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iPhone 16 (Quick Look) - Designed for Apple Intelligence

The latest generation of iPhones are designed and tailored to benefit from Apple Intelligence, which will fully debut in December.

Audio transcription

"Hello everyone and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look, a controversial one and a long-awaited one because this is the iPhone 16.
Now it's very difficult to talk about the iPhone 16 without leaning into a bit of a debate-y territory."

"That is the discussion that is currently going on throughout like YouTube and Twitch and Twitter and all of these platforms where people converse about new consumer electronics and it seems that the way Apple has chosen to put the launch together this time around has proven to be less than satisfactory for a lot of people."

"I personally find it to be two different things are true at the same time at once.
So the first thing that is true is that this is a fantastic smartphone.
If you purchase a regular iPhone 16, even though that it has the 60 Hertz display, which I do think is starting to wear thin, even if you say that the majority of phone buyers out there don't care about either 60 or 90 or 120 Hertz, I do think that what Apple calls ProMotion ought to be considered standard fare by now and not used as a differentiator between the regular and the pro phones, even if we factor in people that are just a lot more casual than you and I."

"But apart from that, think about what you're getting.
This is manufactured to a tolerance that is nearly unmatched, manufactured in a scale that is almost hard to fathom.
Its screen, the Super Retina XDR display, is an OLED 2556 by 1179 pixel resolution screen, which peaks at 1600 nits with HDR content and 2000 nits outdoor."

"It has the A18 chip, which is a six core CPU, a five core GPU, and a 16 core neural engine.
It has Apple's pretty mature processing on the two cameras here, which is a 48 megapixel 26 millimeter f over 1.6 aperture lens alongside a 12 megapixel 2X telephoto that is 52 megapixels.
I mean, this is cool."

"Apple makes cool smartphones, and this is a cohesive, fantastic smartphone.
If you have an older iPhone, you'd probably want this.
It even has the brand new camera control capacitive sensor.
Can I call it a button?
I mean, it clicks."

"I think there is dynamic physical action happening here, but Apple seems to refuse to call it a button.
But the point is, you get a lot of flagship features.
You get all the support that is behind it.
You get the massive Apple ecosystem, both for MagSafe and all of the other stuff that you get access to."

"It can use readily and better by having an iPhone.
You don't get a compromised experience, but at the same time, you get a compromised experience because while Apple is shipping a very capable smartphone, they're also shipping it without the majority of the features that they've chosen as marketing focus on this phone."

"Now, there's different cases here.
Case number one is that Denmark, where we're shooting, Scandinavia, which is the part of the world that we live in, and Europe as a whole, will not get Apple intelligence features at all for the foreseeable future because of an ongoing dispute between Apple and the EU."

"The EU feels that Apple is unfairly utilizing their competition status to create an unsanctioned monopoly.
Now, I don't know if I believe that, and Apple feels like that they have to make their phones worse in order to respond to that."

"Apple intelligence is not coming to the EU, including Denmark, for the foreseeable future.
That's not next month, or November, or January, or March.
It's a while ahead of us.
There is also a future where Apple intelligence could skip EU entirely, meaning there is huge differentiating factors between an iPhone shipped in the US and an iPhone shipped in Europe."

"That means that you are technically getting an inferior product by buying an iPhone, not because that the iPhone is bad, but because it has features that you don't get access to.
But, even over in the US, people are mad."

"Why are they mad?
Because a lot of the Apple intelligence features that they are solely getting, they are not getting yet.
Even the brand new Siri animation, which is kind of like a rainbow-y effect all the way around the edges of the screen, which is the core of Apple's marketing message, is not there yet."

"When you activate Siri on an iPhone 16 today, it's the regular little blurb at the bottom of the screen.
Why is that?
Well, a leading theory is that this simply isn't ready yet."

"But they shipped the iPhone, and they shipped the iPhone and marketed it as an Apple intelligence device.
And it has zero Apple intelligence features.
Some are coming in October, which it might be October by the time you're watching this."

"And it's some features, not all, and those features are in beta.
They are not ready for full-time testing yet.
That's a controversial decision made by Apple, and one that I feel like might net them a lot of criticism for people ready to criticize the iPhone."

"Because some features, even the features attached to the camera control button, aren't here yet, which is basically hold, well, half press to focus, which is a key thing that photographers do, which makes this button, which makes it make sense, which means that a full press will take the shot, half a press will basically give you a chance to see the depth map and focus properly before taking the shot, standard fare for cameras."

"That's not here yet.
We don't know when it's coming.
It's going to be later this year.
Think about that.
Those are core features, and they're not here."

"I know Apple always ships iPhones in September, but maybe this was a bad call.
I don't know.
So again, the tale of two things that are true at once.
If you have an iPhone 13 and you buy this, it's going to feel like an upgrade, man."

"Great cameras, lovely build quality, smooth software, great ecosystem advantages, blazing fast speeds on the A18 chip, a lovely screen.
You get everything, but you also don't get what they promised you.
See you on the next one."

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