Key Takeaways
- Apple’s iPhone 16 continues Apple’s trend of adding features that mainly benefit other products.
- The iPhone 16’s Camera Control button is an interesting but unnecessary addition.
- Apple Intelligence, the company’s new buzzword, has too many unknowns to be the reason people upgrade.
Apple’s iPhone 16 launch event felt familiar. The company is known for its polish and taste. It’ll arrive at an idea late if it can do it the best on the first try. Apple creates good design that elegantly serves its function, but more importantly, compliments the company’s other products. Paired with the occasional out-of-left-field ideas and a major advantage in terms of hardware manufacturing, the company has dominated consumer electronics in a way that’s been hard to counter or undercut.
But the last few years have been different. Apple’s massive custom silicon head start is still in play, but the gap is slowly closing between Macs and Qualcomm-powered Windows machines. Apple has been increasingly reactive to its competitors, too, and not always successfully. The Apple Vision Pro might not have been conceived as a response to Meta’s Quest headsets, but it’s undeniably trying to take advantage of the trend of virtual and mixed reality products. Apple Intelligence feels even more hasty. It’s a very Apple take on AI, but also one that seems rushed, arriving piecemeal, and with few new ideas about how artificial intelligence should work on a smartphone or tablet.
It’s strange that a redesigned pair of wireless earbuds is one of the most interesting things at a phone event, but here we are.
Viewed in that context, Apple’s new iPhone 16 and 16 Pro might seem like exciting revisions of the company’s most popular product, but their individual features are far more interesting than what they add up to: last year’s phones with some new buttons and the same promise of AI features down the road.
-
iPhone 16 Pro
Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro line features a few notable upgrades over last year’s iPhone 15 Pro, including a dedicated camera button, a new A18 Pro chip, a bigger screen, and several AI-powered Apple Intelligence features.
-
iPhone 16
This year’s iPhone 16 line blurs the line between the “Pro” and the base-level iPhone by offering a new camera button and the Action Button, alongside the A18 chip.
How did AirPods become more interesting than the iPhone?
Apple’s cheap AirPods are much better
Apple / Pocket-lint
It’s strange that a redesigned pair of wireless earbuds is one of the most interesting things at a phone event, but here we are. Apple’s new $129 AirPods 4 carry over the AirPods Pro-inspired design of the AirPods 3, but with an even smaller charging case, a redesigned audio architecture, and the addition of an H2 chip, all of which contribute to a more convenient and better-sounding pair of wireless earbuds.
Apple’s also bringing features like Active Noise Cancelation, Adaptive Audio, and Transparency Mode down from the more expensive Pro to a $179 version of the AirPods 4th generation. And more impressive still, without the need for the rubber ear tips the Pro uses to create a physical seal. Apple attributes the new ability to the AirPods’ better microphones, the H2 chip, and “advanced computational audio,” specifically singling out the earbuds’ ability to cancel out “airplane engines” and “city traffic.” With the open-design of the AirPods 4th gen, the ANC is bound to be less effective than the AirPods Pro, but if the company can even get close to its most expensive earbuds, it’ll be worth a purchase.
The AirPods Pro are morphing into a health device
Apple
Apple’s vision for the current AirPods Pro 2 is even more revelatory. Via a software update coming later this year, the wireless earbuds will gain the ability to not only protect your ears from loud noises, but also conduct hearing tests, and act as over-the-counter hearing aids if you do find you need extra help.
Apple pitched these features as a natural extension of the hearing studies and loud noise detection it already offered, but it also sets a clear intention for AirPods in general. They’re not the expensive replacement for the free wired headphones Apple used to put in the box, they’re the company’s de facto vision of hearing and hearing health, as much a tool as the Apple Watch.
With the iPhone 16, all Apple has are the details
New buttons, colors, and chips add up to a similar phone
Apple
Viewed through the same lens, the addition of the new Camera Control button on Apple’s line of iPhone 16s could have a similar effect on the iPhone. If you didn’t view the iPhone as a camera before, maybe a dedicated camera button will do it.
Camera Control fuses a capacitive touch surface with Apple’s preferred force touch button design to create a multi-functional input method for the camera app. It lets you quickly pull up your camera, adjust zoom, change focal lengths, and tweak other settings without having to touch the screen.
The kind of fusion of software and hardware that only Apple could come up with — technically useful, but undeniably unnecessary when you consider how most people interact with their phones.
It looks like it will feel great, but it’s hard not to view it as yet another Apple design flourish rather than a refined purpose for the iPhone. Camera Control seems a lot like the Dynamic Island in that way. The kind of fusion of software and hardware that only Apple could come up with — technically useful, but undeniably unnecessary when you consider how most people interact with their phones. It’s more for feeling good than any specific utility. This is not a bad thing by any means, but not what the average person upgrades over.
Everything else is in service of other Apple products
Apple
Camera Control being mostly razzle-dazzle wouldn’t be a problem if the other major changes made to the iPhone 16 didn’t exist in service of other Apple products. The A18 and A18 Pro chips in the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro, have the typical advancements in GPU performance and CPU efficiency, but they’re mostly here because of their more capable Neural Engine, better able to handle the on-device processing of Apple Intelligence. And Apple Intelligence is the new buzzword Apple is pushing now that it’s increasingly clear the Vision Pro and spatial computing are a niche product.
The rearrangement of the iPhone 16’s main and telephoto camera lenses are in service to the Vision Pro. They use the same sensor Apple introduced on the iPhone 15, just with a layout that better captures the depth needed to create a spatial photo or video. Something Apple naturally wants to push since it’s one of the more compelling use-cases of its expensive mixed reality headset. Beyond that, a new camera layout lets you change the look of a phone without having to radically change how it’s made.
No one knows if Apple Intelligence will actually be worth it
Apple / Pocket-lint
The iPhone 16 has great parts. Apple’s finally making a phone with actually saturated colors. The “Visual Intelligence” feature the Camera Control button can launch keeps the company in competition with the Pixel. Even the A18 chip is helpful in keeping Apple’s phones future-proof. But these features don’t add up to anything more than an iPhone that runs Apple Intelligence. That’s something the iPhone 15 Pro can do.
The first Apple Intelligence features will be made available with the iOS 18.1 updated coming in October.
And since Apple hasn’t even demoed all the components of Apple Intelligence yet, it’s not even something you can get particularly excited about. The Writing Tools feature isn’t original, but someone will use it. Priority Notifications will help sort through messages and email updates, certainly. Everything else related to image generation or a more active and able Siri is coming late this year or next. If you’re supposed to upgrade to the iPhone 16 because of Apple Intelligence, how are you supposed to know that Apple Intelligence is even worth spending $799 and up on? It’s a strange position to put customers in.
All products used to point to the iPhone, now they point to each other
A criticism often lobbed at post-iPhone Apple is that everything the company has done since releasing its revolutionary smartphone has been about squeezing as much value as possible out of it. Devices like AirPods and the Apple Watch create lock-in and work best or only work with the iPhone. Services like Apple Fitness+ or Apple TV+ suck more money out of your wallet until your next hardware upgrade. It’s a self-propagating cycle that keeps you sending money to Apple regularly.
Apple iPhone 16
This year’s iPhone 16 line blurs the line between the “Pro” and the base-level iPhone by offering a new camera button and the Action Button, alongside the A18 chip.
The difference is that the iPhone doesn’t sit at the top of the pyramid. Apple still talks about it that way, but it’s just as much a tool for pushing you towards other Apple products. A cog in the machine, rather than the reason the machine exists. Maybe that’s because a smartphone can only become so different, or maybe it’s because Apple really believes its selling an experience rather than individual products. Whatever the reason, the iPhone 16 is better than ever, but until we know whether Apple Intelligence significantly changes how people use their phones, it doesn’t seem like it’s adding up to anything more than before.
Trending Products
