iPhone 16 Professional assessment: Prime-tier digital camera efficiency

Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro is perplexing.

On one hand, there’s quite a bit to love in regards to the telephone. It contains a new digital camera shutter button, essentially the most thrilling and enjoyable addition to the iPhone line in years, notable tweaks to the look of its pictures (goodbye, terrible HDR post-processing), and actually “professional” options like 4K 120fps video and frame-by-frame colour grading. Nevertheless, it seems practically equivalent to the iPhone 15 (and arguably the iPhone 13 and iPhone 14). Including to this, in a really un-Apple-like transfer, Apple Intelligence will not arrive till later this 12 months (with some options coming even later in 2025). Even the cool Siri glowing animation tied on to Apple’s Glowtime fall {hardware} occasion is not right here but, making the smartphone really feel very incomplete.

With all this in thoughts, the iPhone 16 Professional doesn’t supply a lot over final 12 months’s iPhone 15 Pro — except you are as offered on the Camera Control button as I’m otherwise you’re nonetheless utilizing an iPhone 12 or earlier. Alternatively, Apple Intelligence might reside as much as Apple’s lofty pitch when it releases later this 12 months (and subsequent 12 months). This implies you possibly can seemingly wait no less than a number of months earlier than pulling the set off on the iPhone 16 Professional in case you’re on the fence about upgrading this 12 months.

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Apple iPhone 16 Professional

Apple’s iPhone 16 Professional line options a number of notable upgrades over final 12 months’s iPhone 15 Professional, together with a devoted digital camera button, a brand new A18 Professional chip, a much bigger display screen, and a number of other AI-powered Apple Intelligence options.

Execs

• The Digital camera Management button is nice
• The A18 Professional is highly effective
• It nonetheless options the most effective telephone show

Cons

• Apple Intelligence’s options are delayed
• Almost equivalent to the iPhone 15
• Camer Management button may be finicky

Worth, availability, and specs

Apple’s iPhone 16 Professional begins at $1,000, and the iPhone 16 Professional Max begins at $1,200. Past the display screen measurement variations, with the Professional that includes a 6.3-inch 2622 x 1206 decision and the Professional Max a 6.9-inch 2868 x 1320 decision, each of Apple’s flagship smartphones are equivalent. This contains the 5x optical zoom, which was unique to the Max final 12 months, although the iPhone 16 Professional Max contains a greater battery. Different show tech specs embody a 120Hz LTPO Tremendous Retina XDR display screen.

The iPhone 16 Professional is supplied with Apple’s 3nm A18 Professional chip, a 6-core Apple GPU, IP68 water and mud resistance (as much as 19 ft or 6m for half-hour), and the newest era of Ceramic Defend glass. Inside storage choices can be found in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB variants, whereas RAM stays at 8GB, some extent that may absolutely curiosity Android purists. When it comes to weight, the iPhone 16 Professional is available in at 7.02 oz (199g), and the iPhone 16 Professional Max weighs 8.01 oz (227g).

On the digital camera {hardware} aspect, the iPhone 16 Professional options an array that is practically equivalent to final 12 months’s, together with the f/1.8 48-megapixel huge, f/2.8 12-megapixel telephoto, and new for this 12 months, the up to date f/2.2 48-megapixel ultrawide. The selfie shooter stays the identical as final 12 months at f/1.9 12 megapixels.

This 12 months’s colours embody an array of muted choices, like “desert titanium,” “pure titanium,” “white titanium,” and “black titanium.” I am not an enormous fan of the brand new desert titanium colour, sadly. It feels extra gold than “desert” and appears very yellow underneath some lighting situations. Hopefully, Apple will deliver brighter colours to the Professional line in some unspecified time in the future (this 12 months’s saturated iPhone 16 hues look superior). There’s additionally the brand new Digital camera Management button (that Apple would not need you to name a button), arguably the star of this 12 months’s iPhone lineup (extra on it later).

iPhone 16 Professional construct and design

In case you take away the Digital camera management Button, it is an iPhone 15 Professional in disguise

I might depart this part completely clean and refer you to my iPhone 15 Professional assessment from final 12 months as a result of, past the brand new Digital camera Management button, the iPhone 16 Professional seems equivalent to the iPhone 15 Professional. First off, the iPhone 16 Professional’s display screen has elevated to six.3 inches from 6.1 inches, providing barely extra show house. It is a minor change that most individuals will not discover, and extra importantly, the telephone continues to be straightforward to carry with one hand. However the iPhone 16 Professional Max? That is one other story. The system feels positively unwieldy to me at 6.9 inches, a rise from the iPhone 15 Professional’s 6.7 inches. Lots of people like large telephones, however I am not certainly one of them, and the iPhone 16 Professional Max solidifies this.

The amount rockers, energy button, Motion Button, titanium sides, rear digital camera bump, and extra are all equivalent to final 12 months’s iPhone 15 Professional. That is to not say that the iPhone 16 Professional is a bad-looking system. Actually, it is nonetheless one of the solid-feeling smartphones on the market; it simply seems the identical as final 12 months’s smartphone (and arguably the iPhone 13 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro). Given Apple has adopted this fashion for a number of years now, it is time for no less than a minor visible revamp. Even the iPhone 16 obtained a enjoyable new digital camera bump this 12 months.

iPhone 16 Professional show

That is nonetheless the most effective smartphone display screen on the market

Other than the dimensions change, the iPhone 16 Professional options diminished bezels, providing a barely extra immersive, fashionable look. The display screen stays among the finest on the market, because of its 120Hz silky easy efficiency, which the iPhone 16 nonetheless sadly lacks (at this level, it is ridiculous that the base-level iPhone would not characteristic no less than a 90Hz refresh fee show). Brightness is available in at 1,000 nits, with peak brightness hitting 2,000 nits, making the iPhone 16 Professional’s display screen straightforward to view even underneath vibrant outside situations. I additionally respect that the show can now go down to simply 1 nit of brightness, as a result of it makes late-night doom-scrolling on Reddit a much less annoying expertise for my companion.

I’ve used a whole lot of smartphones this 12 months, together with the Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and the iPhone 16 Professional nonetheless options my favorite-looking smartphone show. Its colours are tuned to be vibrant but subdued, and no matter what’s on the display screen — whether or not I am enjoying video games, watching a film, or simply browsing the web — all the things seems nice.

iPhone 16 Professional digital camera

Apple desires you to determine what your pictures appear to be

The digital camera is the place a lot of the iPhone 16 Professional’s upgrades are. First, there’s the capacitive Digital camera Management button. Digital camera Management (which the iPhone 16 additionally options as a result of it is tied to Apple’s Google Lens-like Apple Intelligence AI identification characteristic) permits you to launch the digital camera and snap pictures with a single press. You could be pondering, “However I programmed the Motion Button to try this final 12 months — why does this must exist?” That is the place issues get fascinating. By half-pressing and double-pressing the Digital camera Management, you launch totally different Photographic Fashion and tone adjustment settings that essentially shift the look of the iPhone’s photos. You can even change the zoom by swiping to entry different options like depth and publicity, all straight from the easy-to-access button.

The Digital camera Management button is admittedly finicky, and I nonetheless discover myself typically reaching for the on-screen controls extra typically than I would like, however it’s enjoyable and genuinely compelling. In an trade stuffed with boring smartphones, I respect this. I believe over the subsequent few days and weeks, I will discover it tough to return to solely utilizing on-screen digital camera controls, particularly when the extra conventional two-stage shutter characteristic launches later this 12 months. I hope this makes the iPhone 16 Professional really feel like a complicated point-and-shoot digital camera in one of the simplest ways attainable. On one other word, I typically unintentionally press the Digital camera Management button, inflicting the show to mild up, which may be irritating at occasions.

Earlier than delving deeper into Photographic Types, let’s unpack what this shift means for images on Apple’s smartphones. Each high-end smartphone snaps strong photos at this level, however every contains a barely totally different fashion. For instance, Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Extremely options tones which might be saturated and really out-there, the Pixel 9 Pro XL presents muted however very true-to-life pictures (with an enormous emphasis on AI), and the iPhone 15 falls someplace in between — although Apple’s highlights and insistence on brightening all the things in a photograph have been disappointing for the previous few years. Including to this, its tackle the sky has been relatively out of this world these days.

With Pictures Types, that is a factor of the previous. They permit you to tweak photos precisely the way you need them. Would you like your photos to be a little bit hotter? Then Gold or Amber is what you are after. Perhaps you’d relatively have shadows and distinction return to your iPhone 16 pictures? Then Pure, my favourite “Temper,” is for you. You may tweak the look of pictures precisely the way you need, together with the pores and skin tone, shadows, and extra, each earlier than and after you snap a shot. It is also attainable to tone down Apple’s very aggressive HDR significantly or ditch it completely, which, so far as I am involved, is the iPhone 16 Professional’s secret killer characteristic. This may be accomplished by way of Apple’s Photographic Types and Moods, however you can even alter the “Tone,” “Colour,” and “Palette” manually for every of those settings (sadly, the d-pad-like management for customized colour and tone is tough to make use of).

It is an amazingly versatile system, however it additionally seems like Apple is admitting defeat. It is as if the corporate stated, “Oh, you do not like what iPhone pictures appear to be? Effectively, determine it out your self,” which matches in opposition to the tech big’s core ethos of telling shoppers what they need earlier than they even know they need it. It is a very un-Apple-like change that I am keen on, and I’ve had a blast tweaking my pictures and determining the Photographic Fashion and settings I choose. Shadows and cheap highlights are again in my iPhone 16 Professional pictures, and I am right here for it.

There are a number of points, although. First, the automated course of that permits you to set your chosen Photographic Fashion is clunky and solely lets you choose from 5 “undertone” choices in the course of the preliminary setup. Apple states that these undertones deal with how pores and skin seems in photos, however in my expertise, they have an effect on each side of the picture. “Pure” is just not included on this menu as a result of Apple considers it a “Temper,” and these can solely be chosen after you shoot the picture or with the Digital camera Management button. To get round this, it is advisable set your default Photographic Fashion/Temper by way of an possibility buried within the Digital camera settings within the Settings app. It is also essential to notice that whereas there are new Photographic Types and Moods, the flexibility to alter pictures on this method is not new to the iPhone and has been round for a number of years.

What’s totally different this 12 months is which you can alter your pictures after you’ve got shot them, because of Apple shifting the order of its photographic pipeline. It is also smarter and may differentiate between faces, the sky, and different objects. Nevertheless, these photos can solely be shot in HEIF, a file format that does not at all times play good with apps outdoors of Apple’s ecosystem. That stated, I have not run into any points with the file sort but. Hopefully, Apple will replace photographic types to work with customary JPEGs.

You might argue which you can obtain the identical impact with earlier iPhones by utilizing the third-party Halide digital camera app and enjoying with Apple’s older photographic types or picture modifying apps like Lightroom CC. The photographs in all probability will not look fairly nearly as good except you actually know what you are doing, however it’s one thing you are able to do with an iPhone 15 Professional, for instance. That stated, in case you’re a images nerd like me, you may discover quite a bit to understand in regards to the iPhone 16 Professional and Apple’s reworked picture pipeline.

The ultimate images query surrounding the iPhone 16 Professional is whether or not it shoots better-looking pictures than the iPhone 16. Like in years previous, Apple’s Professional iPhones supply extra vibrant colours and considerably extra distinction, however the distinction is not monumental. You actually need to have a look at the pictures side-by-side to see the distinction (see the gallery beneath).

Whereas the iPhone 16 Professional’s huge and telephoto lenses stay the identical (though the iPhone 16 Professional now options 5x optical zoom), just like Google’s Pixel 9 Professional XL refresh, Apple up to date the ultra-wide shooter to a 48-megapixel f/2.2 sensor. The brand new ultra-wide lens captures barely sharper photos, however the improve is not monumental.

Switching gears to video, the iPhone 16 Professional can shoot extremely crisp 4K 120fps video, permitting you to decrease the body fee and switch your clip into slow-motion video (take a look at the video above). Samsung has provided related slow-motion options with its S collection units for a number of years, however it’s nice to see it come to the iPhone, and I discover I choose the iPhone 16 Professional’s video high quality over the Galaxy S24 Extremely’s. The brand new audio combine characteristic that removes background audio from movies with the “Studio” possibility or will increase the amount of individuals speaking by way of “In-Body,” additionally works surprisingly nicely. Nevertheless, it isn’t a characteristic I will seemingly use fairly often (I have been utilizing Hollyland’s Lark M2 wireless lav mic for recording audio with my iPhone). I can see the voice isolation coming in useful if I occur to not have a lav mic useful.

iPhone 16 Professional efficiency

The A18 Professional chip is a powerhouse

Apple’s A-series cellular chips have been overkill for years, and the iPhone 16 Professional’s A18 Professional isn’t any exception. Whether or not I am enjoying high-end video games like Murderer’s Creed Mirage, modifying pictures in Lightroom CC, looking the web, or watching high-resolution content material on Apple TV+ (on a aspect word, I nonetheless assume Apple’s streaming service is without doubt one of the finest round), I did not encounter a single occasion of lag throughout my roughly week-long expertise with the iPhone 16 Professional.

If benchmarks are your factor, the iPhone 16 Professional scores 3,386 for single-core and eight,401 for multi-core efficiency, a mark barely above final 12 months’s A17 Professional. I did not run a proper battery take a look at, however I’ve discovered the battery life to be a bit higher than final 12 months, because of each telephones that includes bigger cells. I nonetheless had about 30 p.c battery left within the night after a day of heavy use that included snapping a whole lot of pictures. The iPhone 16 Professional Max seemingly additionally options improved battery life, although I have not examined it (different opinions point out that is the case).

Nevertheless, there’s one caveat to the superb battery life — Apple Intelligence. When Apple’s AI platform launches, will it deplete the iPhone 16 Professional’s battery life, on condition that it runs throughout practically all of iOS 18? We do not know but, however hopefully, that will not be the case. Lastly, Apple has additionally up to date the iPhone 16’s MagSafe charging to be Qi2 appropriate and to cost at as much as 25 watts, which is a welcome addition. I ditched wi-fi charging a number of months in the past as a result of I discovered it too gradual, however for these residing in a wi-fi world, this can be a nice charging improve.

iPhone 16 Professional software program

iOS 18 presents enjoyable customization options, however Apple Intelligence nonetheless hasn’t launched

iOS 18 contains enjoyable new options reminiscent of the flexibility to alter the colour of the house display screen with wild tints, though they will look terrible. The extremely customizable Management Heart can really feel like a multitude at occasions. You can even organize icons on the House display screen nonetheless you need. In an sudden twist, Apple now enables you to make your iPhone 16 Professional look as unappealing as you need, which is a departure from the corporate’s sometimes managed ethos surrounding its units. This is not Steve Jobs’ Apple anymore, and that is very clear with iOS 18 and its considerably wacky customization choices. iOS 18 additionally contains assist for RCS, which improves texting with Android customers.

Whereas iOS 18 presents a number of new options, it is also lacking Apple Intelligence at launch. It seems like Apple deliberate to launch the iPhone 16 line and iOS 18 alongside Apple Intelligence, however launch schedules did not line up. Will options like Writing Instruments, AI era app “Picture Playground,” AI emoji creator “Genmoji,” and a extra contextual Siri be helpful? We cannot know till later this 12 months for some options and 2025 for others. Total, I am not getting a lot out of the beta version of Apple Intelligence’s features, just like my expertise with Google’s Gemini and the Pixel 9. Nonetheless, I must attempt the ultimate model of those instruments earlier than understanding for positive, and it is unclear after they’ll lastly arrive.

Must you purchase the iPhone 16 Professional?

In case you personal an iPhone 14 Professional or iPhone 15 Professional, you possibly can sit out this 12 months — or no less than anticipate the arrival of Apple Intelligence. I actually just like the Digital camera Management button and the way in which Apple handles Photographic Types and Moods with the iPhone 16 Professional, however these options cater to my particular curiosity in smartphone images and tackle my core complaints about how the iPhone 15 Professional processes photos. If this resonates with you, upgrading to the iPhone 16 Professional or iPhone 16 Professional Max could be value it. In spite of everything, the most effective digital camera is the one you’ve with you on a regular basis, and my iPhone is sort of at all times with me.

The iPhone 16 Professional is clearly for folks nonetheless utilizing earlier units just like the iPhone 12 and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone 13. In case you fall into that camp, you may discover quite a bit to love in regards to the iPhone 16 Professional line. Everybody else can wait till subsequent 12 months.

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iPhone 16 Professional