Monday, December 23, 2024

Apple announces new iPhone 16, AirPods and Apple Watch

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Apple is hosting an event at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, where it has unveiled new versions of the iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch.

Here’s what Apple has announced so far:

Apple Watch Ultra 2.Apple
AirPods Max come in five new colors: starlight, orange, purple, blue, and midnight.
AirPods Max come in five new colors: starlight, orange, purple, blue, and midnight.Apple

Apple just unveiled the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which join the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus announced earlier. These are Apple’s more premium phones that have nicer screens and cameras than the regular models.

Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro has a 6.3-inch display, and the Apple 16 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch display, larger than those of previous models, which measured in at 6.1 inches and 6.7 inches, respectively. The new models also have the “thinnest borders on any Apple product,” Apple said, calling them “by far our best iPhone displays ever.” The titanium is nearly half the weight of stainless steel and is “more scratch resistant than other forms of titanium others have used.”

The four finishes include white, black, natural and “desert.”

The company also said that the new iPhone 16 Pro Max has “the best iPhone battery life ever” but did not offer additional details.

The new iPhone Pro models include an A18 Pro chip with second-generation 3-nanometer transistors and a new 16-core neural engine that powers Apple Intelligence, designed specifically for generative AI workloads, the company said — leading to a 17% increase in total system memory bandwidth. It’s “even faster and more efficient than A18,” the company said.

iPhone 16
iPhone 16.Apple

The A18 Pro chip also powers new camera features, per Apple, including a new 48-megapixel “fusion camera,” which can read data 2x faster, and a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera that allows for more detail in wide-angle shots. The 5x telephoto camera offers more detail for zoom photos.

Apple also introduced video capture in 4k at 120 frames per second, the iPhone camera’s “highest resolution and frame rate yet.”

The Pro models have four “studio-quality” mics with reduced noise, designed in part for vocal and acoustic recordings, the company said, as well as spatial audio capture. A new “Audio Mix” feature, which Apple called an “industry first,” uses machine learning to identify and separate background elements from a user’s speech, the company said.

Apple said a new update to Voice Memos, coming “later this year,” will allow people to layer other tracks atop previously-recorded Voice Memos. For example, the feature could help musicians testing out song ideas layer a guitar track over a vocal track they’ve previously recorded.

The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999, and the Pro Max starts at $1,199, Apple said. Both models will be available for pre-order on Friday, with in-store sales starting on Sept. 20.

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