iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus: First Look – Video

Apple just announced the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus and I got to try them out. One of the biggest changes that we’re seeing on the new basic iPhones this year is the addition of two new buttons. One of them is called the camera control. You can use this to launch and control the camera and it’s a lot of fun to play with. The second one will look familiar to many of you who have followed the iPhone over the last few years and it’s called the action button. This was previously exclusive to the Pro and has now also made it to the iPhone 16 range. So putting these two changes together, I think the introduction of two new buttons is going to make the iPhone a lot easier and more personal to use. First up, let’s take a look at those new camera controls, which are sort of capacitive, but it’s not so much a button as it is a little sensor on the phone and you can press that to launch the camera and then depending on how hard you press it and how you swipe across it, you can access different settings, switch between different shooting modes and also switch between photo and video. I think it’s going to be a really great addition for people who take a lot of photos with their iPhone and don’t necessarily want to have their finger hovering over the screen when they’re trying to zoom or switch between different shooting modes and things like that. And it’s also interesting to see Apple adding this now because the camera has been a huge part of the iPhone for years, especially on the pro models. So it’s interesting that we’re now seeing a change like this coming. The action button is also a really interesting addition after all these years and I’ve used it a lot on the iPhone 15 Pro and I find it really useful for even the most basic day-to-day tasks, like using it as a speed dial button or using it as a silent alarm switch, but you can also program it to do really specific things, like I like to use it to order coffee, which is really interesting. So other than those new things, the iPhone 16 looks pretty similar to the iPhone 15. There are a couple of new color options that are really cool to check out. I really like the new green option. There’s also a pink option and a couple of other colors, Apple tends to add these nice bright colors to the base iPhone. And then the Pro models tend to be a little more muted. So we see that again this year, the iPhone 16 also runs on Apple’s new A 18 chip which should offer better performance, particularly for Apple Intelligence, which again Apple is really touting as the first phones that are built from the ground up for Apple Intelligence. But we don’t really get the full picture of what that looks like yet because Apple Intelligence is rolling out in phases. There’s a bunch of features coming out next month and then another bunch after that. That’s not known yet, but one feature that I’m really interested in and really looking forward to trying out is called visual intelligence. The idea is that you can use this camera sensor to quickly launch the camera and then you can point your iPhone’s camera at something and try to learn more about it. So imagine you’re walking by a restaurant and you want to know more about it, like, it’s ours and things like that, you can quickly launch the camera, point your phone at the thing and find out that kind of information. That’s interesting and those are the kinds of AI features that I find most useful on phones. Apple is just one of many companies that are trying to make our phones more user-friendly with features like this that leverage AI within the operating system itself. Instead of just, you know, through apps and things like that. So I’m really excited to see that, but unfortunately it’s not available at launch, so we’ll have to wait. And then another big change is battery life. So the iPhone 16 has a bigger battery. We don’t know exactly how much bigger, but that combined with the power efficiency and I was 18 and the new processor should lead to longer battery life. But obviously we’ll know more as we get time to test it. So that’s what’s new with the iPhone 16. We’re looking forward to learning more as we review and test these phones. So definitely stay tuned, see that for more updates. Thanks for watching and see you next time.