This stunning, transparent iPhone 16 Pro makes us wish Apple was more of a risk taker
The iPhone 16 Pro has a lot of positive qualities, but one thing is missing: personality β and a new transparent modification of the phone has just shown us how much more interesting it could be if Apple released its design handbrake.
Creating transparent versions of Apple’s latest phones is something of an annual tradition for the Phone repair guru YouTube channel, but this year might be the best yet.
The clear mod has echoes of the Nothing Phone 2, of course, but the iPhone 16 Pro looks particularly good because it has “some of the most stunning internals we’ve ever seen in an iPhone,” as the channel notes.
Of course, you can’t buy the transparent 16 Pro, because the modding technique is quite a complicated process that will void the warranty. As you can see in the full video below, once the various components have been removed from the backplate, there is the not inconsiderable task of removing the recycled aluminum finish.
That’s where gallium comes in β a low-melting-point metal that also looks a lot like Terminator T-1000, it can apparently eat through aluminum for breakfast. So Channel applied it to the iPhone 16 Pro and the aluminum (eventually) peeled off like paper, requiring them to clean up and remove the remaining paint to create a transparent back plate.
It’s all very ‘don’t try this at home’, but the impressive result β with a metal battery, a copper-colored wireless charger and a labeled Taptic engine β now has us longing for an iMac G3-style iPhone.
Echoes of the iMac G3
There’s virtually no chance that Apple will release a transparent iPhone Pro, even though it pioneered a similar type of translucent look in 1998 with the iMac G3. Still, all we really want from the Pro series is that it get some of the brighter colors seen on the base iPhone 16 series.
Our recent WhatsApp survey asking which iPhone 16 models you were planning to buy saw much higher engagement with the base iPhone 16 models, with the Ultramarine hue being better than teal and black.
Despite the arrival of the ‘Desert titanium’ shade on the iPhone 16 Pro series this year, the colors are otherwise very dull. While that certainly makes them more business-friendly, there’s certainly a significant number of Pro buyers who just want a nice touch in addition to the flagship model’s bonus features like 5x optical zoom.
There are some early signs that Apple may have ditched some brighter colors as part of its upgrade strategy for next year’s iPhone 17 Pro range, with a leak suggesting a shade of Teal Titanium, Green Titanium or Dark Green Titanium could be in the pipeline could be in place before 2025.
We’d take that speculation with a grain of salt, but it would certainly be an improvement β ββeven if Apple leaves the transparent offering to the modders.