iPhone 16 is here. Even if it didn’t yet have the Apple Intelligence feature that played a big role in that announcement. Either way, there are some significant upgrades under the hood, and the iPhone 16 chip has finally caught up to the Pro models instead of being a year behind. With fast speeds, some great photo features, and extra buttons that expand how you use your phone, this is a more exciting basic iPhone than I’ve seen in years. Not everything will work, but it’s manageable enough.
iPhone 16 – Design and features
iPhone 16 is as clean and elegant as ever. The aluminum frame is sandwiched between front and back glass, and the back and frame are matted to create a calm impression. At the rear, the camera system returns to a vertical stack embedded in a pill-shaped bump; Ara Apple chose to place the flash on the regular back glass rather than extending the camera bump to match the flash. That would have given it a design more similar to the iPhone 12. With little change over the years, Apple will have to tread carefully to create a unique design without reverting to older models. Unless of course it’s broken…
Apple touts the strength of the Ceramic Shield that covers the phone, but I found it a bit underwhelming. During the first few days of testing the new iPhone, when I spent most of it in my bag, protected from the harsh and cruel world, only going out to take photos, the iPhone 16 still had some noticeable scuffs and scratches. There was. display. It’s not that the phone is particularly weak, just that it’s not a tank.
The size of the iPhone 16 is very convenient. The 6.1-inch display isn’t very large, but it does allow for a much smaller footprint than the Pro Max model. I think it’s comfortable to use with one hand. It’s a shame that Apple’s UI requires a lot of swiping from the edge of the display, often requiring the aid of a second hand or careful shifting.
The display isn’t as pretty as Apple’s Pro-level ones. The bezels are a bit wide, but not uncomfortable. Dynamic Island isn’t too intrusive, but I did notice it interfering with some UI elements while playing Wuthering Waves. The 1179x 2556 resolution keeps the screen crystal clear even on this compact display. There’s little to complain about the quality of the OLED panel, with great colors and contrast, but the 120Hz display on the iPhone 16 Pro Max (or just about any Android flagship) makes it all about the iPhone 16’s 60Hz refresh rate. Masu. more noticeable. It’s not that smooth.
At least the iPhone 16’s speakers are great. It offers surprisingly clear stereo and plenty of volume, so you can enjoy a solid listening experience on the phone itself anywhere you don’t disturb others.
The iPhone 16 features the action button introduced with last year’s Pro model, but this is a fairly early trickle-down. Perhaps more impressively, it also features new camera control buttons, which should be a Pro-exclusive feature. Even though the iPhone 16 is smaller, the camera controls are located just as high on the side of the phone as the iPhone 16 Pro Max, so they’re still a little hard to reach when holding the phone horizontally. Be especially careful with swipe gestures in this position. Holding your phone vertically makes it easier to use. This creates a strange imbalance between portrait and landscape photography. Also, swiping on camera controls can be a bit unreliable, and even just using buttons in general requires a learning curve (more on this in my article) iPhone 16 Pro Max review).
There’s a USB-C port on the bottom of the iPhone 16, and it’s great to see this port appear after years of Lightning ports. Unfortunately, Apple limited this to USB 2.0 on the iPhone 16. In other words, it’s slow. I felt that the USB 3.0 ports on the iPhone 16 Pro model were stingy enough, even though the world has moved well beyond USB 3.0, which was introduced over a decade ago, so I upgraded the iPhone 16’s USB 2.0 to Pro. It doesn’t feel like more than pressure to do or buy. Add on-device or cloud storage to compensate for slow photo and video backup speeds.
The iPhone 16 ditches the SIM card completely in favor of eSIM. Providing one physical SIM and one eSIM makes a lot of sense, and after spending over two hours getting the eSIM from my iPhone 16 Pro Max to work on my iPhone 16, I think it’s a good move by Apple. I can’t say that I took it. This change. However, by eliminating the port, it may now be able to remain incredibly water resistant to depths of 6 meters for 30 minutes.
iPhone 16 – Software
iOS 18 has proven to be a decent operating system. We were impressed with the level of customization it offers compared to previous operating systems. The lines between iOS and Android have become much more blurred over the past few years, with the isolated ecosystem of iOS being a bigger difference than the way iOS works. When Apple’s gesture-based navigation is overridden by buttons in the UI, navigation becomes inconsistent and can still sometimes hang. But more than that, I think getting around iOS 18 is as easy as getting a new Android smartphone.
Unfortunately, the Apple Intelligence feature in iOS 18 is not yet available. These will come with iOS 18.1, which is expected to be released in late October. My experience with many AI features on mobile phones. Pixel 9 Pro Gemini tool or Pixel 8 Pro Magic Editor has been impressive so far, and while it can be reasonably useful at times, I’ve had a hard time putting most of it into practice.
iPhone 16 – Gaming and Performance
The iPhone 16 is a bit faster and the built-in A18 chip works well as a gaming phone. It withstood running Wuthering Waves at maximum settings without issue, offering smooth, uninterrupted gameplay throughout use. It was a little warm, but not hot. For day-to-day operations, it’s fast enough for browsing, messaging, and general smartphone usage. Additional memory is also fine. I was able to take a break from my gaming session, check out some apps, and jump back into the game right where I left off without any lag.
While performance is likely to be very good for some time to come, we note that the iPhone 16 is not as fast as the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, which have an upgraded A18 Pro chip with a faster CPU. Worth it. And additional GPU cores. The iPhone 16 isn’t far behind, with only 2% slower single-core speeds and 3% slower multi-core speeds in Geekbench 6. Graphics performance is 15% slower in Geekbench 6, but still incredibly fast.
However, Apple seems to be more focused on comfort than performance, rapidly throttling performance to keep temperatures low. 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light stress test consisted of one fast run followed by 19 runs at roughly the same, slower speed. Still, this isn’t a bad result, as in our best tests it performed just as well as the OnePlus 12, which is a speed champion in its own right, and stayed higher than the OnePlus 12 in additional runs. It loses out to the RedMagic 9S Pro in particular, but thanks to its actively cooled SoC, it came close to matching the iPhone 16 Pro Max in 3DMark’s graphics and stress tests.
A single run through 3DMark’s various gaming benchmarks shows that the iPhone 16 generally lags a bit behind, but still offers a high level of performance and easily outperforms its more direct competition from the Pixel 9 series. I am.
This phone offers decent battery life. Streaming a 1:47 movie at maximum brightness only drained 10% of the battery. The tank holds plenty of juice and can last a full day of moderate use.
iPhone 16 – Camera
The iPhone 16 doesn’t have a full camera capability, as it doesn’t have a better sensor or telephoto optics like the Pro model. However, it has some upgrades over previous models. The cameras installed in iPhone 16 are as follows.
- 48MP wide, f/1.6, OIS
- 12MP Ultrawide, f/2.2, 120 degree FOV
- 12MP selfie, f/1.9
It’s a bit disappointing that the iPhone 16 doesn’t have optical zoom. It’s certainly difficult to get this much detail when punching in objects that are far away. Compared to this year’s Pro model’s 5x telephoto sensor, the iPhone 16’s digital zoom is comparable, with softer, smoother details. However, one of the weaknesses of the Pro model is that it uses digital zoom a lot despite having an optical option, and the gap between the iPhone 16 and the Pro model has narrowed considerably when it comes to digital zoom.
This is mainly thanks to the quality of the iPhone 16’s main sensor. It may look a little different than what you’ll find on the pro models, but it’s still a powerful camera with a wide aperture that can collect a lot of light. When placed side-by-side with photos from the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the iPhone 16’s photo quality is comparable to my eyes. Colors are vibrant and if there’s a bit of a lack of contrast, it’s easy to regain with the photographic style. The depth of field blur you get from your camera can also be great when done right. This doesn’t even have to account for the artificial blur of portrait mode.
Sadly, the iPhone 16’s ultrawide sensor suffers from some of the same issues as the one found in the iPhone 16 Pro Max, even though it’s a completely different setup. Even with great shooting conditions and low ISO, details will be soft and noisy. My guess is that the ultrawide sensor’s autofocus performs much better when shooting close-ups, so I suspect there is some kind of issue with the autofocus. It takes good enough photos to send via text message and offers a wide field of view to capture vast vistas, but all the flaws become visible when you zoom in on the photo.
It’s a similar story for selfie cameras. However, I am not able to take as clear pictures as I expected. I was able to go back and look at some camera samples taken with the iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone SE (2022), and both had sharper detail, so I suspect some kind of software issue. Lens correction is enabled by default on the iPhone 16, which applies to both the ultrawide and selfie cameras, and this appears to be contributing to the issue. Because some photos taken with lens correction disabled look much sharper than those taken with the iPhone 16. Now valid.
