Apple: New, Built-For-AI iPhone 16 Can Challenge High-End PCs

The iPhone 16 series is arriving ahead of its much-hyped Apple Intelligence set of AI features, which will debut in beta next month with an initial set of features for the iPhone 15 Pro or higher as well as Macs and iPads with an M1 or newer system-on-chip.

Apple said its newly revealed iPhone 16 smartphones are “designed to take full advantage” of the company’s upcoming AI features and claimed that the devices can even challenge high-end desktop PCs, thanks to their new A18 chips.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant announced on Monday that the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will also come with a new camera control side button and arrive next week with prices ranging from $799 to $1,199.

Apple unveiled the new iPhone generation alongside its forthcoming Watch Series 10 and Watch Ultra 2 smartwatches, which come with larger displays, thinner designs and new health features. The company also showed off the AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 headphones, the latter of which will come with what it called “the world’s first end-to-end hearing health experience.” The peripherals also start shipping next week.

Apple Intelligence Debuts In Beta Next Month

Apple said additional features will roll out in the coming months. While Apple Intelligence will be available initially in U.S English, the software will expand to localized English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom in December. Support for other languages—including Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish—will come next year, according to the company.

Apple Intelligence is the linchpin of Apple’s AI strategy, and the initial set of features will include Writing Tools—which can rewrite, proofread or summarize text—and an updated version of Siri, which can be prompted via text or voice to perform various actions.

The initial feature set will also include a new Focus mode that only highlights the most important notifications, call transcription and summarization via the Notes and Phones app as well as email summarization and quick reply via the Mail app. In addition, Apple is bringing natural language search, a feature meant to generate movies based on captured photos and videos as well as the Clean Up tool to the Photos app.

Features coming later this year include the Image Playground image-generation tool; Image Wand, which turns notes or sketches into fully featured images; the custom-Emoji-generating GenMoji; an updated version of Siri that provides custom-tailored responses can make hundreds of actions across Apple and third-party apps; and ChatGPT integration.

The company has previously promised that Apple Intelligence will set a “brand-new standard for privacy in AI” because of how the features will either rely on in-house generative AI models that run on the device’s processor or Apple silicon running in the company’s new Private Cloud Compute Infrastructure.

iPhone 16 Models Use A18 Chips, Sport New Camera Control Button

The 6.1-inch iPhone 16 and 6.7-inch iPhone Plus models will make use of Apple’s new A18 system-on-chip, which is manufactured using a second generation TSMC’s 3-nanometer technology and comes with an improved CPU and GPU as well as a new Neural Engine.

Sporting six cores, the CPU is 16 percent faster than the A16 Bionic chip in the previous-generation iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, Apple said. Conversely, it can provide the same level of performance using 30 percent less power, and it can even challenge the CPU performance of high-end desktop PCs, according to the company.

The GPU, on the other hand, comes with six cores and is 40 percent faster and 35 percent more efficient than A16 Bionic, Apple said. The Neural Engine consists of 16 cores, which have been optimized to run large generative AI models and can run machine learning workloads up to two times faster than A16 Bionic, it added.

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus each feature a 48-megapixel Fusion camera with a 2x optical-quality telephoto option as well as a new 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera, the latter of which can capture up to 2.6 times more light than the previous models.

The nearly 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro and 6.8-inch iPhone 16 Pro Max are powered by Apple’s new A18 Pro chip, which is also manufactured using TSMC’s 3nm process and comes with a new CPU and Neural Engine as well as an improved GPU.

The 16-core Neural Engine comes with 17 percent more memory bandwidth and is faster and more efficient than the A17 Pro inside the last generation iPhone Pro models, and it’s capable of 35 trillion operations per second (TOPS), according to Apple.

By contrast, the fastest AI PC processors coming this year from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm boast a neural processing unit performance of 48, 50 and 45 TOPS respectively. AMD’s new M4 chip for iPad reaches 38 TOPS, on the other hand.

The A18 Pro’s CPU, on the other hand, comes with six cores and can run “15 percent faster while using 20 percent less power” than the previous generation, Apple said. The CPU also comes with next-generation machine learning accelerators that are meant to optimize the performance and efficiency of Apple Intelligence features, it added.

The six-core GPU boasts a 20 percent increase in performance from the previous generation and boosts ray tracing by up to two times, according to Apple.

A key new feature coming to all iPhone 16 models is the Camera Control button, which combines a “tactile switch” for clicking, “high-precision force sensor” for light-press gestures and a “capacitive sensor” for touch interactions.

These functions are housed together in a new side button that allows users to interact with first- and third-party camera apps without touching the phone’s screen, whether that’s to zoom in or capture a photo of a subject. Camera Control will gain the ability to identify or gather information about objects and places later this year.