I'm back.

I'm back from Australia, all the way from down under, and I did bring exactly one souvenir with me, but I flew in this morning because Apple said they were going to announce some stuff, and they did.

There was an event today, so here are my first impressions.

So we got the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro today, along with new AirPods and Apple Watch, and I've got some hands-on and some first impressions for you of all that stuff right here.

So let's just start with the new phones.

We knew this was coming, right?

A very, very minor incremental overall update, but somehow Apple's still got to try to get people to buy it, so what will they do?

So iPhone 16 looks very much like iPhone 15, but there are some new colors, as you can pretty much always count on.

This year, it's ultramarine, which is kind of this indigo, pretty sick, teal, pink, black, and white, and the cameras, instead of being diagonally oriented, are now lined up again next to each other like it was back in the iPhone 10 days, but it's not just a retro touch.

That's also so it can shoot spatial videos and pictures now, so the sensors are aligned with each other again, but then everything else, the rounded corners, the size of the regular phone and the Plus phone, the speakers, the antenna lines, everything, just basically the same.

Not much new going on here.

Inside, they bumped it up from the A16 Bionic to a new A18, so there's some solid performance improvements in the 20 to 30% range, better ray tracing, and a two times faster neural engine and eight gigs of RAM for all that Apple Intelligence stuff.

Really, the most underrated new hardware to me, though, that they talked about is Apple briefly mentioned that these new phones will all have larger batteries, and so that seems to imply that it will actually have better battery life, but also, at no point did Apple ever say any numbers.

Not a single number was uttered during the battery section, no exactly how much bigger this new battery actually is, and the only numbers we've been able to find is if you look on Apple's compare page for the phones, it said the iPhone 15 would get a battery life of 20 hours of video playback, and this new 16 gets 22.

So I'm gonna be putting these through the paces.

You already know if you wanna get subscribed to be among the first to see the full review, that's when we'll be able to figure out if it's actually a significant improvement in battery in other ways, but as of right now, better battery, sure.

And then I never thought I'd say this sentence again, but this new iPhone has two new buttons.

So first of all, it gets the action button from last year's Pro, so now you can do the exact same customized shortcuts from a flashlight or Shazam to a Siri shortcut or whatever you want, and then there's also another new button called camera control, and this second button, it's kind of, it's a touch-sensitive cutout covered in sapphire with a Taptic engine behind it.

Now it does actually move, it is an actual button, just to be clear, but just like the trackpad on a lot of modern laptops, the vibration motor clicks to also make a half press feel like you're clicking a two-stage button, like a camera shutter button, and it is also very convincing.

So the magic of this camera control area, is what they're calling it, is that it is pressure sensitive and it's basically a tiny trackpad on the corner of the phone.

It's capacitive sensitive, so you can swipe and do gestures along the corner of the phone.

And so Apple's decided everything that this button will do will be camera related.

So if you press it from the lock screen, it opens the camera app, and then when you're in, you can click it again to take a photo, or long press to start taking a short video.

But then you can do a little half-strength double-tap to open up a menu for different camera options, and then slide your finger along this camera control to change them.

So, you know, it takes some getting used to.

You got to get used to the placement of your hand and how fast you swipe, but once you kind of know what you're doing, it feels pretty smooth and it's pretty sensitive and intuitive.

So this is all a bunch of functionality that's being added basically into Apple's camera app, but Apple's also said that third-party apps that use the camera will also be able to take advantage of the camera control.

So Snapchat, Instagram, Halide, et cetera, they'll be able to also use the slider.

So I think it's pretty cool.

I think it's technically very impressive.

I'm just trying to figure out, kind of similar to the action button, how useful it will actually be.

Like, it is kind of in this awkward spot on the bottom right of the phone.

It makes sense as a horizontal shutter button, but they're kind of splitting the difference, trying to also make it usable in a vertical orientation.

I just, I'm curious how many people actually use this regularly, because again, it is on all the phones.

But I mean, the display also does now drop down to one nit minimum brightness.

So that's, that's great at night.

It is also still a 60 Hertz display on an $800 flagship in 2024.

So that's really disappointing for me personally, but overall this phone is, I'd say it's still pretty tempting to say that this base model is probably a better buy for most people over the pro phones, but let's just get into the pro phones, shall we?

New colors this year, desert titanium, which goes alongside the classic natural titanium and then a slightly darker black and a slightly whiter white, but otherwise same design again, plus the new camera control.

And the main updates with the pro are the new screens and the new chip.

So the phones actually get slightly bigger this year.

So the screen sizes are up to 6.3 inches on the pro and 6.9 inches on the pro max, thanks to the thinner bezels, which I didn't think I would notice, but I'm actually looking at them and they are a little noticeably thinner.

So you can kind of tell.

And inside there is also a new chip as well.

It's the A18 pro.

So this is the new highest end chip in any iPhone.

And this again should have performance boost and efficiency boost over last year's pro phone, again, in the 20 to 30% range.

So CPU and GPU improving better ray tracing should still have the faster USB three speeds that the pros get.

But again, the efficiency improvements have them saying that the pro max will now be the longest battery life ever in an iPhone.

By how much?

I don't really know, but that's, that's good to see.

But the camera is of course always the highlight of the pro phones.

And there are three new cameras on these pros versus last year.

So a new 48 megapixel main camera, then a higher resolution, 48 megapixel ultra wide camera from the 12 from last year.

And then the smaller pro also gets a five X telephoto now.

So the smaller pro used to have a three X, but now both pros have matching all three cameras.

It's also wireless charging a little bit faster, 25 Watts.

So that'll get you 50% in 30 minutes of charging with the new mag safe charger, nothing too crazy.

And also 4k 120 FPS slow motion straight out of the cameras now.

And that's, that's pretty sick.

Now I'm sure the file sizes will be nuts from the pro res version of this, but it gives you really functional files that you can do a lot with.

It also totally proves to me that they could handle processing enough to shoot 8k 30, but they're just choosing not to.

Now there was a whole lot of talk, a whole long section of the keynote that where they constantly talked about Apple intelligence.

And I mean, they have to, because it's a really big deal for them.

But the thing is these phones will launch with iOS 18, 18.0.

And that means they will launch with no Apple intelligence features at all.

No Genmoji, no image playground, no writing tools, nothing that shiny brand new iPhone 16 that you take out the box in September, 2024, and start using in a couple of weeks, we'll have the old Siri on it.

Now they'll start to come out bit by bit with software updates.

So 18.1 has the new Siri and a bunch of writing tools and some other stuff, but it's, it's becoming harder and harder to pair that stuff directly to this new phone as a part of this upgrade.

I mean, if you've watched my videos before, you know, about one of the golden rules, which is to never buy something based on the promise of future software updates.

So this feels like a big separation moment for the iPhone, at least to me, where each year of the new physical phone that you buy is just a small improvement.

It's just a little bit faster chip, a little bit better screen, slightly better cameras.

But on the other side is this rapidly improving ball of all this AI stuff that is not launching on the phone, but that is the totally separate, really big reason to get the phone.

So it feels like I'm going to need to review all of that stuff separately in its entirety when it does finally come out because it comes out so separately from the phone itself.

Anyway, there were also some other Apple announcements today, aside from just the iPhones, and we got new AirPods and new watches.

So there were lots of rumors about this huge redesign with the Apple watch for the 10th year.

But now that we actually see it, Apple watch series 10 is mostly slightly new again.

Now, okay.

It is 10% thinner and 10% lighter, and that's nice.

And it has a slightly larger display again with thinner bezels and better viewing angles, plus a new S10 SIP inside.

That's it.

Oh, and of course you got to throw in some new colors as well.

So the aluminum has silver or rose gold, or this new jet black finish, which is a bit of a shiny throwback.

And then they've dropped stainless steel for titanium, which now comes in natural titanium, gold colored or slate colored.

So that's the redesign.

Again, it is pretty minor.

I don't want to downplay the amount of technical engineering that goes into achieving these things.

Like clearly you still have to combine the metal back plate and the charger into one piece with the antennas integrated to improve the thinness.

And they're using what they're calling the first wide angle OLED display to help you see the screen from more angles, which actually does matter on a watch.

But yeah, I think if you were expecting some crazy radical, you know, square watch or something nuts, then yeah, this is very much still the classic Apple watch shape.

There are some new watch faces since the second display is gone dark.

So that's cool.

There's also a new depth app and a new ties app, which I think it looks really cool.

I don't even surf or have any use for this app, but it's just kind of cool flipping through and seeing exactly when sunrise and sundown are and high tide and low tide are every day.

If you're near a coastline and also introduced sleep apnea detection using only the gyroscope, there's another coming soon feature.

It's like pending FDA approval and regulatory bodies around the world to actually launch.

But the fact that it only needs a gyroscope to detect it, I thought that was pretty cool.

So those series 10 watches are going to start at the same prices as last year's series 10 watches.

And then we also got a new Apple watch ultra two and by new Apple watch ultra two, I mean a satin black finish of the existing Apple watch ultra two.

And I am so into it.

I have absolutely no real reason to upgrade, but this is just one of those things that companies sometimes do.

They just make a matte black version of something that I totally don't need, but suddenly they have my shipping address and credit card info.

And I just ended up buying one.

I'm told this is a pretty robust coding process.

So hopefully it shouldn't ship or scratch too easily.

And then maybe show like light raw titanium underneath, but also it's an ultra watch.

So I think someone's going to do it.

But then there are also the new AirPods, the AirPods upgrades or upgrades.

One of them's one AirPods.

AirPods four have been redesigned and there's actually two versions.

So for one 29, there's the new AirPods four with the new shape.

And then for one 79, there's the same new AirPods version, but you also get active noise cancellation and a wireless charging case with a tiny speaker built in for find my.

So yeah, this new shape, it's a little different.

So it may fit a little better in some people's ears like mine, like the old ones are terrible for me, but these are a but that also means they may be a little bit worse than some people's ears, but yeah, to get, I think for under 200 bucks, active noise cancellation in AirPods with a four hour battery life.

I think it'll be a nice little target demographic waiting for that.

And then AirPods pro two didn't really get a whole lot technically new here, but they also did get certified as a clinical grade hearing aid, which is pretty awesome.

Plus some other hearing protection and testing features are added as well, but the biggest upgrade of the day.

And by that, I mean, non upgrade fake upgrade of the day goes to AirPods max.

Now keep in mind, these headphones came out originally in 2020.

Like we reviewed these a long time ago.

These are $550 when they launched and they're still $550 in 2024.

And they still have a lightning port and they still don't have an on off button and they still have that dumb case that they came with.

So they finally get this update AirPods pro two, and the update is five new colors and they have a USB-C port now, which, okay.

Yeah.

They literally had a lightning port in 2024.

So we're happy to see that, but then that's it.

Like there's not a single other change to these new AirPods.

They still don't have an on off button in 2024.

They still have that stupid case they came with.

Like they got the feedback.

We know this case isn't good.

They didn't improve that at all.

They still have the H1 chip, even though all the other AirPods are on the H2 chip now.

What did the entire AirPods max team go into a coma for four years and then wake up a week before this announcement and scramble to put this together.

This is weird.

The sad part is I'm probably still going to upgrade to them anyway, because I just, I can't carry a lightning cable around anymore and I keep forgetting it.

And then they keep dying and I keep needing a lightning cable and it's just, let me just stop having that headache.

But yeah, weird, non-upgrade, very disappointing AirPods max, but that's basically it.

Those are my announcement thoughts and reactions and first impressions.

And generally, yeah, not a ton of major new stuff.

I think really the two big highlights are one, this separation between the hardware upgrade and all the software that's coming to the hardware, but not launching with it.

And honestly two is this camera control thing, this weird button that they've added.

It's fascinating.

The fact that they've added it to both the pro and non-pro phones when I didn't think they would.

That's interesting.

The fact that case manufacturers are going to have to deal with this now, like some of them are going to have a little cutout for it, but some of them may try to do the same thing Apple did with like a little capacitive glass thing over the top of it to keep it flush.