Apple delivers a great new flagship phone yet again

The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro launched a while ago with one loud shout: Apple Intelligence. This makes reviewing the advertised product difficult, as Apple Intelligence isn’t rolling out until mid-to-late October (and its full set of features won’t be around until March next year). So, if you’re coming to a new iPhone for AI, maybe wait until next year.

Having said that, the iPhone 16 offers plenty of improvements over previous generations, so anyone with anything older than the iPhone 15 should feel happy upgrading to it. Better yet, it gets some hand-me-downs from the Pro line, meaning it’s this year’s most appealing iPhone. With excellent performance, thanks to a new chip and extra RAM, the Action Button and Camera Control, as well as a lovely display and design, the base iPhone has never felt more Pro. Still, how does it compare to the best gaming iPhones of recent years? Let’s find out.

Price and availability

The iPhone 16 is available from Apple and other online retailers like Amazon and Walmart. It starts at $799 for 128GB of storage, $899 for 256GB, and $1,099 for 512GB, while the iPhone 16 Plus retails for $100 more in all configurations. All models come with 8GB of RAM and are available in gorgeous Black, White, Pink, Teal, and Ultramarine colorways. The model reviewed here is the 256GB iPhone 16 in White.

Specs

Here are the iPhone 16 specs:

Features and software

Before we dive into the features, let’s just say this: we can’t review Apple Intelligence right now outside of beta, so while it might be a headline feature, do not buy this phone for AI. It may not be as exciting as the marketing makes out. That being said, there are some exciting features to explore with iOS 18 and the iPhone 16.

First up are the new buttons, which are the Action Button from the iPhone 15 Pro and the brand-new Camera Control. The Action Button is a customizable button that replaces the silence toggle, something many people might find useful, though I just leave it as a silence toggle. You could turn on the flashlight with it, activate an app, or even unlock your car. You could also open the camera with it, but there’s not any point in that.

That’s because there are now many ways to open the camera from the lock screen on an iPhone. The best way is the new Camera Control, a capacitive button that Apple isn’t calling a button. Press down on it and the camera opens; press again to take a photo; or press and hold to record video. You can also swipe along it to explore some interesting camera features, which we’ll talk about later.

Camera Control is an exciting prospect, but for the large majority of the time, I’m not changing camera settings. So, all it is is a shutter button that opens the camera app, and I’m fine with that. It’s a nicer, quicker way to snap a photo, in my opinion. But it’s no great game-changer.

Meanwhile, the iPhone 16 cameras also get a rejig so you can record spatial video to watch on your Apple Vision Pro. Now, I don’t know how many people spent $3,500 on a Vision Pro and then want to save $200 by getting the base iPhone, but perhaps they’re out there – for them, it’ll be nice to have. Beyond those eight people, it’s not all that interesting.

Perhaps even less interesting is the addition of Wi-Fi 7, which may sound a bit meaningless to you. But if you have a router that supports it, you’ll get far better Wi-Fi speeds. Most people don’t yet, but they’re sure to become more common over the next few years.

That’s the extent of the new features exclusive to the iPhone 16. Of course, there are a bunch of new things with iOS 16, lots of good and some a bit more baffling. But everyone all the way back to the iPhone XR and XS users can access them, so it’s not a reason to upgrade unless your phone is properly ancient. All in all, the 16 has some nice new features, but nothing particularly thrilling.

Design

One of the nicest things about the new base iPhones is the overall design. The metal sides and matte glass back look gorgeous in all configurations, while the screen and dynamic island give the whole device a premium feel. It’s light, sturdy, and well-built.

The Action Button, at least for the 6.1-inch model, is easy to use and in a good place. However, Camera Control is a little bit weirder. It’s really easy to activate with your left hand, but if you’re the type that keeps your phone in your right pocket, it may be less smooth.

Meanwhile, using the Camera Control in a horizontal orientation, as feels most natural, is a little bit clumsy. You can’t wrap your finger around the rails of the phone. Instead, you have to put your finger a little bit in front of the screen. This is no big issue, but it isn’t a completely natural position, like when using most real cameras.

Display

The OLED display on the iPhone 16 is excellent, with high brightness and a new lowest brightness of 1 nit. If you’re coming from the iPhone 15, it probably won’t feel like an upgrade, but anything older and you’ll be happy. The new lowest brightness is useful in only a handful of situations, like reading something first thing in the morning, but it adds to the different circumstances where this phone still excels, rather than having weak points in different, less common use cases.

The biggest issue for most is probably the 60Hz refresh rate. A phone that costs at least $800 without having a 120Hz screen is outrageous. The Samsung Galaxy A55 5G is around $400 and has a 120Hz OLED; the base model iPhones are very late to the party.

For me, however, it doesn’t matter. Ever since I upgraded my Xbox, I’ve been incapable of going back to 30Hz gaming. I currently have a 60Hz iPad and MacBook; I fear that an upgrade to 120Hz on my phone may result in the same effect, making my other expensive and more-than-capable devices feel older and less luxurious to use. For that reason, I’m fine with 60Hz.

iPhone 16 cameras

The back cameras on the new iPhone 16 really impress me, though it must be said I’ve upgraded from an iPhone 13, so the difference is more dramatic. While on paper there’s no big upgrade to the main camera (it’s a 48MP Fusion camera instead of a 48MP Main on the 15, the difference being unclear), the photos looked better when I did a mini test in my local Apple Store (I don’t have an iPhone 15 to hand to do a full comparison). The ultrawide boasts a more obvious improvement, letting in more light and making ultrawide shots better at night.

The most exciting thing, however, is the new photographic styles. Apple has rejigged its “Photonic Engine” (whatever that means) so you can capture your photos in exactly the style you want. Rather than adding a filter over the top after taking a shot, you can choose a photographic style beforehand that reacts to different things in the photo in different ways.

These photographic styles are, however, not permanent. If you take a photo in the Rose Gold style and realize it looks better with the Dramatic one, you can just change it afterward. The photo can be edited in a non-destructive way, so you can fiddle around with your photos quite a lot without having to be an editing whizz.

What this results in is the ability to completely change the character of iPhone photos quickly and easily. Want it to look like a rich and nostalgic Fujifilm? Gold does a lovely job. Want a more mossy, action-flick vibe? Dramatic is pretty serious. The choice is yours, now — which seems to be Apple’s trend now. You can make your home screen and your photos unique; you just have to want to.

And that might be the issue. See, how many people actually enjoy fiddling with settings? I do, because I like technology, but if I truly wanted to dive into tweaking my experience on a phone, I wouldn’t get an iPhone. So perhaps all this customization will go straight over people’s heads.

If you leave the camera in its normal settings, everything looks fine. Shots feel very iPhone-y but for me, everything is too washed out and flat. I now use the Gold photographic style with the tone setting around -.5, and it looks really lovely.

So, if you take the time to fiddle a bit with the settings, your relationship with your iPhone camera could become very different with all of the 16 models, but if you’re not interested, it’ll just feel like another iPhone.

Performance

While the iPhone 16 has a very big bump in performance, noticing it might be quite difficult. What it really offers is longevity (and enough RAM for Apple Intelligence when it arrives).

By all the benchmarks out there, the iPhone 16 isn’t far off the 16 Pro in performance, and that’s without having to support a 120Hz display. What this means is that the new 3nm chip, the A18, can run big, triple-A console games in decent enough quality.

If you’re worrying about Candy Crush or other casual mobile games, don’t. You’ll be fine. If you’re worrying about Genshin Impact or Call of Duty, also don’t. You can easily get 60fps without the phone getting annoyingly hot. Anything that your old iPhone could do, this can do.

Better yet, the upgrade means that you can now run games that were previously exclusive to the 15 Pro. That’s the new Resident Evil games, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and a whole host of other big console games. They look good, and the iPhone doesn’t get as hot as you’d expect.

Now, as I write this on my 6.1-inch iPhone screen, I would like to say one thing: don’t buy this iPhone to play AC or RE; it’s too small. Perhaps the experience on the Plus would be better, but for me, they’re more marvels of massive graphics in a tiny package, rather than any way you’d actually want to experience the atmosphere of Racoon City or Digital Baghdad.

Battery

All this performance doesn’t harm the battery, either. Thanks to small battery size increases and perhaps efficiency gains, the iPhone 16 battery is excellent. I charge it at night while I sleep and never have any worries when the night out stretches longer than expected. That’s good enough, right?

If you need anything better, the iPhone 16 Plus’ battery is, by all reports, astoundingly good. But I wouldn’t spend the extra money just for the battery life unless your phone is constantly searching for a signal because you travel during work or you’re using it intensively for gaming. You’ll be fine with a bit less with the smaller 16.

In terms of charging speeds, the iPhone 16 is decent enough, juicing from flat to 100% in around one hour and 45 minutes, or a little longer if you’re wireless. That’s nowhere near the speeds of Android alternatives from the likes of Xiaomi and Honor, but it’s decent for iPhone and means you can get a 25% boost in around 25 minutes.

Should you buy the iPhone 16?

Overall, the iPhone 16 is a neat little piece of tech. There’s really nothing wrong with it. There’s more it could do, sure, but there’s nothing more I need it to do. On a basic day-to-day level, it looks great, performs without a hitch, takes nice photos, and has an excellent user interface. By the time I end my day, its battery isn’t perilously low, and by the next morning, it’s ready to go again. Perfect.

The most important question, perhaps, is: should you buy it? I would say an upgrade to the iPhone 16 is very worthwhile for anyone on a 13 or earlier, especially if you feel like that phone is struggling. Any previous Pro users are bound to notice the refresh rate difference, but anyone else will be happy.

But, while it looks a bit different, it’s not that different from the last generation. Rather, it’s quite like the new Apple Watch. It feels like the near-perfect version of a form factor and idea Apple has worked with since the iPhone X. Perhaps the iPhone will take another shift in the future, but who knows? Maybe phones now are just tools that wear out and we replace. And if yours needs replacing, this is an excellent device to replace it with. There’s nothing wrong, but there’s also no real surprises, which is lovely, if not special.

Alternatives

If our iPhone 16 review hasn’t sold you on the Apple flagship, check out our suggestions for alternatives below.

Google Pixel 9

If you want AI right now, Android is the way to go. Google’s Pixel 9 is great, the photos are nice, and the performance is decent enough. And given it costs the same amount and has long-term software updates, the decision is, well, down to preference. At least it doesn’t wobble when laid down on a table; perhaps that’s enough of a reason.

Samsung Galaxy S24

The Samsung Galaxy S24 is a bit better and a bit worse than the Pixel 9, but it’s a worthy alternative all the same. While if you want Android and its AI integration to feel fully full, Pixel is the way to go; the S24 has enough of it. Oh, and it’s more performant, and for my money, the design is nicer. But all in all, it’s a real toss-up between all three. In general, smartphones are converging, so you’re not losing out too much no matter where you go. For more on this one, check out our Samsung Galaxy S24 review.