The best iPhone for most people

The base iPhone is usually pretty boring, a basic model with enough limitations to push consumers upstream towards Apple’s pricier Pro models.

But with recent flagship lines from Google, Samsung, and OnePlus arguably delivering better base models and Pro phones that really do feel built around optional extras, the iPhone 16 shows Apple learning a little from the Android side.

The iPhone 16 should be the least interesting of the latest-generation of iPhones, but it’s the opposite: the closest a non-Pro iPhone has come to its more capable cousins. There are still trade-offs, but the iPhone 16 is refreshing, satisfying, and far more capable than I expected. For once, this is the iPhone that most Android owners should be tempted by.

Price, availability, and specifications

The iPhone 16 starts at $799 and comes with 128GB of storage. If you need more storage, the 256GB model is $899, while the maximum storage capacity of 512GB will cost you $1,099. These prices include a $30 instant rebate if you activate it on a carrier at point of sale. If you want the bigger iPhone 16 Plus, it’ll cost you $100 more.

The iPhone 16 comes in five colors: black, white, pink, teal, and this ultramarine color I’ve been using for two weeks. Before we get stuck into the review, here’s a quick reminder of the specs.

Design

Not Pro, but still premium

I’ve carried an iPhone alongside an Android phone for years, and it’s always been a Pro model. This year is the first that I’ve switched my main iPhone from the Pro Max to the iPhone 16 Pro, but after starting to use the iPhone 16, this might be my favorite iPhone yet.

It starts with the colors. The iPhone 16 Pro colors are muted, but the iPhone 16 is vibrant. There’s Black and White for people who want something more neutral, and Teal and Pink if you want a pop of color. The hero Ultramarine color is the one I ordered, and I love it. It’s a mix of blue and purple that is unique and different from anything else; exactly what the iPhone started as.

The camera design has also returned to the pre-iPhone 11 pill design, and I like it. The color of the camera cutout is a darker tone to the main body, giving it a contrasting look that stands out, but it also means the phone wobbles when laid flat on a surface.

While the iPhone 16 Pro is made from titanium (just as was the 15 Pro range last year), the iPhone 16 uses aluminum with a matte glass finish. That matte finish means the iPhone 16 feels just as good as its Pro siblings despite the cheaper metal, echoing the approach taken by the Galaxy S24 and Pixel 9 series.

This is helped by the inclusion of the Action and Camera Control buttons. The former was exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro range, and mine is set to turn on the flashlight, although you can also configure it to open specific Focus modes, start a voice recording, or more.

I think Apple’s goal has been to ensure that whichever iPhone 16 you pick up, it looks, feels, and acts the same, and it has achieved this with abundance. The iPhone 16 is the nicest non-Pro iPhone ever made.

Display

Everything you need, except for one feature

It’s easy to dismiss the iPhone 16’s display on paper, but it’s mostly a joy to use. Measuring 6.1 inches, it’s ergonomically friendly and more comfortable than the 0.1-inch larger screen on the Galaxy S24. Part of this is due to the boxier design of the Galaxy S24, with the slightly smaller build making the iPhone 16 more comfortable to hold and use with one hand. The Pixel 9 is 0.2 inches larger than the iPhone 16, but they’re equally friendly to use with one hand.

Yes, the display is only 60Hz. Yes, it’s noticeable if you go looking for it. No, it doesn’t matter for Apple users. Still, hopefully the rumors of a higher refresh rate on next year’s iPhone 17 come true. On the other hand, there’s no always-on display (AOD), and this is the more noticeable omission. This isn’t a technology limitation, rather it’s Apple artificially limiting the display’s features to hold something back for the Pro phones. Even cheap Android handsets offer AOD, and missing it here feels frustrating.

Go beyond the refresh rate and the Super Retina OLED panel looks excellent. Brightness ranges between 1 nit and 2,000 nits, meaning it’s visible in most lighting conditions. I’ve turned to the iPhone 16 Pro — with a larger 6.3-inch display — a few times while reviewing the iPhone 16, and while the display is larger, it doesn’t feel like it’s much better (refresh rate aside). This is because the key features that matter — OLED technology, at least 326 ppi pixel density, and a high enough max brightness — are similar or identical on both devices.

The Dynamic Island is present just like last year, and it’s still a fantastic feature that every Android maker should be trying to copy. The features and apps that tie into the Dynamic Island continue to evolve, and it’s become a key part of what makes the modern iPhone experience. I’ve written that every phone should have a dynamic island, and it’s fast becoming an iPhone feature that I miss when using an Android phone.

Software

The most-Android like iPhone software ever

The iPhone 16 runs iOS 18 out of the box, and it’s the biggest update to the iPhone in over a decade. If you’ve held off switching to an iPhone because you preferred the customizability of Android, there’s never been a better time to switch: iOS 18 is the closest we’ve ever come to an iPhone running Android.

The big changes start at the home screen: say goodbye to fixed positioning and hello to freedom. You can now position apps and widgets wherever you want on your home screen, allowing you to achieve great home screen layouts that weren’t possible before. It’s not elegant, as iOS still tries to autofill apps into empty spaces — and I hope that Apple improves it as it’s frustrating in its current state — but with a bit of fiddling it ends up working. I expect that Apple will fix this in future updates, but who knows how long that will take.

Beyond just the positioning, Apple has finally shown Android makers how to theme a phone properly. Android phones past and present have supported theming in various guises. Still, the implementation in iOS 18 is fantastic: there are options for light backgrounds, dark backgrounds, large icons with no labels, and a color swatch to let you go wild. In the color swatch, you can change colors, hues, opacity, and even engage a color picker to pick that perfect color out of your background. When you use the dark icon, all apps are forced to use a dark mode icon, and when you change colors, it overwrites the icon color for almost all apps. It’s elegantly done, and it’s the way that theming should be on all phones.

My favorite part of iOS 18 is the revamped Control Center. You can now customize it to rearrange all the icons; add big widgets for music, connectivity, or home controls; and add or remove pages as you see fit. The control center used to be fixed with no option to fully customize it, but now it offers the same customization benefits that many Android makers have for years.

Messaging, Privacy, and Security

There are many other iOS 18 features worth noting. You can now easily protect specific apps, by either requiring Face ID to unlock them or placing them in an entirely hidden area. iMessage now has a range of improvements around reactions (called Tapbacks), including being able to react to any message with any Emoji and being able to schedule iMessages for a later time.

The iPhone now supports RCS in case you weren’t already aware, but it’s a mess; some networks support it, others don’t, and it’s only the basic implementation, not the one used by Google. It’s exactly what you’d expect when Google and Apple don’t ensure interoperability, but the core RCS features work, and you can now easily send read receipts, higher-quality media, and typing indicators from an iPhone to an Android phone. The big three US carriers all support RCS on the iPhone, but my carrier of choice — Google Fi — doesn’t, saying that it’s down to Apple to roll out a carrier services update.

The new Apple Photos app is polarizing: you either like it, or you don’t, and I do not. Much of this may be down to the muscle memory of using the previous Photos app, but despite using the beta and the stable release, it doesn’t feel intuitive. It’s a flatter design, and while there are still ways to navigate to items like your favorites, it could, and should, be much better. In an ideal world, Apple would return to the design of old — albeit with some improvements — and return to thinking of the Photos app as a gallery app, instead of approaching it as a social app.

That sums up iOS 18; after 17 years of batting away calls for a more open platform, this is the most customizable software that Apple has ever launched, but it’s far from flawless. It’s designed to get Android users to switch, and it will feel familiar if you’re considering making the move.

A note about Apple Intelligence

If you watched Apple’s keynote on the iPhone 16, you’ll have heard them mention Apple Intelligence multiple times. It’s worth noting that this won’t be launching until later this month at least, and many of the features won’t launch until later this year or early next.

There are many Apple Intelligence features that could transform the iPhone 16 experience, including notification, mail, and message summaries, a revamped Siri with ChatGPT integration, Vision Intelligence — like Google Lens — using the Camera Control button, and AI image/text generation.

However, these features are still in beta, and iOS 18 is not the finished article right now. Don’t buy the iPhone 16 for what it could be in the future, buy it for what it is now: a premium iPhone experience without the price tag.

Performance

Pro-performance for a non-Pro phone

The iPhone 16 is powered by the A18 chip, which marks the first time in three years that the regular model has used the same technology standard as the Pro phones. The A18 uses TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process which offers efficiency benefits over the first-generation process used in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max’s chipset.

Apple says that the CPU is up to 30% faster than the iPhone 15, while the GPU is up to 40% faster. These are strong boasts, but the iPhone 15 was plenty fast and the iPhone 16 simply adds extra polish. There’s no lag, and it feels just as fluid as its more expensive siblings, though it’s unclear whether it will remain this way with extensive use.

The regular iPhone 16 has just one fewer core in the desktop-class GPU, meaning you can now run AAA games like Resident Evil 4, and there’s also hardware-based ray tracing. The iPhone 15 struggles with the most intensive games, but the iPhone 16 is significantly better.

Battery Life

Solid, but not spectacular, battery life

Smaller iPhones have always struggled for battery life when compared to their bigger siblings, and the iPhone 16 is no different: out of the four different models, it has the least capable battery life.

For the most part, the iPhone 16 delivers all-day battery life. On an average day, I can survive a whole day without needing to top it up during the day. Most days I average around five hours of screen time with a healthy mix of social media apps, camera usage, and light gaming. It’s good but it won’t stack up to the best phones for battery life.

For a phone this size, the battery life is about as expected and mostly on par with the iPhone 16 Pro, which I used for a few days prior. For the past year, I’ve used the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which wouldn’t last a full day — thanks to poor efficiency and bad software — so the iPhone 16 is an improvement in this regard.

This year has seen Apple boost its charging speeds, though they’re still sluggish compared to many Android offerings. The iPhone 16 now supports up to 30W wired charging when paired with a 20W adapter, but it only rapidly charges to around 70% by default. It takes about 35 minutes to charge to 70% from empty, but the final 30% takes almost the same amount of time. iOS 18 has a range of charging optimizations designed to increase the longevity of the battery, so this is one of the causes behind the delta in charging speeds.

Camera

Everything but a telephoto lens

The iPhone 16 has two cameras, although Apple promotes four different focal lengths on its listing pages. The main camera is a 48MP camera that captures at 24MP through pixel binning and can crop in to achieve the equivalent of a 2x zoom.

The ultrawide camera still has 12MP resolution, but gains autofocus, which enables better pictures and macro photography for the first time. It’s not quite as capable as the 48MP ultrawide on the iPhone 16 Pro, but it’s a welcome improvement over the iPhone 15. There’s also the ability to capture spatial photos and videos to use with the Apple Vision Pro.

Overall, the iPhone 16 camera is a dependable and capable shooter. Yes, there’s no telephoto lens, so if you rely on one, you will probably want to look at the iPhone 16 Pro or an Android rival like the Galaxy S24. However, the 2x crop is great and this has all the hallmarks of an excellent iPhone camera. As you can see from the galleries above, the zoom remains capable even above the 2x crop mark, although it does degrade in quality as you zoom further. Considering the legibility of the text at 10x, it’s a camera you can rely on.

The iPhone 16 series adds the Camera Control button, and it’s going to be one of the more polarizing parts of the experience. The physical button provides quick access to the camera with a single press, while the capacitive sensor underneath allows you to swipe and half-press to access different features such as swiping through different zoom lengths.

It’s great on paper, but I do not enjoy the implementation. The Camera Control button seems to act as both a capacitive and a physical button, but it’s often hard to press the button and far less intuitive than I would have hoped: when you’re attempting to half-press to focus an image, it’s missing the haptic feedback and response that a physical button has. Its position is also not ideal as you have to adjust your finger to use the button. I want a camera control button, but I don’t like this one, so I’m still using the on-screen controls.

The tweaks to the iPhone 16 camera, including the new Photographic Styles, which are expanded and applied in real-time, make for a great overall camera that’s fun to use. There are many similarities with the iPhone 15, but the improvements this year bring the iPhone 16 much closer to the Pro phones. If you don’t need a telephoto camera, the iPhone 16 delivers almost the full camera experience from the iPhone 16 Pro range and a similar package to what you’d expect from the likes of the Pixel 9.

Competition

Many similarities to the best regular Android phones

The iPhone 16 is most comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S24 and Google Pixel 9. It shares many similarities in that it offers the Pro experience at a more affordable price, but is closest to the Google Pixel 9 in that it only has two cameras.

The Galaxy S24 has a triple-camera setup with a telephoto lens capable of shooting at 3x optical zoom, although the Pixel 9 camera is still fairly capable at this focal length thanks to Google’s software smarts. If you’re using a regular (i.e., non-Plus, Pro, or Ultra) Android phone, the iPhone 16 is probably the best iPhone to switch to, and the improvements in iOS 18 this year mean that transition will feel fairly familiar.

However, it’s worth noting that many additional iPhone 16 features rely on Apple Intelligence. Apple’s approach to AI won’t start rolling out until later this month, and it will take until early next year for the full suite of features to become available. In the meantime, Samsung and Google have both launched a full suite of AI features for the Galaxy S24 and Pixel 9 respectively, and with Samsung set to launch the Galaxy S25 in early January, these Android phones could be considerably further ahead of Apple in the AI race.

Should you buy the iPhone 16?

The iPhone 16 is the best non-Pro iPhone ever made, and the most tempting iPhone in years from an Android perspective. In particular, I can’t get over just how comfortable it is in the hand, and how nice the Ultramarine color is. Make sure you’re not buying it for the future of iOS 18 — as no-one should buy something for the promise of future updates — but rather for what it is now: an excellent entry into the Apple ecosystem.

The only problem is that while Apple has upped its game, so have its Android rivals. The iPhone 16 offers a compelling reason to switch to iOS, but the Google Pixel 9, Samsung Galaxy S24, and OnePlus 12 are only a few of the Android phones worth considering. Each offers similar specs to the iPhone 16, even exceeding it in some areas, and each is compelling for different reasons. If you’re ready to jump ship, then the iPhone 16 is where you want to end up, but there are still plenty of reasons to stay put, too.

Nirave is a creator, evangelist, and founder of House of Tech. A heart attack at 33 inspired him to publish the Impact of Tech newsletter, which covers the impact of technology on mental, physical, and emotional health. For more, follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.