A brand new Apple iPhone 16 has finally been revealed in new colours and this is Apple’s first mainstream smartphone phone to actually pack an AI offering.
Available in more vivid colours compared to previous years, the new colours include UltraMarine and Teal.
Also refreshed is the updated dual-camera arrangement on its rear, which is set up vertically, as last seen on the iPhone 12 from 2020.
Powered by a new A18 chip with 3nm process, Apple claims it’s 30 percent faster than the iPhone 15’s CPU. An Action Button that debuted on last year’s Pro models, and a new physical camera control button below the power button are also included.
Apple says it plans to expand its AI features into languages other than English, including Chinese, coming next year. “Plans to” isn’t a guarantee, but there are big questions around Apple’s expansion of AI into the Chinese market and what that could mean for iPhone sales there.
The 16 follows the same general design as the 15, with a squared-off frame, and rear glass allowing for MagSafe wireless charging.
Apple’s Dynamic Island top cutout houses its front-facing camera and Face ID sensors, and USB-C charging / data port at its base. While the move back to vertically aligned rear lenses may seem like a strange retread to a design element Apple moved on from, but the backtrack makes sense for better spatial video support on the Apple Vision.
The phone can also record spatial audio.
There’s a new Audio Mix feature that’s powered by machine learning to separate background sound and pick from different voice options! You can record sound as in a professional studio, via the new iPhone.
The device also has next-gen screen protection that is stronger than the first-gen Ceramic Shield display protection.
The most notable hardware change, however, is the new physical shutter button that lets users customise various camera features for quick access.
The new button supports tap as well as slide gestures, due to the capacitive surface and a Taptic Engine underneath for vibration feedback.
Aside from capturing pictures, it also pulls up a control slider in the camera viewfinder to adjust metrics such as exposure and depth of field.
The new processor is built atop an updated 3-nanometer processor.
The company says it borrowed tech from Apple silicon powering its Mac lineup to boost the graphics output, bringing a sizeable improvement in raw performance as well as power efficiency.
It delivers a 17% lift in memory bandwidth, a 2x boost at hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and up to 20% improvement in sustained performance. The 6-core architecture includes two performance cores and four efficiency cores, surpassing the A17 Pro’s raw performance by around a 15% margin.
The most notable software-side upgrade is Visual Intelligence, which is tiled to the Camera Control button.
Think of it as Google Lens but supercharged, with the new Siri AI chops as well as seamless offloading to ChatGPT for more complex queries. Visual Intelligence works in the same vein as GPT-4o vision capabilities, but with the added benefit of local integration with tools such as Calendar.
Apple has kept the 48-megapixel primary camera but has upgraded the ultrawide camera to a 48-megapixel sensor while keeping the telephoto camera at 12-megapixel resolution. Notably, the 5x optical zoom capability enabled by the tetra prism lenses architecture is now available on the iPhone 16 Pro and the Max version, as well.
Pricing and Availability
• iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will be available in ultramarine, teal, pink, white, and black in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB storage capacities. iPhone 16 starts at RRP A$1,399 inc. GST and iPhone 16 Plus starts at RRP A$1,599 inc. GST.
• Customers can get A$255 to A$1,125 in credit when they trade in iPhone 11 or higher, to put toward an iPhone 16.
