Sink your teeth into this Apple announcement.
The tech giant unveiled the iPhone 16 on Monday, introducing cutting-edge hardware capabilities, an even more sleek and sustainable design and integration with ChatGPT-powered artificial intelligence, which allows users to make even more nuanced commands.
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus start at $799 and $899, respectively. There’s also the iPhone 16 Pro, starting at $999, and the Pro Max, priced at $1,199.
The phones will be available Sept. 20, with preorders beginning Friday. Apple also unveiled software upgrades in the form of its iOS 18.
The iPhone 16, which comes in 6.1 inches or 6.7 for its Plus model, introduces a new camera-specific slide button on the phone’s lower half. This “camera control” feature automatically brings up the camera’s app and, when lightly tapped, allows users to toggle a drop-down of many high-end optic features to enhance pictures. The 6.3-inch Pro and the 6.9-inch Pro Max models also have the “camera control” button.
The camera itself is 48 megapixels, four times the resolution of iPhone 14. It also has an ultra-wide ratio and spatial photo features. New audio features can help eliminate background noise, too.
Next month, iPhone 16 users will test-drive Apple Intelligence, a ChatGPT-wired generative AI that has a bevy of writing and tone enhancements — Apple even says it can cushion Slack messages to your boss — including the ability to create custom images and emojis from written prompts.
What’s in store for iPhone 16
- A new camera hardware side button
- 48-megapixel camera
- Enhanced custom photo album collections
- ChatGPT-powered artificial “Apple Intelligence”
- Conversationally improved Siri
- Writing tools that can work with apps like Slack to send more professionally polished messages
- iPhone camera can now scan restaurants, books, flyers and merchandise and pull relevant information
- New AI privacy features
- iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max have the thinnest make
- It can create images and custom emojis from text prompts
- The action button has more features
- Transcribed phone call option
Siri also has a much more conversational ability to understand the context of conversations both spoken and written. It can scan text from messages and pull up music albums and other related things that are searchable.
In the iPhone’s camera roll, the new software also builds on searchable features. Now users can promptly filter through their images and videos by searching for names of people and actions they were doing to make collections of memories from specific dates.
Again, the new iPhone’s camera sees a major upgrade when paired with Apple Intelligence to essentially scan the world around you. If you show it a restaurant’s exterior, it can pull up hours, reviews and menus and can also scan flyers to input dates into calendars.
Taking photos of products you are interested in can also prompt shopping options and the high-tech camera can even help differentiate between breeds of dogs. Apple also stressed that the ChatGPT-powered device can scan through college lecture notes and assist with study time.
Calls can also now be recorded, transcribed and summarized, according to the company. Notifications also have a priority order feature.
Phone-wise, Apple Intelligence will also be available on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max in a free update next month. More features will be rolling out in the months to come as well.
The company also urged a need for privacy with the major upgrades and noted there has been a “private cloud compute” option built that doesn’t even store data with Apple, the brand noted.
The iPhone runs on a specially designed and high-powered “A18” chip that promises better battery life.
Its action button was also upgraded to quickly activate other abilities of the phone. This includes turning on its flashlight, translating language, identifying music or other shortcuts.
