iPhone 8 might be red and otherwise look the same as the iPhone 7, report claims

The company has been adding new, jazzier shades to its phones – including black and pink – but red would be the brightest yet

An Apple store employee pushes a cart of (PRODUCT) RED iPod nanos sit in the Apple store in midtown Manhattan October 13, 2006 in New York (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

The next iPhone is going to be red, according to at least one rumour.

Apple will release an iPhone 7s and 7s Plus towards the end of next year, sporting the new colour, according to a report from MacOtakara.

Other than the big change to the colour, the phone will keep the same aluminium design and look almost the same as the iPhone 7, the blog reported citing a Taiwanese supplier. That means that it will look almost identical with the iPhone 6 and 6s, too – with the exception of the headphone jack – meaning that Apple would have been using the same basic design for four generations of iPhone.

That contradicts previous reports that have suggested the company will skip out the 7s entirely and move onto the iPhone 8. That model would sport a complete redesign, pushing the screen all the way to the sides, getting rid of buttons from the front and making the phoen entirely out of glass.

Macotakara has previously leaked colours accurately in the past. Both the new rose gold and jet black colours – which came to the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 7, respectively – were revealed in advance by the Japanese blog.

The company has made plenty of red products in the past, as part of its collaborations with Aids research organisation Project (RED). That has included special red versions of its devices as well as promotions in its app store.

But adding a red phone would be a big step after Apple has moved to make the colours of its phones more conservative. With the exception of the popular iPhone 5c, which sported a plastic body that came in a range of bright colours, the company has only made its recent products in conservative metal colours – and even its version of pink is called rose gold and is a relatively subdued version of the colour.