Source:Lei Technology
On September 10, 2024, at 1:00 a.m., Apple held its highly anticipated online "Special Moment" event, unveiling multiple new products in its Apple Watch, AirPods, and iPhone product lines. Amidst the breathless anticipation of the audience, the iPhone 16 series made its official debut.
First, let's talk about the upgrades of the iPhone 16 series:
1. Camera control button;
2. A18 Pro;
3. Better heat dissipation;
4. Improved internal audio and video processing;
Just like before, under Cook's 'precision knife method', each of the four models has undergone some subtle changes. Seeing this, are you thinking: Is that it? Luckily, Xiao Lei had already given a heads-up: After all, the iPhone 16 series is just a 'transitional product', so don't have too high expectations.
Let's take a look together.
iPhone 16: No high refresh rate screen, is the camera button the biggest breakthrough?
The iPhone 16 series includes two phones, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, with screen sizes of 6.1 inches and 6.7 inches respectively. It's worth mentioning that the iPhone 16 series has an astonishing screen brightness range of up to 2000nit and as low as 1nit. Is this what Apple calls the 'high light moment'?
High refresh rate and off-screen display? Apple didn't mention it at all.
In terms of material composition, the iPhone 16 uses a new generation of sapphire crystal glass, with a slight improvement of 50% compared to the first generation. The newly added camera control button can press to quickly open the camera, and adjust the camera parameters by swiping left and right. In addition, the phone's camera also returns to a vertical dual-camera layout similar to the iPhone X, and like the 15 Pro, it uses operation buttons to replace the mute switch.
To meet the higher hardware requirements of iOS 18 AI functionality, the iPhone 16 is equipped with the new A18 chip. This 3nm process chip features a 6-core CPU (2P+4E), a 5-core GPU, and a 16-core NPU.
Considering that the iPhone 16 is a new phone built around AI, Apple also emphasized the AI features of the new iPhone (which is not relevant to Chinese users at the moment, if you don't care about AI, you can skip to the next section)
Apple Intelligence adopts a private AI model and the related data will not be sent to Apple.
In terms of AI, Apple Intelligence offers a range of features related to text rewriting, natural language understanding, and image search, as introduced at WWDC. In addition, the all-new AI engine significantly improves Siri's capabilities and interactions, while also providing cross-app operations, allowing users to perform actions in hundreds of apps.
Apple Smart is a free feature that will be launched next month, but currently only supports American English. According to Apple, the Chinese AI service will be launched next year.
The newly added camera control button uses a touch-sensitive solution, which uses vibration feedback to restore the mechanical touch of pressing. In addition to quickly waking up the camera, taking photos, and recording videos, it can also adjust the camera's functions by sliding left and right like a professional camera's scroll wheel. In addition, the independent camera control button can also interact with Apple Smart and perform AI operations on the real-time viewfinder. Will the independent camera control button be seen as a 'major interaction breakthrough' by Apple fans?
In terms of imaging configuration, the main camera is a 48MP 26mm wide-angle camera, which can achieve a 2× telephoto camera of 12MP 52mm by cropping the main camera. The wide-angle camera is a 12MP 13mm camera, and Apple has finally included the wide-angle camera macro mode in the iPhone 16, which is a 'huge improvement' in terms of cameras compared to the iPhone 15. In addition, the iPhone 16 can capture spatial videos.
The iPhone 16 has improved the heat dissipation performance of the phone: specifically, it places the CPU in the middle of the motherboard and improves the heat dissipation structure of the phone. According to Apple, this allows for up to a 30% increase in sustained performance when playing games on the iPhone 16 (just for viewing). The addition of the A18 chip also allows the iPhone 16 to run certain videos that can only be run on the 15 Pro model, such as Ubisoft's upcoming Assassin's Creed Phantom.
The battery capacity of iPhone 16 has also been increased, while the low-power characteristics of the A18 chip and the AI function of iOS 18 have also extended the battery life of iPhone 16.
iPhone 16 offers 5 new colors (Azure, Deep Blue, Pink, White, Black), three storage space versions (128GB, 256GB, 512GB), starting at 5999 yuan (iPhone 16 128GB), and the highest price is 9999 yuan (16 Plus 512GB). Pre-orders will open at 8 p.m. on September 13th and will be available on the 20th. Ray Technology will provide the first-hand review. Stay tuned.
iPhone 16 Pro: Slight improvements in heat dissipation, battery life, and imaging
iPhone 16 Pro also adds a camera operation button.
iPhone 16 Pro offers two sizes: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, with screens of 6.3 inches and 6.9 inches respectively, which have been improved compared to the previous generation, and the screen bezels have also significantly narrowed.
The iPhone 16 Pro has also improved its heat dissipation performance by improving its internal layout, with an official claim of up to 20%. In addition, it has also achieved an improvement in battery life. In terms of AI, the stronger on-device AI brings faster search and better Siri performance for the iPhone 16 Pro (Note: temporarily unrelated to Chinese users).
For the chip, the iPhone 16 Pro is equipped with the A18 Pro processor. The A18 Pro adopts the 3nm process technology and features a 6-core CPU (2P+4E), a 6-core GPU, and a 16-core NPU solution. In other words, the A18 used in the iPhone 16 series has removed one GPU core on the GPU.
In terms of the camera, the iPhone 16 Pro adopts a three-camera setup, including a 48MP 26mm wide-angle camera, a 48MP 13mm ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 12MP 120mm periscope camera. The 48MP wide-angle camera uses the second-generation 48MP solution, with greatly improved response speed and read/write speed. With the AI capabilities based on the A18 Pro, the iPhone 16 Pro offers more camera color styles.
The camera configuration of iPhone 16 Pro has also been greatly improved: the new 48MP fusion camera brings stronger slow motion shooting, stronger movie mode color calibration ability, and the ability to shoot videos in 4K120 format. Thanks to the stronger ISP of the iPhone 16 Pro series, iPhone 16 Pro can now perform richer post-processing on 4K 120 videos.
In order to ensure the audio effect of video recording, iPhone 16 Pro adopts a 4-microphone audio recording scheme and supports spatial audio recording. The new Audio Mix function can use the performance of A18 Pro to perform track separation and reverberation processing on the audio in the phone, bringing a better video creation experience. Even the built-in recording software on iOS has added audio overlay and track separation functions.
The storage space of iPhone 16 Pro still starts from 128GB, and it comes in four colors (Desert Titanium, Original Titanium, White Titanium, and Black Titanium). The starting price is 7,999 yuan (iPhone 16 Pro 128GB), and the highest price is 13,999 yuan (iPhone 16 Pro Max 1TB). It will be available for pre-sale at 8 pm on September 13 and officially released on the 20th.
To adapt to the newly added camera control button, Apple has added a sapphire button to the official iPhone 16 series phone case. The second-generation MagSafe charger is available in two lengths: 1 meter and 2 meters, and the charging speed has been improved.
From this product perspective, the basic iPhone 16 will still be Apple's main product for the "Singles' Day Sales" and the "618" period at the end of the year. However, at the same time, the hardware changes also make it face a lot of resistance in the early days of its release. The absence of AI features in the Chinese market also makes the future of the iPhone 16 Pro series uncertain.
Sure enough, the iPhone 16 series has become a transitional product, which is also the most unfortunate betrayal for Chinese users: the core AI upgrade has to wait until next year, but the iPhone 17 will be coming next year.
Xiao Lei finally understands why Huawei dares to have the same day announcement as Apple's "Mars hits Earth", not just ahead of Apple, but observing from behind. It seems that Huawei is confident enough in its three-fold screen phone, possibly also a decision made based on precise product intelligence analysis of the iPhone 16 series. It appears that Apple's "highlight moment" poster pays tribute to its competitors: This is the highlight moment for Android phones, Apple has completely descended from its pedestal, and Android phones have officially replaced Apple as the innovative "gatekeeper" in the smartphone industry.
So, what does the iPhone 16 Pro Max rely on to support the "earth-shattering" price of 13,999 yuan? So far, with no high refresh rate, always-on display, and still using a USB 2.0 interface, how does the iPhone 16 retain its fans? I think there is only one answer: it is "adaptive to the fans, powered by love".
Editor/Emily
