The big Apple event of the year is finally here, and as expected, the major innovation highlights are the iPhone 16 Pro and its Max version. Once again, we are treated to the same fundamental design and familiar colors.
Last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max were among the best phones released last year. How do this year’s models stack up? Are they worth upgrading to? Let’s break it all down.
Apple claims the next-gen screen protection on the iPhone 15 Pro and its Max trim is stronger than the first-gen Ceramic Shield display protection. The most notable hardware change, however, is the new physical shutter button that lets users also customize various camera features for quick access.
This button supports tap as well as slide gestures, thanks to a capacitive surface and a taptic engine underneath for vibration feedback. Aside from capturing pictures, it also pulls up quick a control slider in the camera viewfinder to adjust metrics such as exposure and depth of field.
Apple says the new iPhones have been designed from the ground up to get the best out of Apple Intelligence, the suite of generative AI features that includes everything from writing tools to a more conversational Siri with deeper app integration.
The build now relies on a Grade 5 Titanium with a sandblasted texture. In addition to improving the thermal architecture, Apple also claims that the new Pro models offer the “best iPhone battery life ever.” Apple has also bumped up the screen size, putting a 6.3-inch panel on the iPhone 16 Pro and a 6.9-inch display on the Max variant. Apple has also enhanced the charging pace, taking it to 25W with a MagSafe wireless adapter.
Powering the iPhone 16 Pro duo is the new A18 Pro processor, built atop an updated 3-nanometer processor. The company says it borrowed tech from Apple silicon powering its Mac lineup to boost the graphics output, bringing a sizeable improvement in raw performance as well as power efficiency.
It delivers a 17% lift in memory bandwidth, a 2x boost at hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and up to 20% improvement in sustained performance. The 6-core architecture includes two performance cores and four efficiency cores, surpassing the A17 Pro’s raw performance by around a 15% margin.
The most notable software-side upgrade is Visual Intelligence, which is tiled to the Camera Control button. Think of it as Google Lens, but supercharged with the new Siri AI chops as well as seamless offloading to ChatGPT for more complex queries. Visual Intelligence works in the same vein as GPT-4o vision capabilities, but with the added benefit of local integration with tools such as Calendar.
Apple has kept the 48-megapixel primary camera but has upgraded the ultrawide camera to a 48-megapixel sensor while keeping the telephoto camera at a 12-megapixel resolution. Notably, the 5x optical zoom capability enabled by the tetra prism lenses architecture is now available on the iPhone 16 Pro and the Max version, as well.
In terms of camera capabilities, the the most notable one is the ability to shoot 4K videos at 120fps frame rate, complete with the convenience of ProRes and LOG capture directly on an external storage.
Surprisingly, the asking price remains unchanged. The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999, while the Max version goes up for $1,199 in the US. Pre-orders kick off on Friday, and shipments will commence on September 20, 2024.
This is a developing story. Please check back for more updates as we learn more.
