Apple Intelligence Late Night Explosion! Apple Releases 4 Self-developed Chips, iPhone/iWatch/AirPods Major Upgrades

In June this year, Apple officially launched Apple Intelligence at WWDC.The day after the news was released, Apple's stock price broke through the $200 mark during trading, marking the largest increase since November 10, 2022. As of the close, Apple's total market value rose to US$3.18 trillion (approximately RMB 23 trillion).

To some extent, the debut of Apple Intelligence has restored the market's confidence in Apple. Some analysts pointed out that with the support of AI, this round of surge may be the market's re-pricing of Apple.

Today (September 10), after three months, at the annual Apple fall conference, people's expectations are not only about the new phone upgrades, but also more about the capabilities of Apple Intelligence. Tim Cook did not disappoint everyone."Apple Intelligence" runs through the entire process and has become the basis for the functional upgrades of the iPhone 16 series mobile phones, AirPods and Apple Watch.

It is worth mentioning that Apple’s self-developed chips have also ushered in major updates, from the S10 chip used in the Apple Watch, to the H2 chip used in AirPods, to the A18 and A18 Pro equipped with the iPhone, setting many "industry firsts".

iPhone built for Apple Intelligence

It is reported that the iPhone 16 was tailor-made for Apple Intelligence from the bottom-up design.It is not difficult to see from this that Apple's determination to increase its iPhone market share through Apple Intelligence is bound to set off a round of "phone replacement wave".

In terms of software, Apple has deeply integrated Apple Intelligence into iOS.Major upgrades have been achieved in smart applications for texts and emoticons that users commonly use.For example, Apple Intelligence can rewrite a user's hastily written notes into a more professional and serious dinner invitation. It can also summarize the core content of notification items such as text messages and emails, and provide users with summaries to quickly handle tasks. In addition, users can also create new emojis by entering descriptions, etc.

In terms of pictures and videos,Based on Apple Intelligence, users can locate previously taken photos through text descriptions. They only need to enter a description of the scene, without the exact time and place, to search for the corresponding pictures.

Furthermore, the addition of Apple Intelligence has made Siri, which has always been criticized for its "artificial intelligence", more intelligent. Siri has achieved a more intelligent contextual language understanding ability. Even if the user's expression is not fluent, or there are repeated or reversed sentences, Siri can give accurate answers. Based on this, Siri's usage scenarios have also been upgraded. For example, users can wake up Siri to delete duplicate photos in the gallery; play a specific album; send specified photos to friends, etc.

Apple said that in order to promote the development of more personalized intelligence of the iPhone, they are working to expand Apple Intelligence to more languages, such as Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish, which may be launched in Apple Intelligence next year.

A18 chip: CPU increased by 30%, GPU increased by 40%

In order to support the powerful Apple Intelligence, the chip on the iPhone 16 cannot lag behind.Apple's self-developed chips "leap forward two generations at once", and the A18 and A18 Pro achieved a leap in performance.

First of all, the A18 chip is built with the second-generation 3-nanometer process and has smaller transistors. The A18/A18 Pro is also the world's first mobile phone chip to use the second-generation 3-nanometer process. At the same time, the A18 uses a 6-core CPU architecture, including 2 high-performance cores and 4 energy-efficient cores.

Compared with the A16 Bionic chip on the iPhone 15, the A18 runs 30% faster, and compared with the A14 on the iPhone 12, it has achieved a significant speed increase of 60%. In addition, the A18 is also equipped with a desktop-level GPU architecture, with a 5-core GPU, and its performance is 40% faster than the iPhone 15, which is twice that of the iPhone 12. At the same time, it is more energy efficient and can maintain the same performance while reducing power consumption by 35%.

In addition to the CPU and GPU upgrades, the A18 is also equipped with a 16-core neural engine, which is optimized for running large generative models. Compared with the previous generation, the A18 can process machine learning tasks up to 2 times faster. In addition, the A18 also has 17% more system memory bandwidth than the previous generation, which means it can access generative models more efficiently.

The A18 Pro chip is tailor-made for the iPhone 16 Pro series, equipped with 2 high-performance cores and 4 energy-efficient cores. Compared with the A17 Pro, the chip's processing speed is increased by up to 15%.While maintaining the same performance output, energy consumption is reduced by 20%.In terms of graphics processing, the A18 Pro uses a new 6-core GPU architecture, which improves the performance of the A17 Pro by 20%. At the same time, the chip also has powerful video encoding capabilities and supports double data processing speed.

The biggest, thinnest, and fastest Apple Watch ever!

According to Apple, the Apple Watch Series 10 has the largest display and thinnest design to date.The screen area has increased by 30%, and its thickness is only 9.7 mm, which is nearly 10% thinner than Series 9. In addition, it is equipped with a larger and more efficient charging coil, making it the fastest charging Apple Watch to date, which can be charged to 80% in 30 minutes.

More importantly, the Series 10 is equipped with a custom S10 chip.Based on the Transformer model, Apple Watch Series 10 can process machine learning tasks faster and carry more intelligent functions, such as Siri dictation, automatic motion detection, collision detection, fall detection, etc. Users can use machine learning to identify motion characteristics and impact forces when slipping, tripping and falling. Of course, intelligence also drives more health functions on Apple Watch, such as reminding users to take medicine, notifying users when heart abnormalities such as atrial fibrillation are detected, and detecting hypoglycemia symptoms.

In addition, the Series 10 can detect sleep apnea.That is, by analyzing respiratory disturbance data, the user is notified when the data shows moderate or severe sleep apnea. The detection is based on machine learning and a large number of clinical-grade sleep apnea test data sets. It has been verified in large-scale clinical studies and is expected to be launched this month in more than 150 countries and regions around the world, including the United States, Europe and Japan.

H2 chip empowers you to create personalized sound services

It is reported that in order to optimize the shape of the headphones,Apple used advanced modeling tools to accurately map and analyze thousands of ear shapes, constructing more than 50 million independent data points, and ultimately designed AirPods that are more comfortable for users to wear. Apple calls it the best open AirPods ever, with disruptive audio performance.

The H2 chip in AirPods 4 is the most advanced chip in the headphone field.It can work with the drive unit and amplifier to further enhance the audio experience and call quality. At the same time, based on machine learning, AirPods 4 can realize many functions such as personalized spatial audio, active noise reduction with voice isolation, Siri interaction, etc. For example, it allows users to experience music, movies and games in an immersive way; no matter what environment they are in, the voice isolation function can immediately eliminate the surrounding background noise; when communicating with Siri, users only need to nod for "yes" or shake their heads for "no" to respond.

In addition, AirPods Pro is equipped with industry-leading active noise reduction technology.Designed for people who are at risk of hearing loss in noisy environments. Specifically, when users are in a noisy environment, the intelligent machine learning system in AirPods Pro can reduce high-intensity and intermittent noise up to 48,000 times per second, effectively protecting the user's hearing health.

Written at the end: New product price summary

It is reported that many new products launched by Apple at this conference have been or will soon be available for sale in major markets around the world. In order to help everyone plan their budget more clearly, the editor has specially compiled the detailed price information of these products for your reference.

Among the four highly anticipated iPhone series products, the starting prices of iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max are US$799, US$899, US$999, and US$1199, respectively.

The Apple Watch Series 10, a smartwatch that offers a major upgrade in health monitoring, starts at $399.

Finally, the new AirPods 4 regular version is priced at $129, and the active noise reduction version is priced at $179.