iPhone 16 Pro’s gold titanium color just revealed before Apple event (2024)

With its ‘Pro’ iPhone range, Apple typically provides one alternate color alongside the usual demure mix of metallic, black and white shades. In recent years, that’s been “Blue Titanium” for the iPhone 15 Pro and “Deep Purple” for its predecessor.

That’s led to some speculation about what shade the imminent arrival of the iPhone 16 Pro will bring. Until recently, it was reported that Apple was set to bring a rose gold shade to the table, but now the consensus seems to be that the company is planning a richer kind of gold color dubbed “Desert Titanium”.

Leakers have been divided on just how gold this will be. While Majin Bu described this as a “relatively discreet and deep” kind of “dark gold” in a post on X, a picture from Sonny Dickson showed something almost caramel in tone.

Now 9to5Mac has attempted to offer a definitive answer, via a mystery source. While no explanation of the leaker’s credentials is provided, the site mentions that it’s the same person that correctly revealed the exact shade of the Natural Gray iPhone 15 Pro ahead of time. So it’s likely to be reliable.

Here’s the color that the site is confidently predicting:

It certainly looks lighter than Dickson’s image, and while I personally rather like the darker brown look (as someone who cherished a Microsoft Zune long after support ended), it avoids ‘beige’ criticisms by being a bit more muted.

Indeed, 9to5Mac notes there’s a certain similarity between the colorway and the recently announced Kim Kardashian Beats Studio Pro. Beats, of course, was bought by Apple just over ten years ago.

There’s one final thing worth flagging in the image above, and that’s the case cutout along the top to the left of the sleep/wake button. That’s likely a gap for the capture button, which is set to allow easy access to the camera for quickfire video taking on all four models of iPhone 16.

We’ll know the full set of iPhone 16 colors soon enough. Apple has already sent out invites for its upcoming “Glowtime” event, due to take place on September 9 at its Cupertino campus, with rumors tipping appearances for AirPods 4, the Apple Watch Series 10 and maybe even the iPad mini 7 alongside new phones.

As for the iPhone 16 Pro, we’re expecting slightly larger handsets, with the smaller version inheriting the 5x optical zoom from last year’s supersize Pro Max model, as well as a big power boost from the A18 chipset and a new focus on AI via Apple Intelligence.