Apple Finally Revealed The iPhone 16 At The Launch Event

The day has arrived and 9 September was a success for Apple after launching the new iPhones. The tech company unveiled its latest iPhone models at an event in Cupertino, and as expected, the iPhone 16 handsets are largely iterative of last year's models.

While the smartphones, standard and Pro versions, took center stage, Apple also went into detail on its latest mobile chipsets that power the new iPhones, and reminded folks what they can expect when iOS 18 launches later this month with Apple Intelligence.

The new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus feature a water- and dust-resistant design and new colors including ultramarine, teal and pink. The iPhone 16 has a 6.1-inch display, while the iPhone 16 Plus has a 6.7-inch display. Both of those can achieve up to 2,000 nits of brightness, and can go all the way down to 1 nit in the dark. The Action button has found its way to this series of iPhones as well, and it's just as customizable as the one everyone saw on last year's Pro-model iPhones.

There's also a new easy-access camera control "button" of sorts, which allows users to quickly control the camera with a slide of ther finger. This tool can also tap into Visual Intelligence, an AI-powered feature coming in iOS 18 that can tell users more about anything they point their camera at. It appears similar to Google Lens, and can do things like add live event dates to your calendar after users point their camera at a flyer they see on the street.

The camera array on the standard iPhone 16 models includes a 48-megapixel main Fusion camera, a 12MP telephoto lens and a new ultrawide camera with autofocus. This array will also be able to capture Spatial Photos that can be viewed on Apple's Vision Pro.

Both standard iPhone 16 models run on the new A18 chip, which has a 16-core neural engine optimized for generative models. The internals feature a 6-core CPU and a 5-core GPU, both of which will be crucial for powering all of the new Apple Intelligence features coming to iOS 18.

According to Apple, both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus have larger batteries than their predecessors, and when combined with the efficiencies added from the A18 chipset and iOS 18 improvements, should make for a much longer-lasting battery lives overall (although Apple did not provide an exact estimate). Both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus are available for pre-order today starting at US$ 799 and US$ 899, respectively, and will be widely available on 20 September.