solved this riddle in a simple way, by increasing the iPhone16 Pro screen diagonal at 6.3 inches compared to the current 6.1 inch panel.

iPhone 16 Pro could have a bigger screen - Unwieldy iPhone 16 Pro Max will bring Apple back into the big league

iPhone 16 Pro could feature a bigger screen

However, this would have left a smaller display size difference between the iPhone16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Additionally, Apple's most expensive 2024 iPhone will not benefit from the optical zoom exclusivity that its predecessor currently enjoys. How was Apple able to solve this conundrum? Why, increase the iPhone 16 Pro Max also display at 6.9 inches and keep the size difference intact, of course.

Newly disclosed iPhone16 Professional sketches confirm that Apple will have four iPhone screen sizes to choose from this year, further fragmenting its most successful product. Instead of the 146.6 x 70.6 x 8.25 mm dimensions of the 15 Pro, the iPhone16 Pro would come in a larger, thicker 149.6 x 71.4 x 8.4mm case with the corresponding weight bump.

Granted, the 6.1-inch screen size was getting a bit long and small for today's high-end phones. Additionally, those who think between the regular program iPhone16 and its Pro version will be easier to decide, now that we will have a larger screen.

However, a larger screen also means more weight, and even if Apple continues with titanium construction in its 2024 Pro line of phones, their larger screens will more than make up for what the premium material saved. In other words, we can expect the biggest iPhone ever, with a weight exceeding that of some foldable phones as Apple returns to the big camp, expensive titanium or not.