iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus: First Look!

Intro Apple just announced the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 plus and I had the chance to try them out one of the biggest differences that we're seeing on this year's new basic iPhones are the addition of two new buttons one is called camera control you can use it to launch the camera and control the camera and it's a lot of fun to play around with the second one will seem familiar to a lot of you who have followed the iPhone in recent years and it's called the action button it was previously exclusive to the pro and now it's also available on the base models with the iPhone 16 lineup so taken together I think both of these changes the introduction of two new buttons is going to make the iPhone a bit easier and more personal to use so first let's dive into iPhone 16 Camera Control Button that new camera control which is a kind of capacitive button it's not so much a button as it is a little sensor on the phone and you can press it to launch the camera and then depending on how much you press it in and how you swipe on it you can access different settings switch between different shooting modes and also switch between photo and video I think it's going to be a really great addition for people who take a lot of photos with their iPhone and don't want to necessarily have their finger obscuring the screen when they're trying to zoom or switch between different shooting modes and things like that and it's also interesting to see apple add this now because the camera's been a big part of the iPhone for years especially on the Pro Models so it's interesting that we're seeing a change like this come now after all these years the iPhone 16 Action Button action button also is a really interesting addition um I've been using it a lot on the iPhone 15 Pro and I find it really useful for just even basic everyday tasks like using it as a speed dial button or using it as a silent alarm switch but you can also program it to do really specific things like I like to use mine to order coffee actually which is really interesting so aside from those new things the iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Colors looks pretty similar to the iPhone 15 there are some new color options which are really cool to check out I really like the new green option there's also a pink option and a few other colors Apple does tend to add these like fun bright colors for the standard iPhone and then the Pro Models are usually a bit more muted so we're seeing that once again Apple's A18 Chip this year the iPhone 16 also runs on Apple's new A8 chip which should provide better performance especially for Apple intelligence which again apple is really touting these new phones as being the first phones built for Apple intelligence from the ground up but we really won't get a full picture of what that looks like for a while because Apple intelligence is rolling out in Visual Intelligence phases there's going to be one batch of features that comes out next month and then another batch that comes out later on so TBD on that but one feature that I'm really interested in and I'm really looking forward to trying out is called visual intelligence so the idea is that you can use this camera control sensor to quickly launch the camera and then you'd be able to point your iPhone's camera at something to learn more about it so let's say you walk by a restaurant and you want to know more about it like it's hours and things like that you would be able to just quickly launch the camera Point your phone at the thing and find out that kind of information so this is interesting and these are the kinds of AI features features that I find most useful on phones apple is just one of many companies that are trying to make our phones easier to use with features like this that leverage AI within the operating system itself rather than just you know through apps and things like that so I'm really excited to check that out but unfortunately it's not going to be available at launch so we'll have to wait and another major change is battery iPhone 16 Battery Life life so the iPhone 16 has a bigger battery we don't know exactly how much bigger but that combined with the power efficiency in iOS 18 and the new processor should leave to longer battery life but of course we'll know more when we have time to test it so that's what's new with the iPhone 16 we look forward to learning more as we review these phones and test them out so be sure to keep watching CNET for more updates thanks for watching and I'll see you next time