Once September rolls around, the wait for the new iPhone is over. On September 20th, Apple released the iPhone 16 and iOS 18, bringing exciting features for users to enjoy.
The iPhone 16 exhibits new features that Apple is marketing widely: its camera button, action button, and new AI features. The action button, on the side of the phone, allows users to turn on the flashlight with one button, instead of having to turn on the phone, and quickly snap a photo. The camera button enables users to zoom in or out of a photo and take it without touching the screen.
The iPhone 16 AI system, or the early access iOS 18, has a robust ChatGPT integration. The new features give Siri the ability to hold conversations with people, which has been a feature that Android phones have long since had. It can write texts, organize reminders based on texts and emails, generate images, and summarize calls. While these updates were only recently released, Apple has said they will spread these AI features to the rest of the other iPhones, as the system is just an earlier-released version of iOS 18.
Along with the features, the iPhone 16 has an enhanced camera performance compared to the iPhone 15. It comes with new modes for photo taking and video recording, such as cinematic mode, which focuses on the main subject and blurs out the background, and in-frame mode, which uses AI to record the voices of people in the recording and blocks any offscreen audio.
With actual hardware specifications, the improvements are extremely minimal. The phone is based on newer Apple chips, using A18 processors instead of A16s, but not increasing the number of cores for either the processor (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU). The screen is bright and has a sufficient resolution, but only has a 60hz refresh rate, meaning it can only display up to 60fps and no higher. Although most modern phones boast 120hz screens, Apple decided not to include a higher-refresh screen, despite its hardware being capable of pushing 120fps in most light-use apps.
To increase the utility of the phone, Apple changed its speakers. The speakers offer higher-quality audio than similarly priced smartphones on the market, per usual Apple standards.
For sophomore Jonathan Arcia-Hulett, “I’m not really picky [about getting a phone], it just has to be a normal price. Nobody’s going to buy [something very expensive] … I’d spend $500-$900, but if it has something really new or innovative, I might go up to $1000 or $1200,” he states. Other students shared similarly uninterested opinions. “I don’t really feel the need to buy a new iPhone, because the changes are really minor,” says sophomore Jocelyn Perez. “Until there’s a big change, I won’t really consider buying a new one.”
The iPhone 16’s latest factors bring a new experience for users. The hardware and changes to the phone from its predecessor are minuscule but still could show some promise as a higher-priced phone with decent specifications and features. iOS 18, meanwhile, will cement itself as a core part of the Apple Ecosystem in the future, and mark the start of a new era of widespread AI use in many everyday tasks.
