Apple Unveils iPhone 16 & Apple Watch Series 10
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Apple has pulled back the curtain on its new generation of smart devices: the iPhone 16, Apple Watch Series 10, and updated AirPods.

In a sprawling keynote presentation today, the tech giant unveiled a full suite of new products that will go on sale later this month. These new products will further both their innovation in the smart products market and their commitment to going fully carbon neutral by the end of the decade, while also enhancing users’ health, creativity, and day-to-day tasks. They’ll also incorporate Apple Intelligence after launch, the company’s new machine learning initiative.

Here’s everything Apple unveiled about the iPhone 16 product family, and more:

Apple Unveils Iphone 16 &Amp; Apple Watch Series 10

iPhone 16

As the first iPhone designed from the ground up to work with Apple Intelligence, the iPhone 16 aspires to supercharge your experience.

Its new A18 chip powers machine learning features as small as prioritizing your notifications to systemwide Writing Tools for proofwriting and summarizing text in most apps. Intelligence can also help generate “Memory Movies” from your captures, or generate bespoke new emoji (called “Genmoji”) from your prompts.

Siri will benefit from the enhanced capability as well, with richer language recognition. For instance, if someone recommends a new album to you by text, you can ask Siri to play it on the spot. Intelligence will roll out as a free software update, with the first features available next month in US English; Canadian-localized English will follow in December.

The iPhone 16’s bigger feature is its revised camera and its built-in key. Pressing the tactile Camera Control button can launch the app quickly, or operate the shutter to take a photo or start recording, while the button can also be used like a slider to control certain options, like zoom or depth of field. Later this year it will also work with Intelligence for functions like quickly identifying dog breeds or adding events from a flyer to the calendar.

This generation’s camera system is “like having four lenses in your pocket,” featuring a new 48MP Fusion Camera with two optical-quality lenses in one—a 2x optical-quality Telephoto, and a 12MP UItra Wide. The latter enables macro photography like never before, with autofocus to boot.

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Also enhancing the iPhone 16 experience is its Photographic Styles, which can help users express their creativity and customize photos. These styles surpass filters by applying adjustments to specific colours of a specific style, instead of plastering everything with the same changes. Like many recent iOS camera additions, these styles can be applied or removed after a photo is taken, and now even rendered in live preview.

And, for Apple Vision Pro users, the iPhone 16 can now capture video in Spatial Audio, a feature previously restricted to the iPhone 15 Pro or higher. However, this also has wider applications in Audio Mix, a new sound-isolating feature that can reduce interference from things like high winds.

Some of the gaming functionality enjoyed now on higher iPhone models will make its way down the line to the regular iPhone 16. The A18 chip features an upgraded 16-core Neural Engine, a 6-core CPU, and a 5-core GPU for vast improvements across the board, including hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The 16 and 16 Plus can handle the AAA games that that 15 Pro was keeping for itself, such as Tencent’s Honor of Kings: World (which will receive an ultra graphics mode in an update next year).

With expanded power comes battery concerns, but Apple has addressed them with advanced power management and a revamped internal design that also promises better heat dissipation. Holding it all together is a latest-generation Ceramic Shield casing that’s 50% tougher than the first generation. The display comes in either 6.1-inch or 6.7-inch, featuring a Super Retina XDR display with OLED technology and the return of the Dynamic Island.

The iPhone 16 starts at $1129 CAD and the iPhone 16 Plus debuts at $1279; both come in five colour options, with either 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB of storage, and will be available September 20.

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iPhone 16 Pro

Incorporating the same features as its little brother, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max have plenty of new tricks up their own sleeves, powered by the A18 Pro chip.

This chip has been designed for industry-leading computing power with a unique architecture. It features a 16-core Neural Engine, 6-core GPU, and 6-core CPU—amounting to a 17% increase in system memory bandwidth and a 15% increase to processing, while using 20% less power.

On these higher models, Intelligence will be able to respond to verbal requests for photo manipulation, pulling up specified images and applying edits in Darkroom. Siri can offer guidance on edits as well, such as how to adjust background blur.

Apple’s keynote focused on the iPhone 16 Pro’s benefits in audio-visual creation—in fact, the smartphone was used to film and edit The Weeknd’s new music video, as shown in today’s presentation. Musicians can also record something like a guitar riff in Voice Memos, then sing over their own recording, and layer the two tracks seamlessly in-app.

Apple Unveils Iphone 16 &Amp; Apple Watch Series 10

The Pro camera suite is capable of 4K120 recording for incredible slow motion, while Apple’s industry-leading colour grading can be applied frame-by-frame, even after the moment has been recorded.

These top-tier models feature the iPhone’s largest screens and thinnest borders yet; the iPhone 16 Pro measures in at 6.3-inch, and the Pro Max at 6.9-inch.

With four titanium colour schemes and four storage sizes (128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB) to choose from, the iPhone 16 Pro starts at $1449 CAD, and the Pro Max at $1749 CAD. Like its little siblings, both will be available on September 20.

Apple Unveils Iphone 16 &Amp; Apple Watch Series 10

Apple Watch Series 10

The Apple Watch Series 10 will offer the smartwatch titan’s largest display yet. Offering 30% more surface area than the Series 6—enough for an extra line of text—the newest model has more rounded corners and the company’s first-ever wide-angle OLED display that’s 40% brighter from an angle. The goal is to make the Apple Watch more readable at a glance than ever before.

Despite the bigger screen area, the Apple Watch Series 10 is also the company’s thinnest to date. It’s 9.7mm thick, 10% thinner than Series 7, 8, and 9. This has been achieved with further miniaturization advances and a highly sophisticated production method, integrating the antenna into the device’s housing. The incorporated speaker system will not be compromised in the process, though—in fact, it will be able to play media like music or podcasts.

With the new OLED’s power efficiency, a faster refresh rate is possible in always-on mode. This means it can update once a second instead of once a minute, and second hands will animate even when the watch isn’t raised (on select watch faces, like the sleek new Flux model, which fills the screen with colour as the seconds tick by).

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Speaking of power efficiency, the new smartwatch will have incredible charging times: possible of 80% charging within 30 minutes.

The new generation device is swimproof, with a 50-metre water resistance rating, and supports Custom Workouts for swimming. The depth gauge measures down to 6 metres and detects the water temperature when submerged. If you’re headed to the coast for some snorkeling or surfing, the new Tides app can see tidal forecasts for coastlines around the world.

Like the iPhone 16, the new Apple Watch will rely on Intelligence features with a new Apple Silicon S10 chip. This will enable better onboard performance from features like the Translate app or the Smart Stack, a redesigned Photos face, automatic workout detection, and Crash or Fall Detection.

With the Apple Watch Series 10, sleep tracking will now also detect another possible health problem: sleep apnea. Tracking possible Breathing Disturbances like this over time can help with diagnosing this condition, which affects over a billion people worldwide. This functionality will roll out to Series 9 devices as well.

Its new Polished Titanium theme weighs 20% less than the stainless steel Series 9 model, with a mirror-like shine.

Also on sale September 20, the Apple Watch Series 10 will start at $549 CAD and is available for preorder now. watchOS 11 will roll out for Series 6 devices and up starting September 16.

Apple Unveils Iphone 16 &Amp; Apple Watch Series 10

Apple Watch Ultra 2

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 will be available in a new black titanium finish (and a matching Milanese Loop band) alongside the iPhone 16 family on September 20. This new finish doesn’t only look sleek, it features extreme scratch resistance. Meanwhile innovations in the WatchOS 11’s Workout app will help it retain its position as the top smartwatch for sports.

New training load insights will help guide users on when to push or recover during workouts. Swimmers can benefit from automatic stroke detection and interval guidance, while runners and cyclists can make custom routes.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 starts at $1099 CAD and will be available September 20.

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AirPods 4

Apple is updating their line of headphones, perhaps the most popular in the world, to introduce the world’s first end-to-end hearing health experience.

The new AirPods 4 have an updated open-ear design, setting a new bar for fit and comfort that takes users’ unique ear geometry into account. Their acoustic architecture has been updated to get better highs and lows out of your new iPhone 16.

Spatial audio and voice isolation features are being updated to make your everyday use even more intuitive. Siri can now recognize if you nod or shake your head in response to her prompts, for discretion. Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) will power features like the Transparency mode, which can help users stay aware of their environment, or Adaptive Audio, which blends the two modes based on your situation—while Conversation Awareness can detect when you’re talking and lower your media volume temporarily.

The revised case has USB-C and the smallest design in the lineup yet, while still offering 30 hours of battery life. The AirPods Max line will also get USB-C charging capabilities, alongside five new colours.

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AirPods Pro 2 users will be on the forefront of Apple’s hearing health initiatives. This line’s ear tips help provide passive noise reduction, and the Hearing Protection mode is on by default. Apple is offering a Hearing Test feature with AirPods Pro and compatible iPhones or iPads, using a standard clinical approach to provide users a summary and a personalized hearing profile.

Further, AirPods Pro will offer Hearing Aid capability, suitable for people experiencing mild to moderate hearing loss, integrating the personalized test results and making the earbuds into a clinical-grade hearing aid. A user’s profile will automatically be applied to media they use with the device, and offers dynamic adjustments to keep them engaged in their surroundings.

Apple’s AirPods 4 start at $179 CAD, or the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation for $249 CAD; both are available for preorder now ahead of their September 20 release, alongside the iPhone 16 and Apple Watch Series 10. The updated AirPod Max colours launch the same day for $779 CAD.

Meanwhile the AirPods Pro 2 are available now, starting at $329 CAD; their Hearing Aid features “are expected to receive marketing authorization from global health authorities soon, and will be available this fall.”

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