RATING
- VERDICT
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro have managed to find another level in a category where yearly upgrades are incremental at best. But Apple has still found several ways to innovate, and it cleverly put a lot of work into making the already excellent camera go to another level. And with Apple Intelligence just around the corner, we expect customers will be lining up to upgrade.
The new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro models are here and there are several improvements – the most prominent are Camera Control and improvements to the cameras themselves and, of course, Apple Intelligence.
For those upgrading to the iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro with the hope of Apple Intelligence revolutionising their lives – that won’t be available till December, so they need to be patient.
We’ll save that part of the review after Apple Intelligence is officially launched.
By the way, if you are an iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max user then you’ll be able to enjoy Apple Intelligence after the additional iOS 18 update drops in a couple of months.
So for now, our review of the iPhone 16 (powered by the A18 chip) and iPhone 16 Pro (powered by the A18 Pro chip) will concentrate on the camera and Camera Control.
The camera improvements span both the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro with the latter seeing the most improvement.
When asked by our readers about the new iPhones and which ones they should buy, our answer in the last few years was always “if you’re into your photography then the Pro models all the way”.
It’s the same story this year.
Don’t get us wrong, the iPhone 16 is an amazing smartphone with an excellent camera and would a worthy consideration for the upgrade.
The Pro models in recent years – and the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max this year – have always offered not only a whole extra lens but even more capabilities when taking photos and shooting video.
This year, the camera aboard the iPhone 16 Pro models has reached another level.
DESIGN
The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max has retained its grade 5 titanium design which makes it lighter yet more durable.
But it has been given an internal redesign which improves the thermal capacity of the phone by 20 per cent to keep things running cool especially when running new on-device features like Apple Intelligence and when playing games.
The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro also have the latest ceramic shield which Apple says is the toughest glass-based material in the industry.
The iPhone 16 is made of aerospace-grade aluminium while the colours have been created with a new infusing process on the rear glass panel.
DISPLAY
The displays on the iPhone 16 Pro an iPhone 16 Pro Max are slightly larger at 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch respectively.
This is a combination of having a slightly larger device – we’re talking a millimetre or two – and even thinner borders around the screen.
Despite its physically larger size, the iPhone 16 Pro Max didn’t feel any bigger than the iPhone 15 Pro Max in our hands.
CAMERA CONTROL
Both the iPhone 16 an iPhone 16 Pro models include an all-new feature called Camera Control which is designed to offer faster and more detailed access to the camera features to help you take a better photo and shoot a better video.
It can be found on the lower right edge and is about the same size as the power button.
Camera Control is a tactile switch as well as a precision sensor which can react to presses, half presses, double taps and act as a slider to adjust various settings like settings like zoom and exposure.
A single press while the iPhone 16 is locked will open the camera in the same way as the previous lock screen shortcut.
It takes a deliberate press to open the camera so it’s not something that’s going to happen when the iPhone is in your pocket.
A soft double tap will bring up features like exposure, depth, zoom, your choice of cameras, photographic styles and tone.
All these features are now literally at your fingertips rather than touching the screen and digging around the settings.
It does mean you’re holding the iPhone in the same way you’d hold a traditional camera to take a photo.
It also makes taking selfies a little easier because our thumb, normally required to hit the on screen shutter, is now resting on the Camera Control button.
It does make it is easier to take your photos but one thing we found shooting one handed was the effort of pressing a button on the side of the iPhone caused added movement that meant the subject wasn’t centred in the frame at times.
Using the onscreen shutter button this isn’t an issue which is why we prefer to use Camera Control when we have two hands firmly on the device.
But like everything it does take a little while to get used to the nuances of Camera Control.
CAMERA
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro now include a 48MP Fusion camera that combines two quality cameras into one.
With the iPhone 16 it takes the 12MP camera and combines every four pixels into one to improve light capture an enabling 24MP default resolution.
iPhone 16 also offers 2x telephoto camera and a dedicated image pipeline so you get improved low light performance.
iPhone 16 can also capture 4K 60fps video in Dolby Vision.
The ultra-wide camera has a faster aperture and bigger pixels and, for the first time, it can be used for macro photography thanks to autofocus.
The iPhone 16 Pro’s 48MP camera has a customizable main lens so pro users can access three popular prime lenses 24mm, 28mm and 35mm and switch between them easily to capture stunning high resolution images with the exceptional quality.
The new quad pixel sensor allows the 48MP ultra-wide camera to capture even more detail.
It also has a new Hybrid Focus Pixels that can hold the autofocus when shooting in high resolution.
Despite all the added features and control you have with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Max – it can still work things out for you and still adjust on the fly thanks to machine learning and still come up with a great image and video.
One example is taking a photo with the sun behind you. Usually, with little light in front of you, you end up as a silhouette.
But with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro it actually compensates for the light and you have a clear image even though it is backlit.
For the first time, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max both have the 5x telephoto camera.
Last year it was only available with the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro also both include the latest photographic styles to allow photographers more control over skin tones, colour, highlights and shadows and create a new look and feel to your images.
Users can also take existing photographic styles and adjust them manually with a slider control to change the colour and style of the image.
Both the iPhone 16 and Phone 16 Pro can shoot Spatial photos and videos so you can view them in 3D on the Apple Vision Pro.
To achieve this users need to rotate the phone into landscape orientation and choose the new Spatial option.
The press of the shutter takes an image, pressing and holding the shutter button will start recording video.
This feature turns your iPhone into a 3D camera with the two lenses used in the process acting like your left and right eye when capturing your content.
We’ve always said the pro iPhones offer pro photographers and enthusiasts even more features and quality when shooting both stills and video.
On the video side, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max – thanks to the A18 Pro chip onboard – can shoot 4K 120fps to achieve amazing slo-mo and frame rate flexibility when editing.
The iPhone 16 Pro allows for ProRes and Log encoding which needs a lot of storage space.
What users can do is attach an external SSD through the USB-C port and record directly to the external drive which needs to have write speeds of 220MB/S and higher.
But the iPhone 16 Pro not only offers pro video but also pro audio as well.
Onboard are four studio quality mics so you can capture authentic true to life sounds.
It will even use advanced machine learning to reduce wind noise and maintain the quality for the audio you actually want to hear.
Another remarkable feature is Audio Mix – the first time seen on a smartphone – which can differentiate between background noises and voices.
The In-Frame option focuses on the person speaking on camera and eliminates the voices of those off camera.
The Studio option is like placing a professional microphone closer to the subject even if they are a couple of metres away from you while the Cinematic option lets you play around with voices in an outside the frame and adjust environmental noises in surround sound.
A truly remarkable feature considering it’s being captured with a smartphone.
COLOURS
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus is available in five colours – ultramarine, teal, pink, white and black.
The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max comes in four colours – desert titanium, natural titanium, white titanium and black titanium.
PRICING
The new iPhone 16 is priced at $1,399 (128GB), $1,599 (256GB) and $1,949 (512GB).
The iPhone 16 Plus is priced at $1,599 (128GB), $1,799 (256GB) and $2,149 (512GB).
The iPhone 16 Pro is priced at $1,799 (128GB), $1,999 (256GB) and $2,349 (512GB) and $2,699 (1TB).
The iPhone 16 Pro Max is priced at $2,149 (256GB) and $2,499 (512GB) and $2,849 (1TB).
VERDICT
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro have managed to find another level in a category where yearly upgrades are incremental at best. But Apple has still found several ways to innovate, and it cleverly put a lot of work into making the already excellent camera go to another level. And with Apple Intelligence just around the corner, we expect customers will be lining up to upgrade.
