Preview: Apple’s New, Boring, iPhone 16

Apple has an interesting business problem. On one hand, the iPhone is the greatest product ever made. Ordinarily, you have to choose between scale and margins, but with the iPhone, it’s as though Ferrari built cars at the pace of Toyota — and then, to extend the analogy, as though 60 percent of Americans drove Toyotas.Apple’s problem, though, is that the iPhone is only dominant in America, and they would need to do something radical with a new iPhone to persuade international customers to switch from Android-powered models. Because smartphones are such a mature segment, they aren’t really able to, with each new version offering smaller and smaller upgrades over the previous one. This has even begun affecting American consumers, with upgrade cycles becoming less frequent. Yet, despite attempts to grow other segments, the iPhone still accounts for 52 percent of Apple’s revenue.For the curious: Services make up 22 percent; smartwatches, earbuds, smart home devices, and accessories account for 10 percent; the Mac makes up 7.7 percent; and the iPad contributes 7.4 percent. Sales of the $3,500 Vision Pro virtual reality headset make up approximately 0 percent.So, Apple is reliant on a successful product, whose sales aren’t growing fast anymore, and they can’t acquire many new customers. The iPhone 16 will change nothing about that.In short, this is a slight upgrade from the 15 line, which itself was a relatively minor upgrade from the 14 line — if you ignore the EU-mandated switch to USB-C instead of Apple’s older, proprietary Lightning connection.Courtesy AppleThe non-Pro iPhone 16 line comes in two sizes — the 16, with a 6.1″ screen, and the 16 Plus, with a 6.7″ screen. Other than a bigger battery, the two phones have identical hardware, including the same new A18 chips, new cameras, and the same Apple Intelligence features, which aren’t actually available yet. The cameras are supposed to be a big upgrade, using composite 48-megapixel lenses to shoot more angles and focal lengths with just two cameras, but I’m skeptical.It sounds cool in theory, but it feels more like Apple has cheaped out on hardware and rebranded it as innovative. I also expect many of these camera features to be delayed until long after launch.These cameras are now arranged differently, too. Gone is the slab look of the camera array from the iPhone 13 onward. The cameras are back to being vertically aligned, like the iPhone X and 12, along with most cheap Samsungs. Whereas the slab look was actively ugly, this is a boring kind of ugly, and the change was at least partially made so that iPhone users can record “spatial videos” on them. For the unfamiliar, these are 3D videos that can only be watched on Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro headset — which no one owns.The phone also has an action button on the right side, just like the 15 Pro models, but now it’s a capacitive button with a vibrating click on push. It seems really cool, letting you double-click to instantly capture a photo or click and long press to start recording a video. Once you’ve opened the camera app, you can adjust settings by lightly pressing and swiping to control focus, zoom, and other features, and then hard pressing to shoot. If you enjoy taking photos on your phone, this is a lovely feature, though they’ve limited the DSLR-like two-stage shutter control to the Pro models.The iPhone 16 starts at $799, with the 16 Plus starting at $899. Pre-orders begin on Friday, with the release set for September 20.The long and short of it is that the new iPhone 16 and 16 Plus are totally fine, and there’s no need to buy the 16 Pro unless you’re a creative professional who uses your phone to shoot most of your content. However, given how small these upgrades are, I would actually suggest buying a refurbished or discounted iPhone 15 Pro. They were Apple’s flagship phones until an hour ago, and you’ll likely be able to find them for the same price.

Preview: Apple’s New, Boring, iPhone 16

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