aApple has upgraded the iPhone 16 Pro by adding a 5x zoom camera to its larger Pro Max line, making size its main differentiator, making the smaller Pro an immediate candidate for the best small smartphone going forward. I changed it to
The 16 Pro costs the same as last year’s model at £999 (€1,199/$999/AU$1,799), placing it between the £1,199 16 Pro Max and the vanilla iPhone 16, which starts at £799. That also puts it in direct competition with Google’s £999 Pixel 9 Pro, which has a similarly sized screen.
At first glance, the 16 Pro looks similar to last year’s 15 Pro, but the screen is 0.2 inches larger and measures 6.3 inches diagonally. Slimmer bezels around the display have absorbed some of that growth, but the phone is still a little larger, 12g heavier, and about the same size as its predecessor in a thin case. .
The smooth, crisp display is one of the best on the market, especially good for photos and videos, but outdoors it doesn’t quite reach the best brightness offered by rivals. Apple says the glass covering it is 50% more durable than previous iPhones, but the 16 Pro may still need a case to protect it from drops.
New camera control buttons have been added to the side that you can press, swipe, or click to quickly open the camera and perform various actions. This brings the total number of buttons to five, including the action button added last year.
The 16 Pro runs iOS 18. This adds lots of customization features to the Home screen, Control Center, Photos, Notes, Maps app updates, a new password manager, and RCS support for the Messages app.
However, much-touted Apple Intelligence features such as smarter Siri, notification summaries, various AI writing tools, and emoji and image generators are not yet available. The beta will start rolling out in the US with the iOS 18.1 update in October and in the UK, Australia and other non-US English-speaking countries in December, but the rest of Europe is out of luck for now.
specification
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screen: 6.3 inch Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)
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Processor: apple a18 pro
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Ram: 8GB
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Storage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB
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operating system: iOS17
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camera: 48MP main, 48MP UW and 12MP 5x zoom, 12MP front camera
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Connectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, thread, USB-C, satellite, UWB, GNSS
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water resistance: IP68 (30 minutes at 6 meters)
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size: 149.6×71.5×8.25mm
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Weight: 199g
New A18 Pro chip is faster and more efficient
The 16 Pro has a new chip that’s about 10-15% faster, with 20% faster graphics. It feels fast and will continue to be fast for years to come. It also improves cooling efficiency by about 20% when playing high-end games.
Battery life is long for a phone of this size, lasting around 38-40 hours between charges with 5G and Wi-Fi combined and over 5 hours of active screen use. This is pretty much the same as the previous model and means charging it every other day, or every other night on days of heavy use.
sustainability
Apple says the battery will last more than 1,000 full charge cycles at at least 80% of its original capacity and is replaceable for £109. A non-warranty screen repair will cost £349. The 16 Pro comes with a repair guide and was rated 7 out of 10 by experts at iFixit for repairability.
16 Pro contains over 25% recycled materials including aluminum, cobalt, copper, gold, lithium, plastic, rare earth elements, steel, tin, and tungsten. The company details the environmental impact of mobile phones in its report. Apple offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.
camera
The 16 Pro has major camera upgrades, bringing it on par with the Pro Max line, including the 5x optical zoom camera and new dedicated camera control buttons added to the 15 Pro Max last year.
When your phone screen is on, press the button and the camera will open instantly. Double-press to bring up a menu, then swipe through exposure, depth, zoom, camera, style, and tone adjustments, then slide your finger across the button to make adjustments. Click the button fully to take the photo. It’s very useful for quickly launching the camera and taking photos, but using more advanced tools felt slow and took practice before I could use it correctly.
The main 48-megapixel camera takes great images and can now shoot at full resolution without any lag. This year, the ultra-wide camera has been upgraded from 12MP to 48MP. This generally improves wide-angle images, but also greatly enhances macro photography for larger, more detailed close-up images.
However, the extended optical zoom with the 5x telephoto camera is the biggest upgrade, allowing you to significantly reduce the distance to your subject with meaningful magnification. The digital zoom on the top can go up to 25x and gives good results up to about 10-15x.
Apple has also upgraded its Photo Styles feature, allowing you to adjust the colors, tones, and palette of your photos as you take them. A variety of presets are available to change the mood, such as vintage or vibrant, adjust the undertones to make things look warmer or cooler, increase contrast or shadow depth, and make other tweaks. .
Any style can be changed using the virtual directional pad and intensity slider. It’s difficult to be precise, but you can get very creative, such as recreating the look of a particular film camera or creating very dramatic looks. You can set the new one as the default using a short guided tutorial and change what is used for each photo in the post-mortem photo app.
Other fun new features include spatial photography and 3D photography that can be viewed on headsets like the Vision Pro. Video shot in 4K at 120 frames per second can be turned into cinematic slow motion after the fact. The new audio mix feature for videos is pretty impressive, allowing you to cut out background noise and make it sound as if each person in front of the camera has a separate microphone.
Overall, this camera takes predictably good images under a variety of conditions. The Photo Styles feature is perfect for people who want to get creative without having to develop their images on a computer afterwards. The 5x telephoto camera added to the 16 Pro is a killer feature that keeps it on par with Google’s Pixel 9 Pro. However, its complete lack of AI capabilities is noticeable, especially when compared to Google’s very useful “Best Take” tool and similar tools.
price
Prices for the iPhone 16 Pro start at £999 (€1,199/$999/AU$1,799) with 128GB of storage.
For comparison, the iPhone 16 costs £799, the iPhone 16 Pro Max costs £1,199, the Google Pixel 9 Pro costs £999, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra costs £1,249, and the Fairphone 5 costs £499. is.
verdict
The iPhone 16 Pro offers the perfect balance of size and features, with a generously sized screen and all the high-end trimmings packed into a relatively small frame.
The addition of 5x optical zoom puts Apple’s tiny Pro on par with its monster 16 Pro Max, so the iPhone buyer’s choice becomes simply size and price, not features. Faster chips and camera upgrades are welcome, including fun photo styles.
The new camera control button is very useful for quickly starting the camera, but it’s difficult to use to adjust settings and difficult to press hard enough to capture an image without shaking the phone. It’s a mixed bag. It takes a bit of tweaking to make it great, and it’s not the ideal placement for left-handed people.
Apple’s much-touted AI features aren’t yet available, and for the first time in a while Apple is in serious competition with Google’s excellent Pixel 9 Pro for the best small phone available.
It’s not cheap, at £200 more than the regular iPhone 16, but the 16 Pro is Apple’s best phone, and at least £200 cheaper than the 16 Pro Max.
Strong Points: Relatively small and easy to hold, great camera including 5x optical zoom, great screen, USB-C, action and camera control buttons, great battery life, top performance, long-term software support, Face ID.
Cons: It’s more expensive, the camera is a little harder to control, it’s bigger and heavier, and it has the same design as its predecessor.
