Cheap iPhone = Best iPhone?!

Base model is best model? really they redesigned these and thought M yeah let's leave this freaking thing unbelievable it has been literal years since I finished an Apple iPhone keynote and thought hm maybe the base model is the one to get but I am so glad that that is the case with the iPhone 16 but let's before that we got to just talk Apple Watch Series 2 v2 about the Apple watch and the airpods there was only one new Apple watch today the series 10 because Ye Old watch Ultra Series 2 sticks around for a whole another year however with the addition of a new color matte black look I ain't a black watch guy like at all but I do appreciate they're offering every band with matching Hardware regardless of Watch Body color I'm also really lusting after the new titanium Millan Loop this is one of my favorite bracelet styles from traditional watchmaking and Apple's $200 price point is actually shockingly fair for a titanium bracelet of this complexity and this quality but also come on I ain't spending $200 on that maybe though we also failed to see an Apple Watch SE??? update to the Apple watch SE at all this is highly disappointing considering that it's one of the bestselling but also one of the most underwhelming watches in Apple's entire lineup the rumor of a $200 plastic colorful body to save weight and cost was really exciting to me and I'm just I'm kind of bummed we're stuck with this stinker for yet another year strangely while it wasn't basically given any keynote airtime it does show as available for pre-order on apple.com so I thought huh and I put my investigative cap on and yeah no it's the same watch and it's got the same price but it does have a different default band color big whoo all right so let's talk Apple Watch Series 10 about that series 10 update yeah Mr cook introd it as having a beautiful new design and then they showed us this unveil video that made it look almost exactly the same because well it is almost exactly the same this is not the long rumored squared Edge design with Magnetic band no no there's a marginally larger display and a slightly thinner case starting with the display just just watch this bit that's why for series 10 we developed the largest and most advanced display ever for Apple watch it's the biggest wearable display we've ever built even slightly bigger than Apple watch Ultra okay okay pause what is that that is like that is a single Pixel difference the reason they never showed this new screen side by side with the series 9 is well because of this it looks almost exactly the same in size but do you know what that's fine that doesn't matter that's okay because the display itself got a very nice update which I'm excited about because it aims to fix my biggest annoyance with the watch Ultra 2 and that is off axis viewing now what Apple calls wideangle "Wide-angle OLED" and MLAs, explained! OLED is almost certainly just a micro lens array now I shouldn't say just because this is a newish technology that has made its way into a few specialty oleds but is not mainstream basically thousands of microscopic lenses are placed on top of each individual pixel not one lens per pixel thousands of lenses per pixel super cool which not only help increase light throughput but also the angle at which the light is viewable Now LG has been at the Forefront of this MLA Tech which they call Meta why did they pick that name and it just so happens to be uh that LG is the primary display supplier for the Apple watch so Apple rebranding MLA Tech or meta as their own ultrawide OLED seems to be the most likely to me the end result is something that is going to be pretty cool Apple claims a 40% greater brightness when viewing from angles which allows you to actually lower the total power consumption because you don't need to turn the display brightness up as high and apple coincidentally cites this as the very reason this improved deficiency for which the series 10 can refresh its display once per second rather than once per minute when sleeping so you'll get an actual functional seconds hand when the watch is asleep that's pretty cool now I suspect that part of this might also be attributable to the S10 sip uh it's a new system on chip system in package whatever the heck they decide to call it which the press release heavily implies saw a process shrink uh they didn't say that but it's implied I guess jury still out on that one because the S9 that uh just came out last year I guess saw a shrink to 4 nanometers just last year so is it possible it's already on 3 nmet I don't know the watch always lags a little bit behind but in any case improved deficiency wo now the entire Thinner? Not much. Prettier? Much. internal componentry has been flattened to reduce the Z depth of the watch by a little over a millimeter making it 10% thinner ooh now this will likely not be noticeable in the real world but I do think that it's a step in the right direction to put the band lugs closer to your skin that's what you want in a watch and as part of this redesign well the speaker has been given the ability to play media uh rather than just voice calls like it was able to do prior it sure to sound awful but it could be handy in a pinch now the watch still comes in aluminum however stainless steel has been replaced in favor of polished titanium and I love this because titanium is famously difficult to polish just as Seiko about that but it wears its scratches a lot better than stainless steel so it should look superb over time I really want one and I mean h the gold it's just objectively gorgeous this is undoubtedly the most most handsome Apple watch since the original Edition models released more than a decade ago well I guess almost a decade ago I'm a huge fan of the Watch series 10 in titanium and I really want to ditch my ultra two for one but I must resist this is fine last small updates it can now charge twice as quickly up to 80% in half an hour which is great for a device that proclaims itself to be a sleep tracker and while sleeping well the existing sens are sweet so that means that the ultra 22 yes will be able to notify you of potential sleep apnea now I don't know how useful this is in the long term but maybe once as a hey you should probably go get that checked up on since Apple says that over 80% of people with sleep apnea probably like me remain undiagnosed I'm still waiting and warming up to the idea of a CPAP at age 31 maybe once I'm a dad airpods saw an AirPods 4 update across the entire lineup if not in Hardware in software starting with the base model airpods the airpods 3 those are gone the shape has been entirely redesigned to fit a greater number of heads or so Apple says and that's something that I really hope is true it's massively needed because I've got a lot of friends that are still rocking airpods and airpods 2 for that very reason the threes just didn't fit and they don't like the pros or the pro Maxes look the headphones inherit the H2 chip on this new version and that means that basically every airpods Pro feature you would expect that comes along with them is also available on the new airpods 4 so you've got improved range and call Quality you've got adaptive EQ there's AAC for reduced FaceTime audio latency and there's now the force sensor from the airpods pro instead of having to blast tap your air drum which I hated sadly it does not support touch and therefore volume control that remains a pro feature which is super stupid I mean if you're going to put the force sensor on there just put the little touch Zone okay here's where things get weird there are two new airpods 4 models there's a $130 model that replaces the outgoing airpods 3 and there is a new $180 model which implements active noise cancelling and this is super interesting to me I can't wait to try them out because given that they don't create a well frankly as good of a passive seal I suspect they're not going to be very good at all for eliminating people talking or dogs barking but they should do a nice job at blocking out airplane fan and traffic noises stuff that's consistent now that 50 extra doesn't just bring you active noise cancelling but it also brings you a case with wireless charging and a speaker for fine my just like the airpods Pro 2 and good thing considering their price tag but you see I'm a bit bummed out that those features are absent from the base model especially at $130 I would have preferred a sub $100 price point or $130 with every feature saved for ANC not this weird like partial product fragmentation that you don't really know because they're both airpods for it's confusing but get subscribed for my review because my pairs are ordered and already on their APPLE RUINED MY LIFE (AirPods Max) way then Apple spent all of 15 seconds on the long-forgotten airpods max they now have USBC and they come in new colors that's it no H2 chip even though it's in the $130 airpods 4 there's no adaptive audio there's no modern fine my support there's no improved ergonomics there is still a Generations old active noise cancelling which isn't very good anymore there's no improvements to sound quality there's no new generation trans transparency mode there's still no power button there's still the awful case there's still likely condensate issues the list goes on oh and there's still $550 the fact that Apple didn't change literally anything other than the plug by which it receives power is an insulting slap to the face and literally nobody should buy these I am so pissed off this is worse than no update at all and well I guess the colors they're kind of cool they look like springtime but guess what Apple it's fall but airpods AirPods Pro 2 updates Pro are a product that Apple care about they quite a bit of time in the keynote while they didn't receive any new hardware updates there are software changes forthcoming uh for one there will be enhanced hearing protection uh for when you're using them say at a concert something that I've seen a lot of people wearing at concerts lately it's that's great and apple is in the process of getting official FDA approval to use the airpods uh airpods Pro that is as clinical grade hearing a this is so amazing and to have such high quality hearing aid functionality for $200 is exceptional it is truly Market disruptive I love this this is superb and I love today's sponsor ESR and their lineup of Mag safe and ch2 compatible charging accessories first up the esr2 max a battery pack with kickstand is ultra Compact and slim but what makes it most impressive to me is consistent 15 wat fast charging for the iPhone unlike a lot of Max safe battery packs which get blazingly hot to the point of heat soaking the device onboard sensors and output algorithms ensure that the power bank stays under 100° F which is about 30° less than the standard even better a kickstand helps prop up your device for both portrait and landscape viewing and the powerful magnet array ensures that your phone stays attached and it probably comes in your favorite color too next up is ESR 3 in-1 magfe charger which integrates 15 wat mag safe with active cooling to maintain that charge curve throughout the charge duration uh there's an apple certified Apple watch fast charger which is literally four times faster than other third party Chargers and it has a less airpods charger it looks sleek it is built with premium materials and it won't break the Bank last if you need some juice in the car ESR mag safe car charger doesn't thermally throttle is easily mounted and works a treat use my link below to save iPhone 16 Glow-UP! on your ESR accessories today seriously these are an unbelievably great value and I think you'll love them and that brings us to the iPhone 16 another thing that I love and really did not expect to you see the last couple years have been weird the Basse iPhone has gotten year old silicon hasn't been receiving the latest and greatest Hardware features like the cameras or the action buttons and it's felt intentionally kneecapped so as not to invalidate the pro lineup's existence rather than cost-saving to hit some magically lower price Target well this year's iPhone fixes almost all of those past discrepancy Discretions what's the word discrepancy dis no misgivings it receives brand new silicon with an improved cooling solution it inherits not just the action button from last year but also the brand new camera button which we'll discuss shortly it brings on board last year's amazing Pro iPhone camera the 48 megapixel wide shooter and it gets displays capable of the same low luminance and color space that the pro phones are capable of in the dark a single knit when there's Wi-Fi 7 okay so let's start at the top Let's talk silicon! A18, explained. with the Silicon I've been saying for well a year that the iPhone 16 would never get the A7 because it was built on tsmc's first gen 3 nanometer n3b process that had really low yields super high prices and less than Stellar performance it was a bum process the new a18 just like the M4 from earlier this year runs tsmc's second gen n3e process and it's well it's great Apple claims a 30% performance jump over the iPhone 15's 5 nanometer s so in the CPU Department a 40% faster GPU which yes enables you to play those seven AAA Games published by Konami and Movis soft I hope you like Resident Evil and there's an allnew 16 core neural engine for AI with 20% greater memory bandwidth all while using about 30% less power these are huge generational improvements especially in the power department and further bolstering future Apple intelligence performance is 8 gigs of memory across all iPhone models even at the entry price which was only 6 gigs last gen that is superb also great well the new Camera Control camera control button okay so this isn't really actually a button it is a fixed piece of Sapphire but with Force detection and haptic feedback that performs a ton of different functions so at its base level push button to open camera and push button to take picture whoopee but there's also a strange feature where you can push the button with different levels of pressure to achieve different actions this is so cool it's like um touch but three-dimensional they should wow wouldn't it be cool if they put something like this on the screen anyways so a light opens up a control tab where you can slide back and forth to zoom or you can double tap and slide to move through a bunch of different camera settings and that main camera that thing is all new it gets last year's Pro Camera but with a brand new Second Generation image sensor that supports faster readout speeds in addition to well all of last year's software camera features that were previously only available on the pro phones so Dolby Vision recording and spatial videos and now photos as well thanks to the new very handsome camera layout that there there is macro photography support a 2X digital telephoto and more now there are a couple of other cool camera features that Apple demoed in the Pro portion of the keynote but make their way to the bass iPhone as well too uh there's wind Other neato camera features noise reduction for video this year there's also selective voice isolation mixing in video this is pretty cool you can choose how much of the ambient background you want to bleed through and oh there is a fully redesigned photographic style experience now I never really used these photo Styles previously because you had to do them in camera when you were taking the photo and most of them just felt kind of like cheap Instagram filters they were too aggressive and Moody well now you'll be able to do skin tone rendering and apply photogenic Styles in post thanks to the fact that it's saving tone maps and you'll be able to micro adjust the tone and color balance levels simultaneously with this cool little pad slider to exactly where you want for me this will all but eliminate the need to use third party photo apps I'm really excited for Battery inflation! this now the last of the major Hardware changes is battery life which is said to be noticeably improved from prior Generations thanks to yes a more efficient s so yes improved Cooling and yes if rumors are to be believed a slightly bigger battery we'll find that out once there's a tear down but really this is a super solid feature complete Hardware year for the base model iPhone for the last few years I have told people to just shop the closeout prices on the outgoing Pro Models when the new ones come out but I don't fault anybody for going with the fabulous colors that are available on the base model iPhone this year and say for the stupid lack of a high frame rate display which yeah I know even though normies don't care about it and that 60 HZ is fine for most people it should be there there are really very few things to complain about this is the year to buy a base model iPhone but it's probably not the year to Pro iPhones are very... meh buy a pro iPhone which is very much an iPhone 15s you know I kind of miss the S naming because it kept expectations low there's a new color is brown but Apple ran it through their apple intelligence llm and came up with desert titanium awesome now the new Pro phone also gets a new Pro s so the a18 A18 Pro, explained! pro which validates also all of my predictions that I made many months ago that they would maintain this distinction uh there is an extra GPU core over the a18 and the a18 pro uh I didn't really expect that but what I did expect is stuff that they were never going to bring over to the standard iPhone like the special sectors for display control especially for the always on display and for a high refresh rate you've got the USB 3 controller on there which is still only a pro phone exclusive you've got the hardware engines for prores video recording and end coding um there's a special ISP for processing prw and ases um that's about it on the S so but that stuff has stayed because well that those are pro Phone features and it's fine I mean year-over-year performance improvements on the S so are going to be obviously smaller on this phone than on the Basse iPhone but the efficiency gain should still be really nice I mean battery life has has not been great on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and a new cooling system that uses a graphite sheet for thermal transfer should help sustain performance for longer because I've also had that issue on my iPhone 15 Pro Max though it does not appear unfortunately that this is a vapor chamber as rumored which is a real shame maybe next year other than New UltraWide on the UltraPro phones that I mean the pro iPhones did get a new 48 megapixel ultrawide camera this year which could be interesting I have used my 5x telephoto on the iPhone 15 Pro Max Max a lot this year like a lot and I've used my ultrawide like twice because it just it sucks and so the idea that there might be an improvement to this camera um is frankly compelling and and particularly an improvement to the macro mode which has been really bad for quite a long time yet that's compelling so stay tuned to find out what I think about that in the near future now the sfc also permits for a couple of fun things in the video Department like 4K 120 frames per second slow motion with retiming and post which which is neat though ultimately of questionable use and well that's kind of it if it seems like I'm a little tet on these phones it's it's because I am I mean every other feature is brought over from either the 15 Pro Max or imported as a new feature from the bass model iPhone 16 it's a really minor year for updates on the pro phone line really the two things that keep me there are the 5x telephoto and well that fancy pants ltpo 120 HZ display that's not even that fancy pants anymore it should just be on all the iPhones app and that brings us to the thing we have to talk about last the looming Apple intelligence launch just like a WWDC so Apple Intelligence and Visual Intelligence much of this keynote was the future promise of what Apple intelligence will enable not just from text generation and summarization stuff that's been in the betas for a while and not even the forthcoming image Generation stuff which I don't really care about even a little bit no no it's about this continued Pie in the Sky abstracted example of Siri accessing your personal context so being able to to you know find that appointment that someone texted you about or or to play a new album that's mentioned on an article you're reading that's on screen currently or you know to not even to mention today's demo which was pretty crazy of like oh send Eric all the pictures that I took at the barbecue on Saturday yeah those are the things that have so much promise yet so little tangible framework that right now still even though they're allegedly coming soon just seem too good to be true especially considering that no other company has even cred this code yet and apple then took things a step further in the same vein as Humane or rabbit with visual intelligence so if you hold the new camera control button down there's a viewfinder that opens up and it allows you to quickly snap a picture and have Siri return context like if you take a picture of a restaurant to provide reviews or hours of that restaurant or you could take a picture of a concert poster and have it added to your calendar or to identify the breed of a dog more pies and more Skies guys I guess we we're not really going to know how any of the stuff works until it launches eventually and that's the question is is when does this launch I mean Apple announced certain features will be available in beta next month but you can be sure that it's not going to be any of this stuff it'll probably be the image generation Shenanigans the visual intelligence that was said to be shipping quote later this year and personal context has only ever been referred to as abstractly as like something that someday in the future will be able to do this and that's fine I get it this AI stuff is New Rome wasn't built in a day but so much of the promise of the iPhone 16 and apple intelligence as a platform isn't likely to ship in material substance until we get to the point where we ask ourselves is this really even an iPhone 16 feature at all and and perhaps it doesn't need to be I mean these phones are good enough in their own right to upgrade from a multi-year old iPhone regardless of Apple intelligence features but it's just strange to see something so ethereal and Abstract from a company that is known for creating and shipping concrete features I hope I'm wrong um what do you think I'm just so like on it let me know in the comments down below but most importantly and as always stay snazzy