AI was a major part of Apple’s event hosted by CEO Tim Cook.
“The next generation of iPhone is designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up. It marks the beginning of an exciting new era,” Cook said at the product launch.
Quoted from GSM Arena, the new iPhone 16 and 16 Plus are intentionally designed to meet the computational demands of Apple Intelligence (Cupertino’s name for its AI) with a new 3nm chipset. The presence of Action and Camera Control buttons is also a differentiator from previous generations of iPhones.
Apple is using the same sized display panels as before, 6.1 inches for the iPhone 16 and 6.7 inches for the iPhone 16 Plus, which means they are both 0.2 inches smaller than the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max.
The display still runs at 60Hz, and its brightness can go up to 2,000 nits in sunlight and as low as 1 nit in the dark. The new Ceramic Shield protector is said to be 50 percent stronger than the original formulation and Apple says it is twice as strong as the glass used in other phones.
The big upgrade this year is the Apple A18 chipset, which is two generations ahead of what the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus have. It’s a second-generation 3nm chip that’s more powerful and more efficient.
The A18 CPU is claimed to be 30 percent faster than the iPhone 15 CPU and 60 percent faster than the iPhone 12 CPU. The GPU is 40 percent faster than the iPhone 15 and twice as fast as the iPhone 12. Apple has also increased system memory bandwidth by 17 percent.
Apple improved the thermals of the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, saying they achieve 30 percent higher sustained performance. This includes reworking the motherboard and adding a thermal substrate made from 100 percent recycled aluminum.
Apple also embedded Visual Intelligence ?” which can be directly accessed by tapping and holding the Camera Control. To use it, just point it somewhere and tap Control again.
It can recognize buildings, objects, and even pets and display relevant information. If a user points it at an upcoming event poster, the date and other details will be automatically added to the calendar.
The iPhone 16’s main camera is a 48MP shooter with a 26mm f/1.6 lens and a sensor with 1.0µm pixels, plus sensor-shift OIS. It can shoot 4K video with Dolby Vision at 60fps. New AI features also include wind noise reduction for video.
There’s no dedicated telephoto lens yet, but the main camera and processing pipeline offers 2x optical zoom at 12MP or you can opt for a higher-res 48MP option.
Both new models will be available starting September 20, with pre-orders starting Friday (September 13). Both phones have a base storage of 128GB. The iPhone 16 starts at $800 and the iPhone 16 Plus starts at $900.
58 countries and regions, including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey, UAE, UK, and the US are in the first wave to get the new iPhone 16 and 16 Plus on September 20.
The second wave of countries includes Macau, Vietnam, and 19 other countries and regions and they will get the new iPhones starting Friday, September 27. 
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