Source: iPhone 7 will be similar in design to iPhone 6, but will have a flush rear camera, and no antenna bands on back
First Details on iPhone 7 Design: Flush Rear Camera, No Antenna Bands Across the Back — Apple's iPhone 7 isn't expected to launch until the usual September timeframe …
Context & Ripple Effects
This February 2016 leak lands mid-cycle and extends a pattern already visible in the corpus: the leaked iPhone 6s casings had shown an external appearance nearly identical to the iPhone 6, so a third consecutive year of unchanged bodywork was the live question for the 2016 model.
What makes the report notable is that it claims change concentrated in details rather than silhouette — a flush rear camera and removal of the antenna bands across the back — which the later coverage bears out: the shipped phone matched the old shape while packing a new force-sensitive home button, stereo speakers, and water resistance, and reviewers ultimately flagged the lack of new design as the main letdown.
First-order effects
- Buyers deciding between an iPhone 6/6s and the upcoming model get almost no visual signal to justify upgrading — the differentiators are the flush camera, hidden antenna bands, and whatever internals ship in September.
- Apple's supply chain locks tooling around the existing unibody form factor months before launch, since the leak indicates no chassis redesign to retool for.
Second-order effects
- Case and accessory makers can carry over iPhone 6-series molds, lowering their cost of supporting the new phone but also shrinking the accessory-refresh revenue that a redesign normally triggers.
- With exteriors converging, competitive pressure shifts to what the camera and input changes deliver — the territory where the eventual dual-camera Plus model and haptic home button became the actual selling points.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — identical shells three years running — Apple's iPhone cadence effectively decouples industrial design from capability upgrades, making leaks about small exterior cues less predictive of the product's real story.
- A stable external design also lowers the switching cost of bigger internal bets like dropping the headphone jack, because the familiar body cushions a disruptive change inside it.
The trend: Apple's iPhone cycle is shifting from annual exterior redesigns toward multi-year shells refreshed through cameras, haptics, and port decisions — with leaks increasingly reading the trim, not the blueprint.