As a small subset of the internet loses its mind over what colour schemes Apple will employ for the iPhone 16, the wits among them are finding new and interesting ways to describe a rumoured new tone.
Is it brown? Gold? Rose gold? Bronze? Piz Buin? Titanium Desert?
Nobody knows. Photos leak purporting to show the new colour range. Then new photos leak that seem different from the ones before. Is it the lighting, or a wily game of cat and mouse?
Some seem brownish. Some goldenish. Or is it copper? Is that the Pro? Is that brown a joke?
Speculation suggests the iPhone 16 will come in white, black, gold, and grey, following on from the iPhone 15’s pink, yellow, green, blue and black.
But what is gold exactly?
And when is gold really brown?
And if the brown is not gold and is really brown, or copper-bronze-brown, what does this mean?
The Stranglers had a huge hit 42 years ago with Golden Brown, a song about addiction. What’s that got to do with anything? Nothing. But these debates are of similar worth – even the people leaking the information say they can’t be sure it’s representative of final designs and palettes.
On X, where the leaks often emanate from, people have described the purported golden brown shown in photos as “cardboard”, “titanium poop”, “brownium” and “doo doo brown”. They’ve also had some criticisms.
Meanwhile, one described the gold as “iPhone by Kim”. This was not in reference to the North Korean Dear Leader’s favourite brown loafers, but two of the colours in Kim Kardashian’s new Beats x Kim cans – Dune and Earth.
Meanwhile, one of the leakers was recently caught out by a fake invite to an Apple launch event that had been mocked up by someone who was “bored”.
