iPhone 16 Pro Review

On paper the 16 Pro fixed the 15 Pro. The A18 Pro on second-generation 3 nm ran cool where the A17 Pro had cooked, the 5x 120 mm tetraprism telephoto came down from the Max to the 6.3-inch model, the ultra wide went to 48 megapixels and video hit 4K at 120 fps in Dolby Vision with four studio microphones behind it. The panel grew to 6.3 inches at 2622 by 1206 with the thinnest borders on any Apple product to date, 1 to 120 Hz, always on, down to a single nit at night.

The 3582 mAh cell, up from 3274, delivered the biggest battery jump in a Pro in years: 27 hours of video by Apple's count and a genuine day and a half for most people. Then the two things on the box. Camera Control, a capacitive and pressure-sensing button on the right edge, launched half finished, with the focus-lock half-press arriving in December and most owners settling for using it as a shutter or not at all.

Apple Intelligence, the reason the ads gave you to buy it, was absent at launch, arrived in pieces from iOS 18.1 in late October, and the rebuilt Siri Apple demonstrated in June 2024 was postponed to 2026, which drew a class action over the marketing. A touchscreen that ignored swipes at launch was fixed in 18.0.1. It shipped on iOS 18, runs iOS 26 today, and held $999 for 128GB. Titanium again, in Desert Titanium if you wanted people to notice.