Apple's iPhone 16, 16 Plus add 'Camera Control' button and a faster A18 processor

"The next generation of iPhone has been designed for Artificial Intelligence from the ground up," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company's annual keynote.

Apple announced the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus during the company's streamed keynote on September 9. The iPhone 16 still starts at just $799 while the iPhone 16 Plus starts at $899.

The new iPhones include a ton of on-device AI features and some beefy hardware updates like better cameras, a more powerful processor, and a new action button.

Made with aerospace aluminum, the new iPhones use 85% recycled materials in the enclosure. Both the 6.1-inch iPhone 16 and 6.7-inch iPhone 16 Plus come in bright new colorways, as Apple has added ultramarine, teal, and pink colors to the standard white and black of the entry-model smartphones.

The phones also add a new action button on the side, which can launch several helpful features, like language translation. The action button can also be programmed if you want a more custom experience.

Another new button brings increased camera control to the iPhone 16, allowing you to adjust camera settings on the fly. These new camera controls are paired with an updated camera array, featuring a 24MP primary camera and a larger aperture ultrawide camera lens.

"Apple Silicon is at the heart of new capabilities, starting with Apple Intelligence," said Kaiann Drance , Apple's VP of iPhone product marketing.

Apple's new A18 chipset will be available on iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus

Sribalan Santhanam , Vice President of the Silicon Engineering Group at Apple, claims the silicon in the new iPhones requires "substantial high-performance compute" to handle the on-device AI features coming to iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. Apple is jumping two generations from the A16 Bionic chip in the iPhone 15 to A18, "our brand new chip created specifically for iPhone 16."

Built with a 3nm process, the A18 chip is a 6-core CPU featuring two performance and four efficiency cores. "This CPU is faster than all the competition, challenging even high end Desktop PCs," Santhanam claimed. The A18 Bionic also features "Desktop-class GPU architecture." All that power is needed in the new iPhones thanks to all the Apple Intelligence features coming to the smartphones.

Apple Intelligence features coming to iPhone 16

Apple Intelligence is deeply integrated into the new iPhone 16 platform, bringing a new suite of AI features to the upcoming smartphones.

As Apple's SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi stated in his briefing on the new AI features, "Apple intelligence is the personal intelligence system at the heart of the iPhone 16 lineup, with the ability to understand and create language as well as images and take action your behalf to simplify daily tasks. And each of these powerful capabilities is grounded in your personal context."

• Smart camera controls
  • Exclusive to iPhone 16
  • Click to open the camera
  • Click to take a photo, or click and hold to take a video
  • Lightly click to adjust lighting, focus, or zoom
  • Responsive haptic feedback
  • Recognizes touch gestures to distinguish between a click and a light press
• Private Cloud Compute combines security and increased power to access server-based AI tools that never saves your data in the cloud
• Smart writing tools to help you craft emails, text messages, and apps like Slack
• Create new emoji by typing a description into the text box
• Image playground to generate quick illustrations based on text prompts
• Smart photo and video search to find specific photos or specific moments in a video
• Email summaries and priority rankings so you don't miss out on important notifications
• New Siri
  • Smarter language recognition to better answer questions
  • Step-by-step advice on how to use your iPhone
  • Knowledge of on-device data
  • Updating contacts or adding photos to albums for you
• Visual Intelligence
  • Part of the iPhone 16's Smart Camera controls
  • Can answer your questions about what you're looking at
  • Powered by ChatGPT

iPhone 16 gaming is powered by A18

If you've ever wanted ray tracing on an iPhone, the new A18 Bionic chipset has you covered, thanks to the A18's hardware acceleration.

Apple is also adding Honor of Kings: World which has a custom graphics setting designed specifically for iPhone. iPhone 16 owners can also access all the new Apple-friendly games like Assassins' Creed Mirage and Resident Evil: Village .

In addition to the new A18 Bionic chip's updated power efficiency, Apple is also putting a larger battery in both the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus so you can game for longer than ever on a single charge.

More from Laptop Mag

• Apple iPhone event LIVE: iPhone 16, Apple Watch 10, AirPods, and more
• How to get almost all of Lenovo’s new Aura Edition features for free with Windows 11
• MSI Claw 8 AI Plus: Rumored release date, price, specs, performance, and more