The iPhone 16 Pro after using it for the last couple of weeks, I’ve got mixed feelings about it. Many people see this as an incremental update at best from the iPhone 15 Pro, and while the general performance doesn’t feel a whole lot different when doing everyday tasks, and there is a lot that’s the same compared to the previous generation, there are some notable differences worth discussing.
Battery life has improved on the 16 Pro. There are updated cameras with new features and controls, a new cooling system, amongst other things, but not all of these improvements are created equal. In my own testing I’ve had varying degrees of success with each of them some positive and some negative today, I want to dive into what the whole experience has been like. So, if you’re thinking about picking up the 16 Pro yourself or you’re just curious to see what the latest model looks like from my own real-world use, stick around and let’s get into it.
The iPhone 16 Pro, in my opinion, was one of the quieter releases we’ve seen in recent memory. There were no huge, exciting new feature announcements, at least not ones available right now, and some of what was added doesn’t really seem to be an upgrade by any means. That might make it seem like a pretty underwhelming upgrade cycle, but when you really dig into the details, there are quite a few meaningful changes in the 16 Pro this year for better or worse.
Design and Durability
The design of the iPhone 16 Pro is slightly bigger in size with a 6.3-inch display versus 6.1-inch last year, but it has smaller bezels around the edges that make the physical size just a hair bigger with 3mm added in height and 1mm added in width. That also makes this heavier than last year’s Pro, going from 187g to 199g, which is about on par with the old stainless steel Pro iPhones. But I think the screen size and form factor is really the sweet spot for me personally as it gives you a reasonable amount of screen real estate without the phone feeling too clunky. Outside that, visually things haven’t changed all that much.
You’ve got one new color option, if you want to call it a color, in Desert Titanium but I just went with black this year. I’m not really a fan of anything else, and I wish there was an actual bright color like the regular 16s have with teal and ultramarine options, but honestly most people are just going to slap a case on, so it’s really not that big of a deal.
I have found finding the right case to be somewhat complicated this year all because of the new camera control button that sits along the bottom right edge of the phone under the power button. That is both a physical button that you can press combined with capacitive touch and a haptic engine that allows you to perform different functions. I went over this in detail last week in my iPhone 16 review, look there, but essentially a full press of that button will launch the camera app and take a photo within the app.
Holding it down will record a video, while a half press or soft tap will open up this little control menu for making adjustments to your photo or video, and a double half tap allows you to switch the adjustment that you want to make. I found this really finicky, and it’s taken a while for me to effectively use it, but I still do fumble around with it quite a bit, and at least for me, I’m still kind of the opinion that on-screen controls are just much easier to use. This is especially true with one-handed use in a vertical orientation. The camera control is super awkward trying to navigate. The placement is also a common touch point for me, so sometimes I’ll inadvertently open up the menu while the camera app is open or accidentally take a photo, which obviously isn’t ideal.
That’s why I find choosing the right case to be so complicated. You essentially have two options for cases where you can either get one that transfers the capacitive touch functionality through a case button and keeps the edge flush—you’ll find that on the Apple-branded cases along with a couple others—or option two, which most third-party cases have, is having a button cutout there with a notch in the case. I think the cases with flush edges look much nicer, but the ones with the cutout do feel a bit more functional in that it’s both a little bit easier to find the camera control and less prone to inadvertently hitting it. With a flush edge, it can sometimes be hard to know exactly where the button is, so if you can find a case with a notch that isn’t too obvious, that feels like the best option to me.
Display
The display, mostly because outside of the slight increase in size, the panel has stayed roughly the same, with the exception that it does go all the way down to one nit. So, say if you use your phone in standby mode at the side of your bed, the screen can go a lot dimmer and won’t blast you with light. There’s also a really weird issue right now that was reported that I didn’t initially notice, but if you hold down on the edge of your screen where the camera control is and try to scroll, it actually won’t work, which I’m assuming is some kind of palm rejection software bug or something. But it’s just another thing with that camera control button that seems unfinished or a bit sloppy, right? Apple Intelligence is also unfinished and not out of beta, and it does seem like there are still a few bugs to work out there.
Performance
You’ve got a ton of power, and the new A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro sees decent gains in both performance and efficiency in a variety of ways. The A18 Pro is definitely an incremental bump from the A17 Pro in the 15 Pro.
In CPU performance, you see about a 9 to 14% increase in benchmarks like Geekbench, which is fine. I don’t really think a lot of us utilize the full power of the CPU in our phones anyway. But the biggest changes are in the GPU, where you see about a 22% increase in benchmarks at about 5 to 6 more frames per second than the iPhone 15 Pro. That means gaming will run smoother, which the iPhone 16 Pro does incredibly well. I’ve tried out a ton of games from the Apple Store and Apple Arcade, and they’ve all run buttery smooth. While the phone does warm up a little, it’s nothing that I’ve been overly concerned with, as the phone dissipates heat much better than its predecessor.
When you look at the heat pattern, you can see the iPhone 16 Pro spreads heat out along the whole surface of the phone rather than just one area like the 15 and 15 Pro. If you’re wondering why the new cooling system isn’t making the phone run cooler, I just want to take a second to explain that a bit. None of these phones have fans in them, so at some point, they’re all going to throttle to control heat, especially when pushing them in benchmarks. That’s why you’ll see temperatures stay roughly the same at the high end.
But what happens when that heat is dispersed along the surface better is it not only takes longer to hit that threshold, but you’re able to run at a higher level of performance at that temperature limit. That improves not only gaming but any resource-heavy apps like photo or video editing. It helps with heat while pushing the camera system and can decrease overall heat on lesser workloads, which will increase the battery life, which the A18 Pro is supposed to be much better at as well. Apple says this chipset is 20% more power efficient.
Cameras
The iPhone 16 Pro has undergone significant changes in terms of cameras, with the main camera now having a 5x tetraprism telephoto lens and a new 48-megapixel ultra-wide lens replacing the 12-megapixel one on the 15 Pro. While photos still look great off the main camera, shadows are sometimes boosted too much, which can be adjusted with the new tone and style options.
Ultra-wide photos have a binned-down 12-megapixel image that looks similar to the 15 Pro. Macro photos look equally good off that lens for the most part, but that is a different story with the telephoto lens. The iPhone 16 Pro now has 5x zoom instead of 3x, which is much nicer for getting shots of faraway subjects. However, it may not be as usable for those use cases as the zoom is just a little too much. Regardless, the photos off that lens are decent.
Apple puts a lot of post-processing on regular photos, often boosting the shadows to retain as much information as possible. Users can use the new style and tone adjustments. These adjustments allow users to dial back or boost the shadows by adjusting the tone, or completely change the look of an image by adjusting the style, which is similar to a filter or a film simulation. These styles are contextually aware, so they will affect things like skin tones, objects, or settings differently.
However, there are some clunky things in the implementation. For example, when going to video mode, the camera control menu still has all the same options, but some of them are slightly grayed out or not clickable, which can be a little bit confusing at first. Additionally, the style and tone button disappears from the UI when turning on RAW photos, but it is still available in the camera control menu. This could be confusing for users who use their iPhone for video a lot, as Apple Log recording gives them more control over how their video looks.
Even outside of these improvements, the standard video formats look very good. Cinematic mode always looks great, and the lens transitions are smooth. From my perspective, the Pro iPhone is still the best phone hands down for video quality. Recording to an external SSD is seamless, and if you plan on shooting 4K 120 in Apple Log, an external SSD is required because of the large file sizes.
The most impressive change that I’m looking forward to using more for video is the new audio mix feature. There’s now a four-array studio-quality mic in the iPhone 16 Pro that enables the new audio mix feature, which allows users to isolate different voices based on who is in the frame, reduce wind noise, and enhance vocals. The mic quality itself is just as good as a nice lav mic or a dedicated mic that you would use for recording video or making content.
Battery Life
I have to say battery life was one of the first things that I immediately noticed while using the 16 Pro, where my 15 Pro would often use around 80% of my battery by the evening. The 16 Pro is lasting me much longer, and on days where I’ve been just using my phone regularly, I can usually extend my usage by an extra hour or two of screen-on time. Just be aware that if you’re doing something like recording an Apple Log, especially to an external SSD and in higher frame rates, that’s still going to chew through the battery in a few hours. But the nice thing is you do have a faster charging option this go-round. The 16 Pro has improved wireless charging, or with a new 25W MagSafe charger, you can get around 50% charged in 30 minutes or so. It also stays relatively cool while charging wirelessly, so you don’t really have to worry about this degrading your battery in any way.
Speaking of wireless, as far as connectivity goes, you’ve got Wi-Fi 7 this year over Wi-Fi 6E last year. If you’re like the majority of folks and you don’t have a Wi-Fi 7 modem, that’s going to feel pretty much the same. You get outstanding speeds provided you have adequate bandwidth on your network, and Bluetooth stayed the same with version 5.3, and I haven’t had any issues.
Conclusion
What we’ve talked about here today, from performance and battery life and all kinds of stuff, but just like anything on the channel, I’m only going to review or talk about the things that are finished and that I can touch at the time of making the video.
Even without Apple Intelligence, I still think this is a great phone. I personally love the additions to the video and audio features. You’ve got a great camera system, outstanding performance, and most importantly for me, the battery life does seem to be much better over my 15 Pro.
The camera control, on the other hand, is pretty disappointing, and the more I use it, the more I think I’ll just likely disable it. On-screen controls make a lot more sense and are just easier to use, but we’ll see how that works for some of the AI features it’s designed around when they come out.
