iPhone 16 explained: the lineup, Apple Intelligence and how long it is supported

What Apple announced on September 9, 2024

Apple introduced four models on one day: iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, and iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Pre-orders opened on September 13 and the phones went on sale on September 20 in more than 58 countries and regions, with iOS 18 scheduled as a free update on September 16.

The A18 is built on second-generation 3-nanometer technology, and Apple says its 16-core Neural Engine runs machine learning models up to 2x faster than the A16 Bionic. The A18 Pro adds a 17 percent increase in total system memory bandwidth, which Apple ties to faster Writing Tools and Image Playground, plus faster USB 3 and ProRes video. The Pro models also have ProMotion and Always-On displays, a 48MP Ultra Wide camera and a 5x Telephoto camera on both sizes, and 4K video at 120 frames per second in Dolby Vision.

One detail matters when you replace phones for a team. According to Apple's model guide, iPhone 16 models sold in the United States have no SIM tray and use eSIM only, while models sold elsewhere keep a nano-SIM tray. Plan the eSIM transfer with your carrier before the old phone is wiped.

Camera Control and the Action button

Camera Control is a new button on the lower right side of all four models. It combines a tactile switch for clicks, a high-precision force sensor for a light press and a capacitive sensor that reads a finger sliding along it. One click opens the camera, another takes a photo, and click and hold starts video; sliding adjusts zoom, exposure or depth of field. Developers can bring it to third-party apps.

The more useful feature for work arrived later. With iOS 18.2 in December 2024, click and hold opens visual intelligence, which can summarize and copy text, translate it, or pick up a phone number or email address and add it to Contacts. It can also send the image to Google search or ChatGPT, but only when the user chooses to.

The Action button, which the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus gained in this generation, is the programmable button on the upper left side. By default it switches between Ring and Silent; it can instead open the camera or flashlight, start Voice Memos, a Focus or Translate, run Magnifier, or run any shortcut. For a field team, mapping it to a shortcut that logs a visit or starts a timer turns it into a one-press work tool.

How Apple Intelligence reached the iPhone 16

The iPhone 16 shipped without Apple Intelligence. The features came afterwards, in software updates, and a new language or region arrived with each wave:

The iOS 18.1 release also added call recording in the Phone app, with a transcript and a summary. Apple notifies the other participants automatically when recording starts; whether your team may record calls at all is a question for your own policy and local law.

Siri AI, the headline of iOS 27, is a rebuilt Siri that can search a user's messages, email and photos for context, act on what is on screen, and take actions inside apps. Apple says it will soon be able to draft an email in Microsoft Outlook, which is the kind of feature that brings company data into the assistant's reach. It is rolling out in English, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish due in October 2026. Three limits apply as of September 2026: Siri AI is not initially available in the EU on iPhone, the new features are not available in China, and server-backed features, including Siri AI and Image Playground, have daily usage limits, with expanded access to be offered for a fee in the future.

Apple's requirements page adds two practical conditions. The device language and the Siri language must be set to the same supported language, and Apple Intelligence takes up to 8 GB of storage on an iPhone 16. On a 128GB phone full of photos and offline files, that is worth checking before you rely on it.

The iPhones that came after the iPhone 16

Apple has released several models since, and they change which phone you would buy today.

• iPhone 16e (February 19, 2025). The lower-priced member of the family: a 6.1-inch display, an A18 with a 4-core GPU, one 48MP rear camera and C1, the first cellular modem Apple designed itself. It is built for Apple Intelligence, but it has no Camera Control; its Action button opens visual intelligence instead. It started at US$599 and went on sale on February 28, 2025.
• iPhone 17 family (September 9, 2025). iPhone 17 with the A19, the 5.6mm iPhone Air with the A19 Pro and an eSIM-only design, and iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, also with the A19 Pro. All four shipped with iOS 26.
• iPhone 17e (2026). A 6.1-inch model with the A19 chip and Apple's C1X modem, first supplied in the UK on March 11, 2026.
• iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max (September 9, 2026). The A20 Pro, built on a 2-nanometer process, a main camera with variable aperture and Apple's C2 modem. On sale September 18, from US$1,199.
• iPhone Duo (September 9, 2026). The first foldable iPhone: a 7.6-inch inner display, a 5.4-inch outer display, the A20 Pro and Touch ID in the side button. Available October 23, 2026, from US$1,999.

iPhone 16 vs iPhone 17: what actually changed

For the standard models, the comparison most buyers make, the differences are in the hardware rather than the AI.

The iPhone 17 also introduced the Center Stage front camera (up to 18MP photos) and N1, Apple's own wireless networking chip. What it does not add is a better Apple Intelligence experience. Apple's most powerful on-device model, which enables its most expressive Siri voices and more advanced dictation, runs only on the iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and Duo. If AI is the reason to upgrade, compare against those models, not the iPhone 17.

Which features need which iPhone

As of iOS 27, this is where each feature discussed here runs:

An iPhone 15 or 15 Plus gets iOS 27 but no Apple Intelligence, and neither does any model older than the iPhone 15 Pro. To check which model a phone is, open Settings > General > About and tap the part number to reveal the model number, then look it up in Apple's model guide.

How long Apple will support an iPhone 16

Apple does not print an end date on its phones, but the UK now makes it publish a floor. Under the PSTI regulations, a manufacturer must publish a defined support period, the minimum time for which it will provide security updates; it may extend that period but not shorten it once published. Apple's statement for the iPhone 16 gives a first supply date of September 20, 2024 and a defined support period of a minimum of 5 years from that date. Apple's PSTI page lists a statement for each model:

Apple's record so far goes beyond that floor. According to Apple's security releases page, iOS 27 (September 14, 2026) installs on the iPhone 11 and later, a model introduced in 2019, and iOS 18.7.10 (August 17, 2026) still shipped security fixes for the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR from 2018. Budget replacements on the published minimum and treat anything after it as a bonus.

What Apple Intelligence sends off the phone

Apple Intelligence tries the device first. Many of its models run entirely on the phone, and requests that need a larger model go to Private Cloud Compute (PCC), Apple's own AI servers. Since iOS 27, both tiers run Apple Foundation Models that Apple says were custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models; they still run on the phone and on PCC, under the same privacy design.

Apple's security team published the design of PCC in June 2024. The problem it addresses: a cloud model has to read your request in plain text, so the end-to-end encryption used for iMessage cannot apply. Apple's answer has five parts:

1. Custom servers. PCC nodes use Apple silicon with the Secure Enclave and Secure Boot, and a hardened operating system with no remote shell and no interactive debugging.
2. Encryption to specific machines. The phone encrypts each request to the public keys of PCC nodes it has already verified, so load balancers in between cannot read it.
3. A relay that hides the sender. Requests pass through an OHTTP relay run by a third party, which hides the device's IP address, and carry no personally identifiable information about the device or user.
4. Nothing kept. Data is used only to answer the request and is not retained afterwards; the data volume's encryption keys change at every reboot.
5. Verifiable software. The measurements of all code running on PCC go into an append-only transparency log, and a phone sends data only to nodes whose attested software matches a release in that log.

For a business, the value is that the promise can be checked: Apple publishes the software PCC runs, which traditional cloud services do not. The protection is also narrower than it looks. It covers Apple's own models. It does not cover what happens when a user sends a request to ChatGPT, and it does not decide which features staff should use with client data. The wider picture of on-device AI, including Android and Windows, is in our post on AI in everyday devices.

The ChatGPT extension and company data

ChatGPT is not part of Apple Intelligence; it is an extension the user turns on. Apple's documentation spells out what happens when they do:

• The request and any attachments are sent, with limited data such as time zone, country, device type, language and the feature being used.
• The IP address is hidden from OpenAI, but a general location is shared.
• Without a ChatGPT account, OpenAI must not store the request or its answer (unless the law requires it) and must not use it to train its models.
• Once the user signs in to a ChatGPT account, that account's settings and OpenAI's policies apply instead.
• Siri asks before it sends anything to ChatGPT. The user can turn confirmations off, except with Siri AI, and the extension can be blocked in Screen Time.

The risk for an organization is the signed-in case: a personal ChatGPT account on a work phone, receiving work documents under personal terms. If staff are already pasting client data into personal AI accounts, blocking the extension treats the symptom. The better fix is a tool the business has approved: our AI and automation service builds assistants that answer from your own documents and cite their sources, with a person or a rule approving anything that changes data.

How to restrict Apple Intelligence on company iPhones with MDM

Organizations control these features through a mobile device management (MDM) service such as Microsoft Intune or Jamf, and nearly every useful control needs supervision. Apple defines supervision as a state that generally means the organization owns the device. iPhones enrolled through Automated Device Enrollment are supervised automatically; manual supervision with Apple Configurator for Mac erases the phone. A personal phone that its owner enrols (bring your own device) is not supervised, so most of the settings below do not apply to it.

Apple offers two sets of controls. The older restrictions payload works from iOS 18. The newer declarative configurations, Apple Intelligence and External intelligence, need iOS 26.4 or later, supervision and Automated Device Enrollment.

Apple notes that not every MDM service implements every setting, so check your provider's documentation before promising a control to a compliance team. Start from policy, not from the settings list: decide which data classes may reach ChatGPT at all, then configure the phones to match. Our IT support service enrols laptops and phones in one management console and keeps them configured and compliant, with remote lock and wipe for lost devices.

Should you upgrade from an iPhone 16?

For most people and most teams, not yet. An iPhone 16 has the same Apple Intelligence and Siri AI as an iPhone 17 and a support floor that runs to September 2029. The reasons to replace one early are specific: the 128GB model keeps running out of space, someone needs Apple's larger on-device model on a Pro or Air, or the phone is damaged. For older phones, and whenever you do replace one, work through it in order:

1. Identify each phone. Record the model number from Settings > General > About in your asset register, with its purchase date and owner.
2. Check its support floor. Look up the model's PSTI statement and schedule the replacement before that date, not after an incident.
3. Check its Apple Intelligence eligibility. An iPhone 15, 15 Plus or anything older than the iPhone 15 Pro gets no Apple Intelligence. If the team depends on it, those phones go first.
4. Buy so the phones enrol themselves. Buy from Apple, an Apple Authorized Reseller or an authorized cellular carrier, and assign the phones to your MDM in Apple Business for Automated Device Enrollment. Phones bought through other channels can still be added with Apple Configurator, but the user then has a 30-day provisional period in which they can release the phone from management.
5. Size the storage. Leave room for Apple Intelligence (up to 8 GB on an iPhone 16, up to 14 GB on an iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max or Air) on top of apps, mail and photos.
6. Move the line, then retire the old phone. Transfer the eSIM or SIM, confirm the new phone is supervised and receiving its policies, then erase the old one and remove it from management.

After the upgrade, keep the fleet current on purpose rather than by luck. On supervised iPhones, your MDM can hold back a new update for 1 to 90 days so a test group tries it first, choose whether users move to the next major iOS version or stay on the current one for a while, and enforce a specific version by a set date.

Deferral is for testing, not for avoiding updates: keep it short for security releases, and use enforcement so that no phone quietly drops behind. More guides on running a team's devices are in IT support.