WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 The last few years have seen the regular iPhone fall behind its pro sibling. 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:13.920 In camera, of course, but also power and capability, and it's made it a much less appealing option 00:00:13.920 --> 00:00:19.560 in the lineup. So when Apple's announcement showed a greater upgrade for the regular iPhone than the pro 00:00:19.560 --> 00:00:26.160 model, I was curious. I mean, new camera control button like the pro, a processor that's not a year old at 00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:31.320 launch, the same amount of RAM as the pro, things that will be helpful as Apple Intelligence 00:00:31.320 --> 00:00:35.640 rolls out. If you're thinking about upgrading to a new iPhone, it's a great year to get it on 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:40.040 pro. 00:00:40.040 --> 00:00:44.600 The main reason for this chip upgrade is Apple Intelligence, which will be trickling out 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:48.080 over a bunch of software updates in the coming months. 00:00:48.080 --> 00:00:53.080 But this iPhone is ready because it gets the fully up to date A18 chip. 00:00:53.080 --> 00:00:56.480 This is a two-generation jump from the iPhone 15. 00:00:56.480 --> 00:01:01.120 My Lightroom export test showed 2 minutes and 45 seconds, though something is weird 00:01:01.120 --> 00:01:08.800 with our iPhone 15 because it's remarkably slow. And even when I run the test on an iPhone 14 Pro with the same A16 chip as the 15, it 00:01:08.800 --> 00:01:13.200 performed equal to the iPhone 13, which has an A15. 00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:17.360 Geekbench numbers, however, showed a more gradual improvement, with the A18's graphics 00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:20.920 pushing M1 MacBook Air territory. 00:01:20.920 --> 00:01:28.160 I think the biggest news, though, is memory. Thanks to the requirements of Apple Intelligence, the iPhone now has 8GB. 00:01:28.160 --> 00:01:33.160 That's the same amount as found on all entry-level Macs sold in the past few years. 00:01:33.160 --> 00:01:39.960 Now I do agree that it is a small amount on a PC, but on an iPhone? 00:01:39.960 --> 00:01:44.400 The way iOS deals with memory is by purging apps you haven't used in a while. 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:47.800 This means if you're swiping between different apps and browser tabs, they'll have to 00:01:47.800 --> 00:01:52.880 reload. I have to confess, I've always hated this, because a lot of the time I'd be midway 00:01:52.880 --> 00:01:58.640 through an article or feed in the app or website would not remember where I left off 00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:02.640 when it reloaded. Well, there's a lot less of that now. 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:06.320 It's not something I noticed initially, until I really thought about it and then tried 00:02:06.320 --> 00:02:11.000 to open up older tabs and apps and yeah, they're still there where I left them. 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:16.120 It also means I'm not waiting for them to load too, even though they do load fast. 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:20.120 The real reason to care though is that iPhones with big memory and chip upgrades are likely 00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:24.920 to benefit from longer OS support, and so it means that this iPhone could get 6 years 00:02:24.920 --> 00:02:28.520 of updates like the XR and 6S before it. 00:02:28.520 --> 00:02:33.200 You know, underneath the case, these colors don't really look like the images you see 00:02:33.200 --> 00:02:36.400 online. They're somehow less saturated in real life. 00:02:36.400 --> 00:02:40.520 I thought I'd like the teal, but it's just not doing it for me, and the aquamarine is 00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:47.480 missing some sort of blue punch too. Phones are important on the iPhone, Ariana Grande elected to forego pro features to get 00:02:47.480 --> 00:02:51.400 an iPhone 15 in pink. 00:02:51.400 --> 00:02:56.160 I wonder what she thinks of the 16's pink color. 00:02:56.160 --> 00:02:59.160 About color, let's talk about the iPhone's camera. 00:02:59.160 --> 00:03:04.440 They've renamed the main camera the fusion camera, despite there being no change in specs 00:03:04.440 --> 00:03:09.320 that I can see. I thought it was deep fusion for processing. 00:03:09.320 --> 00:03:13.840 The ultra wide camera, however, now has autofocus, so it supports macro photography like the 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:18.640 pro iPhone, though every time I try and use the macro feature, I'm so close with my iPhone 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:22.320 I'm blocking the light I need to take a photo. 00:03:22.320 --> 00:03:26.120 The headline feature is the new camera control button. 00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:30.600 As a avid button pusher, I'm glad to see a new button introduced to the iPhone, but 00:03:30.600 --> 00:03:36.040 the execution on this one leaves something to be desired. 00:03:36.120 --> 00:03:42.400 First, I'm not sure about the position. It's on the correct side of the phone, but for landscape photos like this, it's very 00:03:42.400 --> 00:03:45.760 far in. My finger wants to rest naturally here. 00:03:45.760 --> 00:03:50.160 Now, it's likely they placed it up here for vertical photos, especially selfies. 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:53.840 It works ideally for when you're stretching your ARM out to get everyone in the shot, 00:03:53.840 --> 00:04:00.400 and can only hold the phone with one hand. Now you can take a horizontal photo and hold the phone without blocking the front camera. 00:04:00.400 --> 00:04:04.640 I fear that Apple's engineers were too insecure to have the button simply act as a camera 00:04:04.640 --> 00:04:08.800 app launcher and shutter button, so they had to add a layer of interactivity to it. 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:13.120 If you lightly press on the button, it brings down a camera control from the screen's bezel, 00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:19.960 allowing you to dial in exposure, depth, zoom, cameras, which is zoom, but less granular, 00:04:19.960 --> 00:04:23.000 styles and tone, more on those later. 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:27.000 It's a strange assortment of options, but strangers still adjusting them. 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:31.600 Remember the trackpad in that HP laptop I was complaining about in our last video? 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:39.560 This kind of feels like that. While the haptics feel nice, swiping and adjusting them feels bad, though not everyone agrees 00:04:39.560 --> 00:04:45.880 with me. I find it to feel slow when I'm trying to be fast and imprecise when I'm trying to 00:04:45.880 --> 00:04:49.480 be slow. 00:04:49.480 --> 00:04:53.200 There have been times where I'll bring the camera control down, try and make an adjustment, 00:04:53.200 --> 00:04:56.920 and it keeps disappearing. It's really annoying to use. 00:04:56.920 --> 00:05:02.000 Light pressing the shutter button is a mainstay on traditional cameras to activate the autofocus 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:08.800 and exposure reading before taking a photo. Because no adjustments are being made, they have a really light actuation. 00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:15.760 The iPhone camera control on the other hand requires a lot of force just to take the photo. 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:19.880 In dark environments where you need the camera to be still for longer exposures, I worry 00:05:19.880 --> 00:05:23.440 that holding the phone with one hand will introduce camera shake that will impact the 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:29.320 clarity of the photo. Looking at this button, it appears a lot like the Touch ID button found on less expensive 00:05:29.320 --> 00:05:33.600 iPads, and honestly that's the button feature I'd be waiting for. 00:05:33.600 --> 00:05:37.560 But that functionality would be more ideally placed on the traditional side button. 00:05:37.560 --> 00:05:42.640 If you have an iPhone 15 and feel like you're missing out on the camera control, don't. 00:05:42.640 --> 00:05:46.680 Yes, there are times where it will be handy, but you'll be surprised how infrequent that 00:05:46.680 --> 00:05:52.560 is. The next new feature they added to the camera is photographic styles. 00:05:52.560 --> 00:05:55.840 Wait, wasn't that added to the iPhone 13? 00:05:55.880 --> 00:06:00.120 Yes, but this is the latest generation of photographic styles. 00:06:00.120 --> 00:06:05.360 So there. The idea with photographic styles is that you can tune the iPhone's camera processing 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:12.320 to better suit your tastes. So if you find that they over sharpen and run too cool, you can dial that back. 00:06:12.320 --> 00:06:17.080 On the iPhone 13, any photos you took with photographic styles would get burned into 00:06:17.080 --> 00:06:20.680 the photo destructively. Not anymore. 00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:25.120 Because your photo style can be changed in the photos app after the photo has been taken. 00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:30.960 Nice. It's just like the iPhone's Instagram style photo filters introduced over a decade ago. 00:06:30.960 --> 00:06:35.720 Actually, the latest gen photographic styles is a strange combination of the first gen and 00:06:35.720 --> 00:06:41.240 those filters. Swipe to the left of standard and you're playing mostly with color undertones. 00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:45.000 Swipe to the right and they really look like modern interpretations of the previous iPhone 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:48.600 filters and they have a dramatic effect on the way color is rendered. 00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:52.840 This white background can go from purple in the luminous style to yellow in the quiet 00:06:52.840 --> 00:06:59.440 style. As an indecisive person, I always get antsy when trying to decide how to tune a photo, 00:06:59.440 --> 00:07:03.360 which is why I never picked a photographic style on previous iPhones. 00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:09.080 They get burned in. Now that they're available after the fact, I feel more comfortable. 00:07:09.080 --> 00:07:13.240 And Apple even has a little tutorial to help you dial in your preferred style before you 00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:17.800 begin too. When I did it the first time, I took on the Amber Hue mainly because it makes me look 00:07:17.800 --> 00:07:21.680 less pale, but I actually prefer cooler, more natural photos. 00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:25.400 Sure enough, when I finally got that dialed in, I prefer the results of my photographic 00:07:25.400 --> 00:07:31.600 style. As much as I wish the regular iPhones would take RAW photos like mainstream Android equivalents, 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:35.080 I know that for most people RAW is a waste of storage space. 00:07:35.080 --> 00:07:38.360 This is a happy medium. 00:07:38.360 --> 00:07:41.520 There are still many day-to-day improvements to the iPhone worth noting. 00:07:41.520 --> 00:07:45.560 The 16M Plus have larger batteries than the last, which for me meant I was able to run 00:07:45.560 --> 00:07:50.400 for one and a half days and six hours of on-screen time, and the on-board speakers are notably 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:55.880 loud and clear. The regular iPhone does still have irritating limitations, though. 00:07:55.880 --> 00:07:59.640 Lots of people complain about the iPhone's maximum 60Hz refresh rate. 00:07:59.640 --> 00:08:04.800 Yes, the animations are buttery smooth at that frame, but similarly priced Android phones 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:10.080 have been getting a high refresh rate screens for years, at least give us 90Hz. 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:15.400 Also this USB-C port is great, but despite the fast chip, it only supports USB 2 speeds. 00:08:15.760 --> 00:08:19.920 It's 2024. That's like putting a serial port on an Intel MacBook. 00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:27.960 Finally, this iPhone has been weirdly glitchy. One of them, which was apps and things just refusing to deal with touch inputs, got fixed 00:08:27.960 --> 00:08:34.040 in a recent update. But I still get a weird visual glitch if the phone tries to turn the screen off itself. 00:08:34.040 --> 00:08:37.200 It flickers pink like crazy, sometimes. 00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:43.520 At $800, the iPhone 16 is just as expensive as ever, here in Canada it's over $1100. 00:08:43.520 --> 00:08:49.200 But at least the price hasn't gone up. If you have an older iPhone and are contemplating upgrading, this is the generation to pull 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:53.920 the trigger on. At these prices, most people can and should keep their phone for at least four years. 00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:58.040 In fact, I found this funny tweet recommending you take the case off and watch the announcement 00:08:58.040 --> 00:09:01.760 of the phone you have. Wow, new phone. Works on me. 00:09:01.760 --> 00:09:08.920 I also recommend replacing the battery, too. If it's not lasting a full day, it really does feel like a new phone when you do that. 00:09:08.920 --> 00:09:12.760 If you have an iPhone 12 or 13, I recommend doing that. 00:09:12.760 --> 00:09:17.720 If you're upgrading from an iPhone XR or 11, though, this will feel great. 00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:24.160 Thanks for pressing the buttons of this Mac Address. I'm curious in the comments below how many of you are upgrading from an iPhone XR or 00:09:24.160 --> 00:09:30.600 11 or even earlier to one of these. And if you want to watch another video we did, you should watch the one where I talk 00:09:30.600 --> 00:09:33.960 about the history of Wi-Fi and how instrumental Apple was to it.