iPhone 16 Pro
Apple Inc.
Apple’s The iPhone 16 family of phones will hit shelves on Friday. Ahead of their launch, I’ve been testing the high-end iPhone 16 Pro Max for the past five days.
It’s a great phone with cool updates like a dedicated camera button, and it charges faster with MagSafe than previous Pro models. The screens are also slightly larger than previous versions.
But this review is tricky because one of the banner features Apple has touted — both on the platform and in its new ads — is Apple Intelligence. It’s Apple’s suite of AI features for the iPhone, and it won’t arrive until later this year.
There are reasons to be excited. Some of the new AI features will launch in beta in October, such as changes to Siri, photo editing, and the option for AI to rewrite text for you. Additional additions will come later, such as Apple’s image and emoji generator, personalized Siri responses, and integration with ChatGPT.
I was able to test some beta features for this review. Others are not available. Those limitations make it difficult to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the new device or recommend whether an upgrade is worthwhile.
Apple shares fell earlier in the week after analysts suggested weak demand for iPhone 16 Pro models this year. TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Guo says the problem is that Apple Intelligence isn’t up and running. Barclays feared that a Chinese-language version of Apple Intelligence would not be launched until 2025.
Here’s what you need to know about the new iPhone 16 Pro Max right now.
Changes to be aware of
The biggest change you’ll notice is the new camera button. After a few days I’m still getting used to it, but I’m already normalizing pulling my phone out of my pocket, tapping a button, and taking a picture.
My wife rightly asked me why I don’t press the camera button on the lock screen like on previous iPhones. I don’t have a perfect answer for that. Pressing the camera button feels very natural.
I enjoyed half-pressing to get camera controls like zoom during my son’s first soccer game, though sometimes it was easier to pinch to zoom. A new 48-megapixel wide-angle lens delivers sharper images on zoomed-out shots that can capture more scenery.
Videographers will enjoy the 4K 120fps recording offered on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. However, I try to keep my clips low quality as I share them with family and friends via text messages.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max has the best battery life of any iPhone yet. Apple’s new A18 Pro processor, paired with a larger battery, offers up to 33 hours of video playback, up from 29 hours in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro Max. I usually manage to get to dinner before charging 15, and I can make it to bedtime — or beyond — with the new phone, depending on how much I use it.
I love that Apple has increased the speed of its MagSafe charging. I used MagSafe when it came out, but since it was faster, I switched to regular cable charging. Now, MagSafe charges up to 50% in 30 minutes if you use a 30-watt charger (not included).
The screens are slightly larger on this year’s Pro models. The iPhone 16 Pro Max went from 6.7 inches to 6.9 inches. I don’t know the difference, I can only tell if I put the two phones next to each other. It’s still a fantastic screen with a high refresh rate, meaning scrolling is smooth. It’s colorful and bright, and I love the always-on display so I can see notifications without having to pick up my phone. It’s not new this year, but still useful and limited to Pro models.
Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence Photos
Apple Inc.
I’m only testing some beta features because Apple Intelligence isn’t available at launch. As expected in beta, they are hit or miss.
Apple Intelligence will help drive a new cycle of iPhone updates. Apple iPhone sales in the fiscal third quarter were $39.3 billion, about 46% of the company’s total revenue and down 1% from a year earlier. CEO Tim Cook said the segment grew on a constant currency basis.
I love the email summaries provided by Apple Intelligence. They are precise and only contain two lines that summarize what was said or sent in the email. It only works with Apple’s Mail app, so it won’t work if your company uses Outlook or if you use Gmail. Similarly, I found that Apple Intelligence accurately summarized long texts (including the introduction to this review) and provided an accurate snippet.
In notifications, that’s right. The summary of message alerts was correct. The brevity of text messages was sometimes redundant. For example, in a text from my wife, Apple Intelligence suggested that I throw a dinosaur at my daughter and make her cry before I apologized. Actually my son is the culprit. The original text would have sufficed.
In a daycare notification app I use, Apple Intelligence does a great job of summarizing that my daughter “took a nap, ate Cheerios, and played happily.” This is the perfect amount of information to have while driving.
Apple Intelligence Photos
Apple Inc.
Another Apple Intelligence feature lets you create movie memories, which are short snippets of photos and videos set to music. In a TV ad, Apple shows a young woman using Siri to create memories of a dead goldfish with the help of Siri.
I can’t use Siri to make movies like that. Instead, I opened the Photos app, tapped Memories, and wrote in a line asking for a photo memory my son “learning to fish on Skytop set to a fishing tune.” It showed pictures of the family trip to the Poconos correctly but no pictures of my son fishing there. This music is called “fishing tune” by Jiang Jiaqiang, but doesn’t sound like fishing music to me. Another test, asking my son for a photographic memory of “playing soccer,” worked well.
There’s a whole new Siri interface that glows around the edges of the screen. I like the look compared to the globe, and it’s easy to type into Siri by tapping the screen indicator at the bottom of the display. “How do I use my iPhone to scan a document?” Even though I like to ask iPhone-specific questions like this, Siri doesn’t change much with me right now. and “How do I take a screen recording?” Siri provides the answer in a simple step-by-step guide at the top of the screen.
You can now talk to Siri with interruptions. So, if you’re stumped and say, “Umm,” or “Wait a second,” when you’re thinking, “How tall is the Eiffel Tower?” You can continue to ask questions with the same thought. Then, “When was it built?” But it doesn’t always work. I tried “How far is Boston?” For example, “And what’s the weather like there?” Siri gives me the weather for my current location.
Apple Insights is useful and I’m excited to see where it goes.
Apple iPhone 16
An attendee holds two iPhone 16s as Apple hosts an event at the Steve Jobs Theater on its campus in Cupertino, California on September 9, 2024.
Manuel Orpegoso | Reuters
I focused this review on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The iPhone 16 is slightly smaller and has less battery life, but is otherwise identical. My colleague used a regular iPhone 16.
There are some differences between the two. The iPhone 16 comes in more colors and is constructed of aluminum instead of titanium like the higher-end Pro models. It has a new camera button, but lacks the higher refresh rate and always-on features of the Pro model’s displays.
The iPhone 16 will support all the Apple Intelligence features I mentioned above and more to come. Apple improved the app for faster performance and added a new macro camera mode for very close-up shots of objects, as well as support for taking spatial photos for the Apple Vision Pro headset. It offers 22 hours of video playback, up from 20 hours on last year’s iPhone 15.
Should you buy it?
The iPhone 16 Pro Max is a solid upgrade, but if you’re coming from the iPhone 14 Pro Max or earlier you’ll notice the biggest changes. Big improvements over last year’s phone include an added camera button, a faster chip, new cameras and a slightly larger display.
When it comes to Apple Intelligence, we’ll all have to wait for features like previous calendar events, questions that require personal context, using Siri to control your apps, or Apple’s integration with ChatGPT. So if you’re buying now, that applies to everything except AI.
