Phew, you don’t need to feel too bad about not buying Apple’s new iPhone 16

• Bloomberg reports that the iPhone 16 will likely only have minimal changes from the iPhone 15.
• For those of us not looking to upgrade, we won’t be missing out on some life-changing new features.
• Apple Intelligence features are only for the iPhone 15 and 16, but … meh?

There’s good news for those of us who suffer from FOMO (PHONE-MO?) in September when the new iPhones are announced.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the iPhone 16 is expected to feature only minimal upgrades from last year’s iPhone 15 (which was only a little different from 2022’s 14).

There may be a new camera button on the side and slightly larger screens. But the lineup will be largely the same as it has been the past few years — four phones in varying sizes (iPhone 16, 16 Plus, Pro, Pro Max).

While the fact that the iPhone 16 lineup isn’t going to be mind-blowing might be a bummer for anyone who was ready to upgrade or needs a new phone ASAP, it’s good news for another large chunk of people: those of us with a recent-ish iPhone that can chug out another year or two just fine.

This, of course, isn’t great news for Apple, which would very much like you to buy a new iPhone.

Plenty of iPhone 14s, 13s — heck, even iPhone 12s — are still working perfectly fine! Sure, there have been incremental updates (the Dynamic Island of the iPhone 14 is cool and the cameras always get a little better). But these phones are expensive, and carrier subsidies are quite different these days than they were back in the 2010s. It feels less and less urgent to have the latest model iPhone.

The big new thing that was announced this spring at Apple’s WWDC event was “Apple Intelligence” — new AI features that will be available only on the iPhone 15 and 16. A recent survey of Morgan Stanley summer interns found that while most of them use iPhones, they don’t really care about upgrading just to get AI features.

As someone still very happy with my iPhone 14, I was a little bummed to learn that my phone wouldn’t be able to do the new AI stuff. It made me wonder if I should upgrade to a 16, even though my 14 was still perfectly fine. It sounds like probably… no.

Which is great news for my psyche and my bank account. Thanks, Tim Cook! Er, I mean, sorry?