Apple iPhone 16 announced: everything you need to know
Apple has announced the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Po at its "Glowtime" event, and we have the scoop on what's new
📱 Apple has announced the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro at its Glowtime event
🏎️ The new iPhone 16 has a better processor and an Action button
📸 The iPhone 16 Pro has improved cameras and longer battery life
📅 All four phones go on sale September 20
At the company’s “Glowtime” event in Cupertino, Apple has announced the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. The company’s newest smartphones, which will likely go on sale next week, focus heavily on AI and better battery life to appeal to customers, while offering minimal but notable design changes and faster performance.
Both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus look more or less like the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus (save for the redesigned camera bump), while the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max are growing in size a bit. They’re still covered in glass, ship in a few different colors, and boast hefty starting prices (although not as hefty as we initially thought).
Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s latest phones.
Follow along with our Apple event live blog to see everything the company announces!
iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus
📐 Same sizes, new colors, new buttons. The iPhone 16 sticks with the same 6.1-inch form factor as last year, while the iPhone 16 Plus is still 6.7 inches. You get Apple’s Ceramic Shield that’s 50 percent tougher on the front to protect the OLED displays, the Dynamic Island at the top, and 2,000 nits of brightness. It comes in five different colors: Ultra Marine, Teal, Pink, White, and Black.
The three biggest design changes involve the cameras and buttons. The camera bump on the back is now vertical instead of diagonal, which will make it easier to identify an iPhone 16 from far away.
On the left side, you’ll find the Action button, which was originally on the iPhone 15 Pro. It replaces the mute switch and can be fully customized to whatever you want, whether it be first-party features like the flashlight or camera to
The Camera Control is completely new. It’s a small area on the right side of the iPhone 16 that lets you trigger the camera, zoom, focus, and more while in the camera app. It’s pressure-sensitive and vibrates when clicked. Click it once to open the camera app, then again to snap a photo. You can slide your finger across it to zoom in, and various pressing gestures can bring up other tools for capturing the photo you want.
Apple is even opening the Camera Control up to third parties, in case you want to open something like Snapchat on the fly.
🏎️ Faster performance thanks to A18. The 3-nanometer Apple A18 chip is new on the iPhone 16. It’s more powerful than ever, ramping up to 30 percent faster than iPhone 15. It has a 16-core neural engine that’s designed for Apple Intelligence. It has 17 percent more memory bandwidth, a six-core CPU, a five-core GPU, and is up to 35 percent more efficient than A16 Bionic.
🧊 Keeping things cool when gaming. The iPhone 16 can sustain 30 percent higher sustained performance while gaming thanks to an improved cooling and thermal system. When gaming, Apple says the phone allows for 5x higher frame rates thanks to ray tracing. There are also more console-level games launching on iPhone and improved controller support.
🤖 Apple Intelligence makes a splash. The A18 powers all the new Apple Intelligence features included on the iPhone 16. Apple is adding a lot of exclusive features to drive sales, and there’s plenty here to enjoy.
You can do things like rewrite paragraphs, generate emojis, and more. It also lets you search for things in photos, specific moments in videos, or look for people in your images. Siri is getting a huge upgrade with more natural conversational skills, the ability to teach you to use your device, more personal commands, and more.
One of the coolest features is using the Camera Control to search for things around you. For example, you can hold up your iPhone to a puppy and use Apple Intelligence to identify what kind of dog it is. You can also use it to search for restaurants you come across on your scroll.
These features rely on the A18 and Private Cloud Compute, which lets you securely connect to special servers to use new AI models for increased functionality. Apple says none of your data is ever shared and can’t be viewed by the company.
Apple Intelligence is kicking off in US English and will expand to more languages in the future. Not all the features will be available at first. Apple says it’ll introduce more features in an iOS 18 beta next month.
📸 Upgraded cameras for better snaps. The 48MP main camera now supports capturing full 48MP images like on the iPhone Pro models and lets in 1.6x more light. You can zoom in to use the middle 12MP of the sensor for sharper telephoto shots, too. There’s also a new 12MP ultra-wide camera that lets in 2.6x more light than before. It also ships with macro mode so you can get up close to your subjects.
Apple says the cameras can capture spatial photos and videos that can be viewed later on Apple Vision Pro. Audio quality is improved in video, and speaking of which, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus can shoot 4K videos at 60 frames per second with Dolby Vision support.
🔋 Longer battery life and support for Qi2. The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus come with larger batteries than the iPhone 15 series, and combined with the efficiency of A18, they should give you a “big boost,” at least according to Apple. However, it’s unclear how big a difference it’ll make.
The iPhone 16 anbd 16 Plus also support Qi2 wireless charging for faster charging speeds. There’s a new MagSafe charger to accommodate.
iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max
📱 Bigger, better screens and titanium designs. The standard iPhone 16 Pro has a bigger 6.30-inch display while the iPhone 16 Pro Max gets a 6.9-inch display, the biggest ever on an iPhone. They also have the thinnest bezels of any Apple product to date.
Both phones still come with Grade 5 titanium and feature a new micro-blasted finish. For colors, there’s Black Titanium, White Titanium, Natural Titanium, and Desert Titanium, which sort of looks gold. The phone’s internals have also been optimized so that it runs 20 percent more efficiently.
The Action button is still here, and the Camera Control from iPhone 16 has also landed on the 16 Pro.
🏎️ 🏎️ A18 Pro is even faster. Apple’s new 3-nanometer A18 Pro is even faster than A18 with improved performance and efficiency. It comes with a six-core GPU for better gaming and a six-core CPU that’s up to 15 percent faster than A17 Pro. It also has a 16-core neural engine for better performance when using generative AI workloads in Apple Intelligence.
The A18 Pro’s advanced media features allow for things like faster media encoding, quicker USB 3 speeds, and faster camera processing times. You won’t find these on the regular A18.
📸 Upgraded cameras with better slow-mo. There’s a new 48MP Fusion camera on the back of the iPhone 16 Pro that comes with a second-generation quad-pixel sensor for faster shutter speeds and processing. There’s also a new 48MP ultra-wide camera with the same benefits. The 12MP telephoto comes with 5x zoom and uses the same tetra-prism design as the 15 Pro Max on both the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. The Camera Control is also here and allows for focus locking on subjects with the iPhone 16 Pro.
The iPhone 16 Pro comes with new Photographic Styles that can add deeper richness and new hues to your photos, and in Apple’s examples during the event, the results seemed really impressive.
Both of the new iPhone 16 Pros can now record video in 4K at 120 frames per second. It works in both standard video mode and slow-motion, and you can use ProRes and LOG recording so long as you connect an external drive to your iPhone. There are new grid options for capturing video that’ll make it easier for shooting movies, TikToks, and more.
🎤 Speak up! The microphones have been improved for more true-to-life audio quality on iPhone 16 Pro. You can also record Spatial Audio for the first time for listening back on your AirPods or Apple Vision Pro. Using the new Audio Mix feature, you can organize where voices are positioned and how loud background noise is for a more cinematic experience. Voice Memos also uses the new mics for higher-quality recordings, which can come in handy for musicians who want to record song ideas while playing an instrument.
🤖 Apple Intelligence gets even better. The iPhone 16 Pro has all the same Apple Intelligence features as the regular iPhone 16, as well as some other features that’ll remain exclusive to the 16 Pro.
🔋 Longer battery life with Qi2 support. The iPhone 16 Pro Max has the best battery life ever on an iPhone, according to Apple, while the 16 Pro’s endurance has been improved over the 15 Pro. The company relies on the A18 Pro’s efficiency improvements and bigger batteries to make it happen.
Like the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max have Qi2 wireless charging support.
Pricing and availability
The iPhone 16 will start at $799 while iPhone 16 Plus starts at $899. The iPhone 16 Pro costs $999 and the iPhone 16 Pro Max is priced at $1,199. All four iPhone 16 models will go up for preorder this Friday, September 13th.
The iPhone 16 series will go on sale September 20.
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