The new Pros are here. Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max have the A18 Pro chip, camera controls and “a huge leap forward in battery life”, Apple claims. There’s also a new main camera, a new ultrawide and 5x telephoto on the ‘vanilla’ Pro. The titanium design remains, and Apple is advertising the thinnest bezels ever on any product it’s ever made. This should be interesting.
The two Pro iPhone 16s will be available in Black Titanium, Natural Titanium, White Titanium, and Desert Titanium. Pre-orders begin on September 13, and they will be available on September 20 at prices of $999 and up for the Pro and $1,199 and up for the Pro Max.
As predicted in rumors, Apple Intelligence is not going to be built-in from day one. Instead, it will arrive as a free software update next month with the first set of features in US English in “most regions around the world.” This includes writing tools, recording, transcribing and summarizing audio, short notifications, priority messaging in Mail, email summaries, a redesigned Siri with improved understanding capabilities, and typing to Siri.
Then, “later this year” and “in the coming months”, a new batch of features will be released — including Image Playground, which lets you create images and emojis. Siri will be able to provide customized intelligence for you using your personal context and gain onscreen awareness to understand what you’re looking at and take action based on it. By the way, ChatGPT is also coming at this vague later point.
Now that we’ve learned all about Apple intelligence, let’s talk about the hardware — as much as Apple will let us. The iPhone 16 Pro has a 6.3-inch screen and the Pro Max has a 6.9-inch screen, breaking the record for the world’s largest iPhone screen. On top of that, the latest-generation Ceramic Shield (which is still not actually ceramic, note) has “an advanced formulation” that’s claimed to be twice as strong as the glass on any other smartphone, whatever that means.
Apple promises up to 20% better sustained performance on these phones than their predecessors, thanks to improvements in heat dissipation and efficiency. The A18 Pro is built on a 3nm process and has a new 16-core Neural Engine. Total system memory bandwidth has increased by 17%, which also benefits the 6-core GPU that is up to 20% faster than the previous generation.
The new 6-core CPU is the “fastest in a smartphone,” with two performance cores and four efficiency cores that can run the same workload as the iPhone 15 Pro 15% faster while using 20% less power.
Like the other iPhone 16s, the Pro also has a camera control – a button that is not a button, or as Apple likes to say, “the result of thoughtful hardware and software integration”. It has a tactile switch that powers the click experience, a high-precision force sensor that enables a light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that allows touch and slide interactions.
You can use it to adjust zoom, exposure, and depth of field in the Camera app, and “later this fall” you’ll also get a two-stage shutter function. Developers will also be able to use it in their apps.
“Later this year” it will “unlock visual intelligence” allowing you to learn about objects and places by clicking and holding the camera control, allowing you to get information about places you pass, add an event from a flyer to your calendar, or identify the breed of an animal, things like that. You’ll also be able to search Google and use ChatGPT with the camera control, for some reason.
Talking about the cameras, there is a new main 48 MP Fusion Camera with a “faster, more efficient” quad-pixel sensor that supports 4K120fps video recording in Dolby Vision, a first on a smartphone. Apple has also promised zero shutter lag for 48 MP ProRAW and HEIF images. Both iPhone 16 Pro can now take spatial photos in addition to video. There are also four new “studio-quality” mics.
iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max can connect to the nearest satellite to send and receive texts, emojis, and tapbacks on iMessage and SMS, even when you’re out of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage.
