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As usual, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Max are each available in different storage configurations, but you can’t change anything else about them. The 16 and 16 Plus start at 128GB, which is just enough for folks who only use Apple’s own apps and do everything in the cloud. You can upgrade these to 256GB (for $100 extra—a no-brainer no matter how you use your phone, if you ask me) or 512GB (an additional $200—steep).

The 16 Pro also starts at 128GB and offers the same upgrade steps but adds a 1TB option at yet another $200 on top of the 512GB price. The Max is the same, but it offers no 128GB option, starting at 256GB instead.

Design

The Pro models are slightly bigger than last year’s, as we noted when talking about the screens. The iPhone 16 Pro is 5.89×2.81×0.32 inches (149.6×71.5×8.25 mm), up a smidge from the iPhone 15 Pro’s 2.78×5.77×0.32 inches. The Max is similarly upsized: 6.42×3.06×0.32 inches (163×77.6×8.25 mm) compared to the previous 6.29×3.02×0.32 inches.

I’ve heard people saying Apple has somehow crossed some unspoken line into "unmanageably large" with the 16 Pro Max, but it’s such a slight increase in size over the previous one I don’t think that holds much water. For better or worse, people want huge phones. The Max delivers.

The iPhone 16 gains the Action button, which was introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max a year ago. It replaces the mute switch, and the user can map it to a wide variety of functions, including most of the things the Control Center can do in iOS 18. Most people will probably keep it as a mute switch, but you can really get crazy with it if you want to wade into the world of Shortcuts.

The iPhone 16 also has a new rear camera arrangement. The two lenses are no longer diagonal to each other; they’re stacked vertically. This looks a little nicer, and it also helps with capturing spatial images and some other camera features that benefit from depth information.

Weirdly, the flash is no longer embedded in the camera bump alongside the lenses. It’s now a white spot a few millimeters off to the side. I personally think this looks kind of strange—almost like it was a mistake. But little about these phones’ designs is ever accidental, so I’m sure Apple had its reasons. (The three camera lenses on the back of the Pro phones look the same as before.)

All of the iPhone 16 devices have the same glass backs and fronts we've seen before, with a metal band around the sides. The iPhone 16’s metal band is aluminum, and the iPhone 16 Pro’s is titanium.

The treatment on the glass and aluminum on the 16 looks and feels awesome. I actually don’t like the starker, more utilitarian-seeming materials, finish, and colors of the titanium Pro phones in terms of look or feel as much, but that’s admittedly up to personal preference. I imagine it’s a conscious choice by Apple to make these feel like real workhorses.

I complained last year that the iPhone 15 Pro got hot to the touch. It later turned out that was partly a software issue that was resolved, but even still it got a bit warm. Apple has redone the thermal design of the iPhone 16 Pro. It can get warm when playing games or charging, but I haven’t noticed the same kind of excessive heat that I did when the iPhone 15 Pro first arrived.

The one design change that this generation will be remembered for is Camera Control, a new button for taking and tweaking pictures quickly and efficiently, so let's start talking cameras.

Cameras

Just like last year, the iPhone 16 models have a 48-megapixel (ƒ/1.6 aperture for iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, ƒ/1.78 for 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max) wide-angle main camera that Apple has dubbed a “Fusion” camera. It’s capable of taking 48-megapixel pictures, albeit without full color detail, but it typically takes 24-megapixel pictures.

It also allows a sort of simulated optical zoom of 2x by using just part of the frame. The 12MP zoomed photos it takes work out quite well; most people wouldn't know or care about the fact that there's no true 2x zoom telephoto lens here.

On the Pro phones, Apple is promoting a much faster sensor and shutter speed, which will allow you to take photos that resolve much more quickly. I definitely didn't have any complaints on that front in my time taking a bunch of photos with these phones.

All the phones also have an ultra-wide camera (now 48MP for the first time and ƒ/1.78 on the Pros, still 12MP and ƒ/2.2 aperture on the base 16s). The Pro now takes drastically better low-light photos with this lens than the last-generation even with night mode disabled, as you can see here.

Last year, the iPhone 15 Pro offered an additional 3x telephoto lens, while the Pro Max had another one entirely: a 5x telephoto. Now the 5x telephoto lens (12MP, ƒ/2.8 aperture) has come to both sizes of the iPhone 16 Pro, but is still not included in the iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Plus.

With the standard iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus (which have identical cameras), we have an important feature coming from prior Pro phones to these cheaper models. Macro mode is now available, and it works quite nicely, as you can see below. The comparison with the iPhone 15 for this brick closeup isn't, well, close.

Video

It's a good year for video improvements. The most notable are 4K slow-motion with Dolby Vision on the Pro phones (it looks incredible) and a new spatial audio capture feature for videos captured on all iPhone 16 models. In tandem with the new spatial audio feature, Apple has introduced Audio Mix, which lets you adjust the spatial audio mix between four options:

• Standard is the default with no modifications to the mix.
• In-Frame attempts to reduce the volume of audio sources that are not visible in the frame.
• Studio tries to simulate a professional studio by reducing background noise and reverb.
• Cinematic is arguably the coolest: it emulates the typical sound mix in movies, with speaking voices in frame occupying the front channels, and environmental audio in surround.

Most people won't mess with this too much, but it's a neat feature for those who want to make sure their videos have great audio on devices that support spatial audio or surround sound.

Photographic styles

If you've read my past iPhone reviews, you know I've simultaneously reveled in awe at the kinds of photos that computational photography allows modern smartphones to take despite the very real limits of optics, while also lamenting the fact that the images can appear overprocessed—or that users don't have enough control over how it appears. I even once speculated that the hyper-processing look of today's smartphone photos will have a nostalgic vibe for people in the future, kind of like the unique look of Polaroids or other long-gone photography tech today.

Apple previously allowed Pro users to start taking photos in an unprocessed, raw image, so they could tweak them in an application like Lightroom later. That's still the case. But this year, Apple has introduced a more user-friendly way to regain some control of the image via newly adjustable overtones (particularly useful for skin tone) and additional photographic styles.

Apple introduced photographic styles quite some time ago, but the ones that existed before were pretty much just glorified Instagram filters. New styles are available for a wider range of presentations, and it's all so much more customizable than before. If you don't like recent iPhones' overblown, bright, washed out, processed images, you can tweak your photos to meet your own preferences—even after they're taken. You have to stick with the HEIF format to do this, but that limitation makes sense and is a small price to pay.

The Camera app won't remember your style choices when you make them in the app, but you can make picks that it'll remember via the Settings app.

Photographic Styles are also one of the things you can tweak with the iPhones' new physical control, which Apple has dubbed Camera Control.

Camera Control

Camera Control is a new pressure- and touch-sensitive button on the side of every device in the iPhone 16 lineup—not just the Pro phones. At the top level, it acts as both a launcher for your camera app of choice (Apple's by default, of course, but it will work with others) and a shutter for snapping a photo. Now that iOS 18 allows you to change the camera control button on the lock screen, you can use the Camera Control physical button instead and assign that spot to something else you use a lot.

In fact, there are a frankly ridiculous number of ways to get to your camera now. You can press Camera Control, you can swipe right from the lock screen, you can use the lock screen control as before, you can tap the app icon on your home screen or in your app library, you can launch your camera from the newly customizable Control Center, or you can bring it up by typing a Spotlight search or speaking a voice command to Siri.

Camera Control doesn't just launch the app and snap pictures, though. Once you've launched the Camera app, you can lightly press the button to bring up a new control menu. By default, it brings up your zoom options, and you can gently slide your finger across the button to increase or decrease the zoom level. Double-light-tapping Camera Control changes this zoom wheel to a control picker, where you can switch from using the button to adjust zoom to instead adjust tone, styles, exposure, or depth.

It's nifty, but it's hard to build a new habit around. I've been taking photos and adjusting the settings via on-screen options for so long, I have to consciously train myself to think to use it in the moment, and I usually forget. That might change with time. I haven't had trouble adjusting to launching the camera app or snapping photos with it though.

That said, the button is in a position that makes it ideal for using as a shutter when taking landscape photos, but it's in a kind of awkward place for taking portrait photos while keeping the phone up and stable—at least if you have the giant Plus or Max phones. In that case, I find it's still easier to just tap the screen.

Camera Control has additional features coming in the future; it's supposedly going to be used to control visual intelligence, a subset of Apple Intelligence. And Apple plans to use it as a two-stage shutter button, but that, too, is coming in a later update.

Performance

CPU performance is not the big story with these phones, but we found modest gains in line with what we've come to expect from Apple's annual iPhone releases.

The GPU is a different story. Apple claimed the A18 Pro would offer up to 40 percent faster GPU performance than the A16 in the iPhone 15, and that's not looking like an exaggeration. We see a significant jump even over the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro.

It's important to note that the Geekbench GPU and 3DMark benchmarks below are very incomplete pictures. For example, a AAA game that uses ray-tracing might see significantly higher performance gains by going to these chips, but that's more a hypothetical than a reality, as there aren't any iPhone games that would take advantage of that right now.

Apple is also touting a drastically faster NPU for AI and ML tasks. We might look into that more when Apple Intelligence eventually materializes. Right now, it's not likely the user would notice much difference on that front.

Users of some of these features in the developer betas of iOS are reporting some big RAM consumption (up to 2GB) by Apple's models, so the extra RAM in the iPhone 16 (2GB more than the 15, it just so happens) seems key.

All told, it's a good year for faster GPU performance, and an average one for CPU gains—just like Apple said when it announced these phones.

I don't think anyone with an iPhone 15, 14, or even 12 or 13 was complaining about performance, though. If you have a recent iPhone, you're good. The extra performance is just gravy that matters only for some niche pro workflows and AAA-quality games like Genshin Impact.

“Every three years” is the sweet spot

There was a time early in the iPhone’s life when I bought a new one almost every year (I had a 3G, a 4, and a 5). Then I started buying them every other year. Now, I upgrade my phone once every three years.

The iPhone is a mature product. Its core features are set, its general design is set, and I’m not expecting anything radical to happen to it for a long time. Even if the rumored iPhone Air arrives next year, it’s still not going to change any of those fundamentals. For that reason, it’s hard to imagine buying a new phone every year again—or even every other year. Yeah, the cameras get better and the chips get faster, but it rarely amounts to much over a short period of time.

I previously had an iPhone 13 Pro. I could have held onto it for another year, but something that had nothing to do with the new generation drove me to pull the trigger. After years of griping about the death of small phones suitable for one-handed use, I decided that if I can’t beat 'em, I should join 'em—I got the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

I wanted a bigger screen for a few reasons. The main one is that I’ve been using my phone as a TV screen a lot more in recent years. I’ve started going to the gym for an hour most days, and I watch an episode of a favorite TV show when I do the treadmill or elliptical machine. I don’t own an iPad, and even I had to admit the 13 Pro’s screen was a bit small for that.

I also set a new personal record for travel this year; it’s only September and I’ve already flown 20 times this year, with more to come. While I enjoyed using the Vision Pro on flights when I was reviewing it, that was a review loaner provided by Apple, and I can’t justify spending $5,000 for an in-flight entertainment system. So again, I was trying to watch movies and TV shows on my phone. Again, I had to admit a bigger screen would be nice.

I also ran into battery problems on those long travel days. It’s not that I couldn’t carry a battery pack or charge my phone at charging stations throughout the day; it’s just that I already have enough reasons to be stressed while flying, so one less step or bit of cognitive load seemed like it’d be a win.

After a few days with the 16 Max, I can report that upgrading after three years feels about as significant as upgrading every two years has for most of the iPhone’s life. It’s a lot of little things, but they add up. By going from the 13 Pro to the 16 Pro Max, I got:

• A bigger screen
• A brighter screen that does more justice to HDR content
• A more durable phone body
• Substantially better battery life
• Much better performance in 3D games
• Apple Intelligence support, if that ends up mattering
• The Action button
• A notably better wide-angle camera
• A drastically better ultra-wide camera
• 5x telephoto zoom instead of 3x, with better image quality to boot
• Numerous additional video capture options
• The Camera Control button
• The Dynamic Island, which in tandem with software, is far more elegant and useful than the notch or Apple’s old, disparate notifications systems
• Reduced screen bezels
• Notably faster Wi-Fi with supported devices and notably faster 5G data

That’s actually a lot—even if you were to discount the size-related differences. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that Apple’s iPhone updates are more iterative. The chaotic changes of the early years happened because the smartphone was an immature product. But even though its fundamental form isn’t being reinvented anymore, things are progressing. Every three years still feels right for me, but I could see some folks opting to do it every four years.

Don’t bother upgrading if you have a 14 or later, though.

To Pro or not to Pro?

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a sort of rubber-band effect between the basic iPhone and the Pro. One year, the Pro has substantially more and better features (especially in the cameras). The next cycle—like last year—Apple plays catch-up by adding the features from the previous year’s Pro to the current year’s base iPhone, and it becomes a little less tempting to spend extra on a Pro.

This year, Apple is continuing to bring the phones closer rather than widening the gap again.

The 16 Pro gives you marginally more screen space, though I don’t think most people would notice—nor would any but display geeks like me recognize the improvements in the screen itself. The Pro has an improved wide-angle camera for sure, but the big differentiator is the presence of a 5x optical zoom lens. Performance is pretty similar, though there’s that longstanding 60 Hz vs 120 Hz screen gap, which ends up being one of the most noticeable differences.

It's very easy to recommend the base iPhone 16 this year. It’s the full package, pretty much, and the Pro features are really just there for niche use cases or to justify a steeper price for folks who want “the best” purely for the sake of having the best.

That’s not to say the niche use cases aren’t relevant to some consumers. It’s common to harp on Apple’s “Pro” nomenclature for its products—often, a more accurate term would just be “premium” or “extra.” But it’s getting hard to level that criticism at the Pro phones these days. Apple really is adding features that are hyper-specific to a particular audience of professionals: content creators like YouTubers, TikTok videographers, and so on.

From expanded photography features to support for pro-specific file formats to external drive support, Apple really is treating the iPhone 16 Pro as a high-level device for a certain kind of professional.

But if you’re not that kind of professional, you probably don’t need to spend the extra premium for the pro features. The always-on display and 120 Hz refresh rate are arguably the only big features that matter to people outside of those professional disciplines. I’m not convinced they’re worth it, but you might feel differently.

If you’re not sure, just get the iPhone 16. It’s already a better phone than most people really need.

A mature product

I wrote last year that the iPhone 15 was the iPhone’s “final form.” I wasn’t trying to suggest that nothing will change in these phones again, but that the core features and priorities—as well as the design in a general sense—are set and unlikely to shift.

I still think that’s the case. These are, for almost all intents and purposes, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro. This is one of the smallest year-over-year updates Apple has ever done—especially if cameras aren’t your end-all, be-all reason for shopping for a new phone.

Gradual growth isn’t as exciting, sure, but there’s nothing bad at all about a mature product. More than ever before, you know exactly what you’re getting. Forget flashy marketing and tentpole features; that stability is a clear win for the consumer, if for no other reason than it’s hard to imagine a scenario where you’d buy this year’s phone but regret it because next year’s ended up being impressively better in some way.

Contrast this maturity with the Vision Pro, which is still finding its feet. Those who bought the Vision Pro have no idea what the future of that platform holds.

The future of the iPhone is clear as day: boring excellence. I’ll take it.

The good

• These phones still have some of the best screens you can buy—even the non-Pro iPhone hits it out of the park
• They have by far the best smartphone performance, too
• Solid gains in GPU performance
• Camera Control brings the long-awaited physical shutter button
• The customizable Action button makes its way to the base iPhone
• New photographic styles allow you to move away from the pitfalls of Apple's computational photography decisions in any direction you choose
• High-end camera features previously reserved for more expensive models have trickled down
• Ultra-wide photos in low light got quite a bit better
• Battery life improvements are always welcome

The bad

• 60 Hz on the non-Pro phones is looking a bit long in the tooth
• Likewise, always-on displays are now standard in some of the iPhone 16's direct competitors
• The Pro phones don't offer enough to justify an upgrade over the base models for the majority of consumers
• Possibly the most subtle year-over-year upgrades in iPhone history—if that's really a bad thing

The ugly

• Not much, other than the steep prices