By: Nick Gambino
Well, it’s finally here – this year’s iPhone made its debut at Apple’s Glowtime Event on Monday. Some of the rumored features that we’ve been hearing about panned out, others will either show up in a later iteration of the smartphone or will never see the light of day.
The iPhone 16 is of course the most powerful iPhone ever built, with an improved camera, yada-yada-yada. But let’s get down to brass tacks – is it worth the upgrade?
This is not a given these days. There used to be a time where every new iPhone felt like a must-have, but now, very little changes from model to model and with an ever-increasing price tag, you have to think long and hard before committing.
So what’s new in the iPhone 16? Well, first of note is the inclusion of a physical camera button dedicated to serving the most popular function of your phone – capturing pictures and videos.
The Camera Control button, as it’s called, resides just below the power button. With a variety of gestures and taps you can call up the camera, snap a photo, record video, zoom in and so much more. The way they included this as a functional tool, they can continue to update and add capabilities based on how you tap or swipe it.
Apple has already said they plan to include an auto-focus feature when you half-press on the Camera Control button. I would expect that in an update in the next couple months. Strangely, this new button makes the phone more like a traditional camera than any previous updates. You don’t even need to interact with the screen to capture images.
Speaking of the camera, they’ve redesigned it to stack the lenses vertically as many predicted. This makes it easier to capture spatial video and pictures to be viewed on the Vision Pro VR headset.
The other big addition to the iPhone is Apple Intelligence which officially launches as part of iOS 18.1 in October. The iPhone 16 was designed with Apple Intelligence in mind so is technically the best device with which to use the AI.
If you’re on a budget, I’d say skip the iPhone 16, but if you’ve got the money, this year’s model has plenty of redesigned elements and fresh goodies to make it worth it.
You can preorder the iPhone 16 on Friday. The smartphone will officially go on sale on September 20th.
