Apple announced its new iPhone 16 is getting a little more spatial with the addition of both spatial photos and audio, essentially putting it in line with Vision Pro’s capture capabilities.

The company’s big event on Monday didn’t bring any giant revelations for Vision Pro, although the company announced a host of products, including its AI-infused iPhone 16 line, as well as all-new Apple Watch Series 10 and AirPods 4.

iPhone 16 Pro Max & 16 Pro  (left), iPhone 16 Plus & 16 (right) | Images courtesy Apple

The iPhone 16 introduces a new pill-shaped camera design, enhanced AI features, and a couple of new buttons (Action and Camera Control) compared to the iPhone 15. It retains the same 60Hz display (120Hz on iPhone 16 Pro), with improvements being pretty incremental overall.

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The entire iPhone 16 line however also comes with the ability to not only capture spatial video like on iPhone 15 Pro, but now spatial photos and audio. Vision Pro can do all of these things, although you’d have a hard time fitting it in your pocket.

Regardless of what phone you have, if you own a Vision Pro all of your photos can be spatialized thanks to an update earlier this summer which automatically converts 2D photos to 3D—and pretty convincingly so.

Notably, spatial videos can also be viewed on other XR devices that support the MV-HVEC video codec, such as Meta Quest.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Shad Daffucup

    Great, now every time I'm outside my privacy can be infringed upon in full 3D

    • ViRGiN

      Should have build your toilet inside the building, like every normal human being. I assume the smells of your excrements are insufferable and that's why you're going out? Your Google Fit shows you walked less than two kilometers in the past 30 days.

      • Shad Daffucup

        Your accusations are not even mutually consistent, since why would I have to go outside to avoid a smell that was already outside?
        And it's quite laughable you think you know what constitutes a 'normal human being', given that your life consists of watching daytime television on a discount Black Friday fake-4K screen and waiting on your next welfare payment. I'll try not to go too hard on you though, you must already be sore that they raised the price of Supernoodles by 20p.

    • sfmike

      Yeah, we're all dying to catch a picture of you in the wild.

      • Shad Daffucup

        Actually a funny comeback for once

  • Stephen Bard

    The iPhone 15 Pro, and now iPhone 16, produce highly inferior "improvised" 3D photos due to its mismatched cameras and the fact that the cameras are too close together to capture proper depth (about 40% of the depth that proper dedicated 3D cameras with cameras eye-distance apart produce). The QooCam Ego($300) and the new XREAL Beam Pro ($200) produce far better 3D photos/videos than the Apple iPhone scam.