Apple Announces iPhone 16 Series

As expected, Apple today announced its next-generation iPhone family, the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. They are available for preorder now and will ship later in September with iOS 18. But the Apple Intelligence features the company announced back in June at its annual WWDC event won’t ship until later in 2024 and beyond. 

“We are thrilled to introduce the first iPhones designed from the ground up for Apple Intelligence,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during today’s pre-recorded event. “iPhone continues to make a profound impact on all our lives … Apple Intelligence will super-charge these experiences.”

The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus are minor upgrades to their predecessors, with 6.1 and 6.7 inch displays, respectively aluminum bodies in a new range of richer colors, improved ceramic shield screen protection, up to 2000 nits of brightness, and the Action button that debuted last year on the Pro models. It will ship with iOS 18.

The iPhone 16’s two rear camera lenses are now vertically stacked to visually differentiate them from the iPhone 15s. There’s a new 48 MP main camera lens, like Pro got last year, that supports 2X optical zoom, and a new 12 MP ultra-wide lens with autofocus and macro capabilities. The camera system supports spatial capture for the 13 people with an Apple Vision Pro headset, and wind noise reduction in video recordings.

There’s also a new Camera control button with gesture support that can used to launch the Camera app, focus, take shots and video recordings, and perform other actions, often with on-screen controls. Camera control is extensible to support third-party apps like Snapchat, too.

Camera control will support Visual Intelligence later this year. It will let you click and hold on it to learn more about the real-world location you see through the viewfinder, use text recognition capabilities, and access third-party tools like Google Search and ChatGPT.

For Apple Intelligence, the iPhone 16 jumps forward two processor generations to the 3 nm Apple Silicon A18, and it now comes with 8 GB of RAM, up from 6 GB in the previous models. The CPU, GPU, and NPU (Neural Engine) are all significantly improved, and the new iPhones will run multiple generative language models on-device. There’s a new thermal design to reduce heat and improve performance. The iPhone 16 also supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and the AAA games that were previously only available on the iPhone 15 Pro handsets.

Some of the new AI capabilities that Apple highlighted include Writing tools almost everywhere you type, Image Playground for image generation, a Relive memories feature for finding older photos using text prompts, summaries in Mail and notifications, priority notifications, and Siri, which is getting a major update to be more personal and powerful. Siri will provide step-by-step guidance for specific tasks, and Apple promises more features in the future. Indeed, all of this is future leaning. Apple Intelligence will be a free update in the future, starting with a beta next month.

The iPhone 16 starts at $799, while the iPhone 16 Plus starts at $899, the same as last year and with the same 128 GB of storage.

The iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max are also minor upgrades. Both offer slightly larger displays than their non-Pro stablemates, and their predecessors–6.3 and 6.9 inches, respectively–and they have noticeably smaller bezels. The display tech carries over from last year, as does the body’s Titanium material. Most of the colors are the same as last year, but Apple dropped Blue Titanium and replaced it with a Desert Titanium that’s more attractive than the leaks suggested.

There’s a newly machined chassis for improved thermals that expands beyond the work Apple did on the non-Pro iPhone 16s, larger batteries, and the new Camera control button. The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max support the same Apple Intelligence features noted above. But there are unique features, too, powered by an improved 3 nm A18 Pro chip with a 35 TOPS NPU (Neural Engine), improved memory bandwidth, better overall performance, and lower power consumption.

The camera system is getting a small hardware upgrade overall. The most significant change, to me, is the ultra-wide camera lens, which gets a 48 MP sensor and autofocus, putting it on par with the main camera lens. The smaller iPhone 16 Pro now supports 5X optical zoom, the same as the Pro Max, up from 3X last year, though there are no changes on Pro Max. Or as Apple calls it, “three new cameras.” It will support a two-stage shutter through the new Camera control button with a future update, and there are new Photographic Styles, some with dramatic new looks.

Video has always been an iPhone strength, and the new Pro models expand on that with a Cinematic slow motion mode that delivers 4K video at 120 FPS with Dolby Vision. You can record 4K/120 in ProRes to an external device, and unique Camera control experiences. On the audio front, the iPhone 16 Pros deliver four studio quality microphones with improved noise reduction, Spatial audio capture during video recording, and a new Audio Mix feature that with four mix choices. And Voice Memo is getting a multi-track recording capability later this year as part of Apple Intelligence.

The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max starts at $1199, the same prices as last year, and they ship with same 128 GB of storage to start. They will be available for preorder Friday and ship next week, on September 20.

Apple is keeping select iPhone 14 and 15 models in the market. And there are also new cases for all four iPhone 16 models that work with the Camera control and a faster MagSafe Qi2 charger.

Apple also announced the Apple Watch Series 10, with a thinner, new design and taller and bigger displays, new AirPods 4 earbuds in versions with and without Active Noise Cancelation (ANC) capabilities, AirPods Max 2 headphones with new colors and USB-C connectivity, and some new features for the existing AirPods Pro 2 earbuds. You can read Laurent’s write-up to learn more.