Introduction:
All right, I'm back from Australia, all the way from Down Under, and I did bring exactly one souvenir with me, but I flew in this morning 'cause Apple said they were going to announce some stuff, and they did. There was an event today, so here's my first impressions.
We got the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro today, along with new AirPods and Apple Watch, and I've got some hands-on and some first impressions for you of all that stuff right here. So, let's just start with the new phones. We knew this was coming, right? A very, very minor incremental overall update, but somehow Apple's still got to try to get people to buy it, so what will they do? So, the iPhone 16 looks very much like the iPhone 15,
but there are some new colors, as you can pretty much always count on. This year, it's ultramarine, which is kind of this indigo, pretty sick teal, pink, black, and white, and the cameras, instead of being diagonally oriented, are now lined up again next to each other like it was back in the iPhone 10 days.
But it's not just a retro touch; that's also so it can shoot spatial videos and pictures now, so the sensors are aligned with each other again. But then everything else—the rounded corners, the size of the regular phone and the plus phone, the speakers, the antenna lines—everything just basically the same. Not much new going on here.
Inside, they bumped it up from the A16 Bionic to a new A18, so there's some solid performance improvements in the 20 to 30% range, better ray tracing, a two times faster neural engine, and 8 gigs of RAM for all that Apple intelligence stuff.
Really, the most underrated new hardware to me though, that they talked about, is Apple briefly mentioned that these new phones will all have larger batteries, and so that seems to imply that it will actually have better battery life. But also, at no point did Apple ever say any numbers—not a single number was uttered during the battery section.
No graphs or anything like that, so we don't know exactly how much bigger this new battery actually is. And the only numbers we've been able to find is if you look on Apple's compare page for the phones, it said the iPhone 15 would get a battery life of 20 hours of video playback, and this new 16 gets 22. So, I'm going to be putting these through the paces.
You already know if you want to get comment to be among the first to see the full review, that's when we'll be able to figure out if it's actually a significant improvement in battery in other ways. But as of right now, better battery, sure.
And then I never thought I'd say this sentence again, but this new iPhone has two new buttons. So, firstly, it gets the action button from last year's Pro, so now you can do the exact same customized shortcuts from a flashlight or Shazam to a Siri shortcut or whatever you want, and then there's also another new button called camera control
. And this second button, it's kind of a touch-sensitive cutout covered in Sapphire with a tactic engine behind it. Now, it does actually move—it is an actual button, just to be clear—but just like the trackpad on a lot of modern laptops, the vibration motor clicks to also make a half press feel like you're clicking a two-stage button like a camera shutter button, and it is also very convincing. So, the magic of this camera control area is what they're calling it is that it is pressure sensitive, and it's basically.
Basic Point:
Tiny trackpad on the corner of the phone—it's capacitive sensitive, so you can swipe and do gestures along the corner of the phone, and so Apple's decided everything that this button will do will be camera-related. So, if you press it from the lock screen, it opens the camera app, and then when you're in, you can click it again to take a photo or long press to start taking a short video.
But then you can do a little half-strength double tap to open up a menu for different camera options, and then slide your finger along this camera control to change them. So, you know, it takes some getting used to; you’ve got to get used to the placement of your hand and how fast you swipe, but once you kind of know what you're doing, it feels pretty smooth, and it's pretty sensitive and intuitive.
So, this is all a bunch of functionality that's being added basically into Apple's camera app, but Apple's also said that third-party apps that use the camera will also be able to take advantage of the camera control. So, Snapchat, Instagram, Highlight, etc., they'll be able to also use the slider. I think it's pretty cool, I think it's technically very impressive, but I'm just trying to figure out, kind of similar to the action button, how useful it will actually be.
Like, it is kind of in this awkward spot on the bottom right of the phone; it makes sense as a horizontal shutter button, but they're kind of splitting the difference trying to also make it usable in a vertical orientation. I just, I'm curious how many people actually use this regularly, 'cause again, it is on all the phones. But yeah, that's about it for the 16. I mean, the display also does now drop to one nit minimum brightness, so that's great at night.
It is also still a 60Hz display on an $800 flagship in 2024, so that's really disappointing for me personally. But overall, this phone is, I'd say it's still pretty tempting to say that this base model is probably a better buy for most people over the pro phones. But let's just get into the pro phones, shall we? New colors this year.
Desert titanium, which goes alongside the classic natural titanium, and then a slightly darker black and a slightly whiter white, but otherwise the same design again, plus the new camera control. The main updates with the pro are the new screens and the new chip, so the phones actually get slightly bigger this year.
So, the screen sizes are up to 6.3 inches on the pro and 6.9 inches on the pro Max, thanks to the thinner bezels, which I didn’t think I would notice, but I’m actually looking at them, and they are a little noticeably thinner, so you can kind of tell. And inside, there is also a new chip as well—it's the A18 Pro.
So, this is the new highest-end chip in any iPhone, and this again should have a performance boost and efficiency boost over last year's Pro phone, again in the 20 to 30% range, so CPU and GPU improving, better ray tracing. Should still have the faster USB 3 speeds that the pros get, but again, the efficiency improvements have them saying that the pro Max will now be the longest battery life ever in an iPhone. By how much, I don't really know, but that's good to see.
But the camera is, of course, always the highlight of the pro phones, and there are three new cameras on these Pros versus last year. So, a new 48-megapixel main camera, then a higher resolution 48-megapixel ultrawide camera from the 12 from last year, and then the smaller Pro also gets a 5x telephoto now, so the smaller Pro used to have a 3X, but now both Pros have matched all three cameras. It's also wireless charging a little bit faster, 25 watts, so that'll get you 50% in 30 minutes of charging with the new MagSafe charger. Nothing too crazy, and also 4K 120 FPS slow motion straight out of the cameras now, and that's pretty sick. I'm sure the file sizes will be nuts from the Proves version of this, but it gives you.
Features:
They're using what they're calling the first wide-angle OLED display to help you see the screen from more angles, which actually does matter on a watch. But yeah, if you were expecting some crazy radical, you know, square watch or something nuts, then yeah, this is very much still the classic Apple Watch shape.
There are some new watch faces since the second hand is now always visible even when the always-on display is dark, so that's cool. There's also a new depth app and a new tide app, which I think looks really cool. I don’t even surf or have any use for this app, but it’s just kind of cool flipping through and seeing exactly when sunrise and sundown are and when high tide and low tide are every day if you’re near a coastline.
They also introduced sleep apnea detection using only the gyroscope. This is another coming-soon feature; it's pending FDA approval and regulatory bodies around the world to actually launch. But the fact that it only needs a gyroscope to detect it? I thought that was pretty cool. So, those Series 10 watches are going to start at the same prices as last year’s Series 10 watches.
And then we also got a new Apple Watch Ultra 2, and by new Apple Watch Ultra 2, I mean a satin black finish of the existing Apple Watch Ultra 2, and I am so into it. I have absolutely no real reason to upgrade, but this is just one of those things that companies sometimes do.
They just make a matte black version of something that I totally don’t need, but suddenly they have my shipping address and credit card info, and I just end up buying one. I’m told this is a pretty robust coating process, so hopefully, it shouldn’t chip or scratch too easily and then maybe show light raw titanium underneath. But also, it’s an Ultra Watch, so I think someone’s going to do it.
But then there are also the new AirPods. The AirPods upgrades or "upgrades"—one of them is a fake upgrade. So, the new base AirPods 4 have been redesigned, and there are actually two versions. For $129, there’s the new AirPods 4 with the new shape, and then for $179, there’s the same new AirPods version, but you also get active noise cancellation and a wireless charging case with a tiny speaker built in for Find My.
So yeah, this new shape is a little different. It may fit a little better in some people’s ears like mine—the old ones were terrible for me, but these are a little better—but that also means they may be a little bit worse in some people’s ears. But yeah, to get, I think, for under $200, active noise cancellation in AirPods with a 4-hour battery life? I think there’ll be a nice little target demographic waiting for that.
And then AirPods Pro 2 didn’t really get a whole lot technically new here, but they also did get certified as a clinical-grade hearing aid, which is pretty awesome. Plus, some other hearing protection and testing features were added as well. But the biggest "upgrade" of the day—and by that I mean non-upgrade, fake upgrade—of the day goes to AirPods Max.
Now keep in mind, these headphones came out originally in 2020, like we reviewed these a long time ago. These were $550 when they launched, and they’re still $550 in 2024. They still have a Lightning port. They still don’t have an on-off button. They still have that dumb case they came with.
So, they finally get this update, AirPods Pro 2, and the update is five new colors, and they have a USB-C port now, which, okay, yeah, they literally had a Lightning port in 2024, so we’re happy to see that. But then, that’s it. Like, there’s not a single other change to these new AirPods. They still don’t have an on-off button in 2024.
They still have that stupid case they came with. Like, they got the feedback—we know this case isn’t good. They didn’t improve that at all. They still have the H1 chip even though all the other AirPods are on the H2 chip now. What? Did the entire AirPods Max team go into a coma for four years and then wake up a week before this announcement and scramble to put this together? This is weird. The sad part is, I’m probably still going to upgrade to them anyway because I just—I can’t carry a Lightning cable.
Conclusion:
Basically, those are my announcement thoughts, reactions, and first impressions. Generally, there’s not a ton of major new stuff. I think the two big highlights are, first, this separation between the hardware upgrade and all the software that's coming to the hardware but not launching with it. Honestly, the second highlight is this camera control thing—this weird button they’ve added.
It’s fascinating. The fact that they’ve added it to both the Pro and non-Pro phones when I didn’t think they would? That’s interesting. The fact that case manufacturers are going to have to deal with this now—some of them are going to have a little cutout for it, but others may try to do the same thing Apple did with a little capacitive glass thing over the top to keep it flush—that’s interesting. The fact that it won’t come out with the two-stage shutter press in the actual camera app until later this year via a software update? That’s just weird too. There’s just a lot of fun, weird stuff going on with the shutter button.
But now that you’ve made it this far, let me know in the comment section below what you want to see in those full reviews as you subscribe to see them. Thanks to Anker for sponsoring this video. Their latest MagGo lineup is out—the six series—and there are a couple of changes. There’s a new slimmer battery bank, a battery bank with an Apple Watch charger, a stand with a rotating click head, and one of my favorite items: a 3-in-1 foldable charging pad.
The Anker MagGo power bank is a 10,000mAh battery that supports CH2 and is MagSafe compatible. It supports 15W wireless charging and temperature control, keeping your devices protected by maintaining charging under 40°C—all in this slim 15mm body. Then there’s the Anker MagGo wireless charging station.
This thing charges three devices at once—an iPhone, AirPods, and your Apple Watch—all at the same time. It supports CH25W fast charging and MagSafe charging for iPhones, and it folds up into this compact little package that fits in your pocket. It can even fold the other way to make it into a stand to activate Apple StandBy mode while you charge your phone.
But yeah, that’s been it. Thanks for reading this impressions Post, and I’ll catch you guys in the next one soon. Peace.
