Apple isn't going for Gold with the iPhone 15 Pro

(Image credit: Apple)

published 25 August 2023

If like me you're a fan of the iPhone 14 Pro's gold option, it looks like there's bad news: Apple isn't going to offer gold as a colour for the iPhone 15 Pro. According to new reports Apple intends to offer the new titanium-encased iPhone in a new range of colours, and this time gold isn't one of them.

According to 9to5Mac the new colours are dark blue, silver, space black and a "natural titanium shade"; the colours will be for both the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The previously rumoured dark red that I thought looked amazing has apparently been shelved.

As for the standard iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Plus, we're expecting to see those models come in a choice of black, green, blue, yellow or pink.

Why isn't Apple going for gold?

Apple clearly wants you to focus on the new titanium material, and it does like to change the colour options from generation to generation. But I'm still surprised by the lack of a gold model, because its introduction was specifically designed to appeal to the Chinese market. As Tim Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek back in 2015, "A big reason for why we released the gold iPhone as because many Chinese consumers like the color gold... sales for the gold iPhones in China have far, far exceeded other markets."

Presumably Apple feels that gold has now lost its desirability. It's not a common colour option in current smartphones; the closest Samsung colour option for its flagship Galaxy S23 Ultra is cream.

I think the closest equivalent iPhone 15 Pro colour is going to be the natural titanium option. You can see Apple's use of titanium already on the Apple Watch Ultra, and I'd expect the iPhone 15 Pro to match that its premium smartwatch and premium iPhone appear to be carved from the same metal. It's not quite as buttery as the current gold option but it's likely to be warmer-looking than the silver model Apple is apparently also going to offer.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).