The iPhone 16 comes in bolder colours than last year, and has two additional buttons.
As well as the action button, the phone has a new touch-sensitive capture button for taking photos. You can press it any time to open the camera, then press it lightly for controls, firmly to capture or scroll on it to zoom or select options. The button sits flush with the phone so it’s unclear how difficult it will be to use with a case attached, but Apple said its own cases have a touch-sensitive area to translate your gestures.
The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus come in saturated pink, blue and teal colour options, as well as black and white, and unexpectedly will be slightly less expensive than last year’s models; starting at $1400 and $1600 respectively.
The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max add slightly larger displays, a 48MP ultra-wide camera, a third camera with 5x telephoto zoom, the more powerful A18 Pro chip and a raft of exclusive new recording features.
The iPhone 16 Pro has a slightly larger screen and a bigger battery.
For still photos, Apple said the Pro has new colour styles that you can now apply after you’ve taken the photo, and that in an update later this year, the capture button will get a two-stage shutter. For video, the phone supports capture of 4K 120 frames-per-second in Dolby Vision, so you can apply various slow-motion speeds in editing on-device. For audio, there are four microphones Apple said are “studio quality”, which enable a new Voice Memos feature that lets you record a track and listen to it back while recording a second track over the top.
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Apple said the Pro phone would have the best battery life of any iPhone ever, with up to 33 hours of video playback on the larger model, and 27 on the smaller. They support faster 25W charging over MagSafe and Qi2.
The Pro iPhones come in black, white or natural titanium, plus a new desert titanium colour and will also be $50 less expensive than last year’s models; starting at $1800 and $2150.
Apple’s new watches and headphones
The Apple Watch has had its first major redesign in four years in the Series 10, with a larger display and thinner case that is also lighter than previous models. The watch comes in new 42mm and 46mm sizes, with aluminium or titanium cases. Apple said a new OLED screen makes the watch viewable from more angles, and able to refresh once per second in always-on mode (rather than once per minute), so you can see a second hand ticking without having to activate the screen.
The new watch introduces the ability to sense water depth and temperature, and comes with a Tides app to help plan aquatic activities. New features coming to WatchOS 11, which will also work on some older watches, include a new Vitals app to track health metrics, and the ability to define fitness goals according to days of the week, or to take a rest day. For the first time on an Apple Watch, the Series 10 can play audio from apps directly from its built-in speakers.
The tenth generation Apple Watch is thinner and lighter, but with a bigger screen.
The Series 10 will launch on September 20, starting at $650. Apple is also updating the Watch Ultra 2, originally released last year, with a new black colour option.
For headphones, Apple introduced a new line of AirPods that borrows some features from the more expensive AirPods Pro but maintains the traditional open-ear design. The AirPods 4 have a smaller case with USB-C charging, the same H2 chip as the Pros for spatial audio and low latency, plus a force sensor button for controls. They will sell for $220 starting September 20. Apple will also sell a $300 model that comes with a wireless charging case and active noise cancellation, though it said the $400 Pro model removes twice as much sound.
The AirPods 4 bring some features over from the Pro models.
During the presentation, Apple unveiled a new clinically-validated hearing test and said that the AirPods Pro would soon be able to function as medical grade hearing aids. It said the feature was still awaiting regulatory approval in the US but that it expects to roll out it out to more than 100 countries this year. It has not announced plans to bring it to Australia.
Finally, Apple made is rolling out a minor upgrade to the over-ear AirPods Max, with new colours and a USB-C port replacing the old Lightning connector.
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