iPhone 16 Pro hands-on review: Apple's smartest upgrade yet

Meet your iPhone 2024 lineup: iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max (Image credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

• ✅ 📐 Bigger screens on the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max

• ✅ 📸 Great photos and impressive 4K120fps slo-mo video

• ✅ 🔘 Camera Control is a multi-function shortcut to snap great pics

• ✅ 🔋 Superb battery life so far (up to four extra hours)

• ✅ ⚡ 25W faster wireless charging beats Samsung and Google

• ✅ 🌈 Getting an iPhone 16? Get Ultramarine; 16 Pro? Get Desert Titanium

• ❌ 🤲 The 16 Pro Max is a two-hand phone – I almost wish it folded

• ❌ 🤳 Selfie camera timer could be easier to access (buried in menus)

• ❌ 🌈 I wish the Pros got the fun colors too

I’m currently testing the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro series, and while you’ll have to wait for my full review as I put the camera and battery through their paces, I already tell you about some of Apple’s winning features.

This year’s iPhone upgrades offer bigger screens on the two Pros, a dedicated multi-function Camera Control on all four new iPhones, and up to four hours of additional battery life and faster charging. I’ve toyed around with Apple Intelligence in beta for several weeks, and while it’s not due to launch until iOS 18.1 in October, it promises a smarter Siri (finally), AI summaries of emails and notifications (so clutch) and AI photo-editing tools (magic erase those photo-bombers in the background).

The iPhone 16 and Apple Intelligence are Apple’s answer to a year of AI features found in the top Android phones of 2024. The month-old Google Pixel 9 Pro and the seven-month-old Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra have been particularly impressive. But if you favor Apple’s cohesive ecosystem and didn’t buy last year’s iPhone 15 Pro Max, there’s enough here to get excited about this year’s upgrade.

📐 More screen. The 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9-inch iPhone 16 Pro Max give you more screen space for the same starting price of $999 and $1,199. That’s 0.2 inches more screen, and while I could see some users of the prior 6.7-inch Pros (a size that dates back to the iPhone 13 Pro Max) opting for the new 6.3-inch size, I’m still a smartphone screen maximalist.

📺 Less bezel. It’s not just because the phone dimensions have increased. Apple managed to reduce some of the bezels that outlined the Pro phone. That, along with the 120Hz ProMotion display and telephoto camera, are the reasons I would opt for the iPhone Pro series phones.

⌨️ Keyboard luxury. I prefer the iPhone 16 Pro Max for one reason you may not be thinking of: the keyboard always seems easier to use on a bigger screen. I tried using a 4.7-inch iPhone SE 2 recently (before I upgraded my parents’ phones), and it felt cramped. The Pro Max has always felt great for this reason – your thumbs may thank you.

📖 Almost big enough to fold. One day, I want to see Apple’s take on a foldable design, like the one found in the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold or the flip-style Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6. At 6.9 inches, it feels like things can’t get any bigger unless you fold.

🌈 New fun colors. I’m already jealous of the iPhone 16 colors – Ultramarine and Pink especially. In person, they’re so vibrant. Teal, White and Black are also options, but if you’re buying the iPhone 16 or 16 Plus, go for Ultramarine, unless you’re tied to Pink. I’m using the iPhone 16 Pro Max in the new Desert Titanium color, and it’s thankfully creamier and less brown than some of the early photos that circulated. You’re not going to be disappointed in it.

🔘 Camera Control. For the second year in a row, Apple is adding a new button to its iPhones. All four phones now have Camera Control on the bottom right of the frame. This makes it easy to launch the camera and cycle through zoom and photo styles. What’s interesting is that Camera Control isn’t a protruding button. It’s flush with the new iPhone’s body, meaning you won’t accidentally press it. It takes some getting used to, but I’m a fan of physical buttons and, obviously, shortcuts.

👀 Styles and tones. Sliding across the multi-function Camera Control opens up a whole bunch of possibilities – some new and others returning but previously buried in submenus. I’ve talked to iPhone users who didn’t know you could adjust styles. “This a new!” they said. It’s not. It’s just way easier to find and simply a click away.

• Exposure

• Depth

• Zoom

• Cameras (meaning 0.5x to 5x

• Styles

• Tones

👻 Snapchat, others use Camera Control. I like the fact that third-party apps now have access to the Camera Control API. This means the feature won’t be limited to Apple’s default camera app.

🤳 Same selfie camera. The iPhone 16 series has the same TrueDepth front-facing camera across the board. While you can use Camera Control to snap a photo, I’d love to see a better way to access the timer. It’s buried too deeply into the menus and I still find Samsung’s hand-gesture-to-trigger-timer the best way to snap a group selfie (where the pressure is real when you’re in charge of tapping the shutter button).

📹 4K120fps is slow motion. iPhones always have top-notch video capabilities vs Android, and now Apple has widened the gap with even better in slow motion video. Not only can “slo-mo” capture scenes and subjects in 4K at 120 frames per second, you can adjust when the slow motion kicks in (or do away with it completely). It’ll eat up storage and recording in ProRes does require external storage (might I suggest this Anker MagSafe SD card accessory on Amazon), but the results are worth it.

👐 48MP ultrawide upgrade. The ultra-wide camera went from 12MP to 48MP on the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. We still need more time to test it, but we went to a Mets game and captured a range of photos from the various cameras.

🔍 48MP cacros shots. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the iPhone 16 Pro phones also benefit from the 48MP camera sensor when using the macro mode. Close-up shots are even bigger when you’re trying to focus on tiny subjects.

🔭 5x telephoto on both Pros. This may make your iPhone buying decision harder. There’s no difference between the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max this time – both now have a 5x optical zoom using Apple’s tetraprism camera. Previously, this was a feature limited to the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

🥽 Spatial capture. All four iPhone 16 series phones can capture Spatial photos and video (at 1080p and 30fps) that can be played back using the Apple Vision Pro. I like that the camera now includes “Saptial” as a dedicated camera option on the bottom instead of being another button within the crowded video mode.

🎛️ Audio mixing. Apple has a new, post-production quick fix for noisy video audio in all four new iPhones. In crowded rooms or environments, you can reassign the audio as “in-frame” or “studio” to dampen chatter outside the frame. There’s also a cinematic option if you want to take in all the sights and sounds. I would say this feature was only for Pros if it wasn’t so easy to pull off.

🎮 Gaming with the A18 Pro chip. I’m currently pushing the iPhone 16 phones to their limits with a flurry of games: Call of Duty Mobile, PUBG, and Genishin Impact, along with a flurry of Apple Arcade games. So far, Apple’s A18 and A18 Pro chips top multi-core benchmarks and don’t get as hot as last year’s iPhones at launch. Triple-A games like Resident Evil: Village, Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage offer near-console-quality experiences, though I’d like to see more of them announced.

🔋 2-4 hours of extra battery. Bigger screens on the Pros and Camera Control on all new iPhone 16 models are obvious perks, but inside, the battery gets a big boost. I’m still benchmarking the results, but Apple promises up to four extra hours from its iPhone 16 Pro Max, offering another reason to go big.

🔌 45W fast wired charging. While not mentioned during Apple’s iPhone 16 launch event that we liveblogged, this year’s new iPhones support 45W fast charging, which matches Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s wattage and a nice boost over the 29W charging on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. That means you should be able to juice up to more than 50% in the 30 minutes that’s advertised when using a 20W charger.

⚡ 25W wireless charging. Apple’s new MagSafe wireless charger and a 30W charger brick break the 15W barrier for impressive 25W charging. 15W has long been a limitation of wireless charging, but now it’s almost as fast as last year’s wired charging.

🍎 Apple Intelligence in the offing. Apple’s AI push, which we first reported on during Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote, is coming in October as part of iOS 18.1. Having tested the developer beta, I’m digging the summaries of my Twitter/X notifications and getting the gist of emails without having to dive into a thread. Being able to erase photo bombers in otherwise perfect photos is also a perk. There’s a lot more to come in the software update, meaning I’ll have to update this iPhone 16 Pro review twice (once with a review score and another time when Apple Intelligence launches), so stay tuned for my own version of firmware updates to this review format.