Apple‘s annual September event delivered the expected refresh to its flagship line, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. While the upgrades are mostly iterative with no major change in design or feel (as expected), there are a few new features that make the new iPhones stand out, like the Camera Capture button.
It’s about subtle-ty
The most noticeable change is the ever-so-slightly larger screens: 6.3 inches for the Pro and a whopping 6.9 inches for the Pro Max.
The increase in screen real estate (vs 6.1-inch on iPhone 15 Pro and 6.7-inch on 15 Pro Max) is thanks to the trimmed-down bezels which are 33% thinner now. Apple says these are “the thinnest borders on any Apple product”—a claim that might hold weight until the next iteration.
The familiar titanium body makes a return but has a new micro-blasted texture and is offered in a new “desert titanium” shade alongside black, white, and natural options.
Powered by A18 Pro chip
The core of the phone is the new 3nm A18 Pro chip which features a 16-core Neural Engine with 17% more memory bandwidth that Apple promises will deliver “amazing performance” for its AI features.
Compared to the previous generation, the A18 Pro offers a 15% boost in Apple Intelligence tasks, while its 6-core CPU with two performance and four efficiency cores offers 15% faster performance and 20% more efficiency. Graphics are handled by 6-core GPU which is said to be up to 20% faster than the A17 Pro and supports hardware-based ray tracing.
Cameras
The iPhone 16 Pros features a new 48MP “Fusion camera” and a matching 48MP ultrawide lens. The telephoto lens stays at 12MP as its predecessor, but the 16 Pro gains the 5x tetraprism design previously exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
There’s also a new Camera Control button that joins the entire iPhone 16 lineup. It is made of sapphire crystal, sits flush with the surface on the right frame, has haptic feedback, and is designed to make your photo-capturing experience better.
A single press of the button launches the camera app, clicking it again takes a picture, and you can click and hold to record videos on the go. It also accepts touch gestures — a light tap clears the camera UI for a better preview and brings up a new overlay that shows a quick access option to camera features like zoom and lens switching.
Users can double-tap lightly to see other controls and slide to their preferred camera feature. Camera Control will get an update later this year lock focus and exposure with a half-press.
Camera Control is also the door to experience Apple’s new Visual Intelligence feature, so it will remain exclusive to the iPhone 16 series. It lets user point their iPhone camera at any object or place and bring contextual details about it. Like for a restaurant, the Visual Intelligence pulls up details like the restaurant menu, timings, ratings and even allows you to make a reservation right away.
Audio and Battery
Audio gets a slight upgrade with four “studio quality” mics. The iPhone 16 Pro can now capture spatial audio when recording spatial video. Additionally, a future update to Voice Memos will allow users to layer tracks over existing recordings, quite a handy feature for musicians on the go.
Apple didn’t say much about the battery, except that the new Pro phones have “a huge leap in battery life” with the 16 Pro Max having the “best battery life on iPhone ever”. This is thanks to an “optimized internal design” and the efficiency gains of the A18 Pro chip.
The Pro Max boasts a hefty 33 hours of video playback, while the Pro manages 27 hours. Both models support faster 25W MagSafe charging and are Qi2-certified for broader wireless charging options.
Price and Availability
The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999 with 128GB of storage, while the Pro Max starts at $1199 with double the storage. Pre-orders begin September 13th, with official availability kicking off on September 20th.
