Do you have an iPhone 15?
Time to take that crummy old thing back to the Apple Store, and upgrade to a fancy new one with full AI service and a touch sensitive camera control button.
That’s what Apple CEO Tim Cook will be hoping for at least, after the company debuted the iPhone 16 at its annual launch event yesterday,
We’ve come a long way from the days of Steve Jobs’s first smartphone launch in 2007, but there are still big leaps to be found.
All the phone’s major new features – as well as the new AirPods and Apple Watch – were revealed at the event entitled ‘It’s Glowtime’.
While the phone may not look all that different from the outside, the company says the way it works is a massive change, as it is the first iPhone which will be fully integrated with AI.
So what will change in the iPhone 16?
New camera features including new button
Many of us have given up carrying a camera unless we’re professionals or very into photography, preferring the ease of snapping on a phone.
And Apple has leaned into this aspect of its tech with the new iPhone, beefing up the capabilities of the phone’s already-impressive camera with what it calls a ’48 megapixel fusion camera’.
One annoying aspect of taking photos with an iPhone can be pressing the touch screen shutter button, or accidentally managing to switch the whole thing off by pressing the wrong physical button on the side.
The new model will avoid all this by introducing a whole new control with a new, touch sensitive camera button on the side, which also allows easier control of the camera such as zoom.
Users will also be able to take spatial pictures that can be viewed on the Apple Vision Pro.
Apple Intelligence integrated into the phones
Apple has been seen as behind the curve in its adoption of AI for its handsets, with Google and Samsung phones already integrating it.
But the company has now announced its Apple Intelligence (which also contracts as AI – get it?) which it has already said will be ‘built into your iPhone, iPad and Mac to help you write, express yourself and get things done effortlessly’.
It boasted it will ‘draw on your personal context while setting a brand-new standard for privacy in AI’ and will be used to make its Siri voice control feature more natural.
Yesterday’s announcement revealed the technology will also help you change the tone of a message you’ve written if you need it to sound ‘more professional’ – and most fun of all, it will craft special new emojis based on prompts you suggest.
The AI features will also be available on the iPhone 15 Pro when the new operating system is rolled out, but not across the basic iPhone 15 or earlier generations of the phone in general as they do not have the A17 Pro chip required for the necessary processing.
Photo fans will be pleased to know that a popular feature on Google phones will be coming to iPhone too, allowing them to ‘clean up’ background clutter in pictures.
Chat GPT will be harnessed to help users with drafting text, whether that be making an email sound more professional or adding ‘humour and creativity to a party invitation’. Proofreading for spelling and grammar will become simpler, and users can also easily create a summary of text into bullet points or a shorter paragraph by highlighting it.
New look and new colours
The Pro line will feature slimmer bezels (the frame around the screen), and there will be improvements to battery life.
New colours will be available, with blue, green, white, black and pink expected for the simpler models while Pro versions are expected to come in white, black, grey, and bronze.
We looked more at the new technical specifications which could be on the way in our explainer here.
Even if you won’t be getting a new phone, if you have an iPhone already you will soon be able to update to iOS 18 on September 16.
Not all AI features will be available outside of the latest models, but there will still be major updates.
One of them is the ability to control the iPhone and iPad using your eyes, similar to the futuristic way the Vision Pro headset is used.
This will help users with disabilities, but is also just a very trippy feature in general.
Will there be a new Apple watch?
The Apple Watch Series 10 was also unveiled – with that name, despite rumours it would be known as the Apple Watch X to mirror the format of the earlier generation iPhone X.
One of the biggest new features is the ability to monitor sleep apnea, which is when breathing stops and starts while you sleep, a feature which is already available with the Samsung Galaxy Watch.
It also has the biggest display of any Apple wearable yet released, while it’s also thinner than any of its predecessors.
What else did Apple announce?
We haven’t mentioned Macbooks or iPads yet, and that’s because they weren’t the focus of last night’s event.
Instead, there were developments for AirPods, as two tiers of the earbuds were unveiled with more advanced sound quality.
It was revealed that the new AirPods Pro 2 can be used as a clinical-grade hearing aids, while the regular AirPods will allow you to use Siri with a nod or shake of your head.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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