Have you heard the good news? It’s officially Glowtime, ladies and gentlemen. Apple has, unsurprisingly, come out of the woodwork for its annual iPhone check-up – among other things – and it hasn’t disappointed this year. The Big Fruit Company took to the stage at Apple Park, months ago we’re sure, to unveil the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, and… well, you know the rest.
After a rather middling performance where Apple’s Watch Series 10, Watch Ultra 3 2 and AirPods are concerned, here’s hoping that Apple has something big in store for the world for the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus that doesn’t include everyone’s favourite words: Apple Intelligence (AI, if you didn’t get it). Uh… About that.
This is the bit where you gasp
Bigger is always better, or so we’re told. Apple, apparently, didn’t get the memo this year, ultimately sticking with the same 6.1in and 6.7in displays on the vanilla iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, respectively – going as high as 2,000 nits or as low as a single nit. If you’re in the bigger is better camp, you’ll need to head on over to the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max corner. If you’re lacking the pocket space necessary, you might want to stick around.
One downside, however, is that you’ll be stuck with the 3nm A18 chipset. That might not sound all too bad – it’s a whole two numbers larger than the iPhone 15’s A16 chip, right? Sure, but you’ll be sacrificing the opportunity to get your hands on the A18 Pro chipset, reserved for the richer folk out there. Calm down. It still packs a 16-core neural engine and four efficiency cores. You’ll be just fine.
Don’t believe us? Apple reckons the basic A18 chipset supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and delivers those AAA games that were reserved for the Pro models last year. That means Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and a new title that Apple took the opportunity to announce: Honor of Kings: World from Tencent.
Protecting all that tech is a body wrapped up aerospace-grade aluminium, an even tougher display, and colour-infused backing glass to provide some new colours to gawk at, complete with a “new” customisable action button that we last saw appear on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Joining it is an actually new ‘camera control’ button to fiddle with, summoning the camera at the tap of a button. New for iPhones, that is. Sony smartphones have had one for years.
It’ll do a whole lot more than that, too, if you know where to stick your fingers, but we’ll get to that. Just know that it’s making use of the iPhone 16’s updated dual-camera set-up on the phone’s rear to get itself going. Speaking of which, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus reps a 48MP main sensor and a new ultra-wide camera that’ll make autofocus a breeze and allow for more light when the situation calls for it.
Oh, and USB-C returns, as does the Dynamic Island that Apple popularised two iPhones ago. But you already knew that, didn’t you?
Apple Intelligence arrives
As expected, the iPhone 16 line-up will be the first proper smartphone under Apple’s wing to fully utilise the company’s foray into artificial intelligence – Apple Intelligence – announced earlier this year. Expect upgrades for Siri, a smarter gallery, Writing Tools, and AI regulars like Image Playground, Genmoji and Clean Up… in October.
Yup. Apple’s biggest selling point this year is currently only available to developers in the iOS 18.1 developer beta, while the general public will need to wait until October for a glimpse of the public beta. When it does eventually arrive everywhere, it’ll be available on the entire iPhone 16 line-up as well as the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
Visual Intelligence is likely the coolest of the AI-touting features headed our way, being a Google lens-like competitor that’ll help you recognise the type of dog strolling by, or information about that restaurant you’ve been dying to try. Again, that’s headed to the iPhone 16 line-up only later this year.
If you’d like to walk away from the Apple Store on 20 September with a brand-new 128GB iPhone 16 to show off, you’ll need to fork over $800 (R14,300) for the privilege and living in the US. Or, you could go the whole hog and get the $900 128GB iPhone 16 Plus (R16,000) to get the extra six inches of real estate in your face. We doubt those prices will remain that low once they reach South Africa, the details of which are scarce. We’ll keep you in the loop.
