The base model is more Pro than ever, except for where it counts

It’s easy to think that smartphone innovation is stalling, and every update is incremental at best. That’s especially true when the best iPhones are concerned. However, when you look beyond the new iPhone 16’s chassis, you’ll find that it’s closer to the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max than ever. It has an A18 system-on-a-chip that’s not too far behind the flagship A18 Pro, the same Camera Control button as the Pro models, and picks up the Action button.

While the iPhone 16 Pro looks virtually identical from the back to its predecessors, the base iPhone 16 at least comes with a new-look vertical camera bump that’s now smaller. In many ways, the jump between the iPhone 15 and the iPhone 16 is bigger than that of the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the iPhone 16 Pro Max. So, I traded in my iPhone 15 Pro Max and used the Teal colorway of the iPhone 16 as my daily driver for a week, right after using the Pixel 9 series.

It went about as spectacularly and as terribly as you’d expect. I love the compact form factor of this year’s 6.1-inch iPhone — which is smaller than the base-model Pixel or Galaxy phone — but losing essential features like a high refresh rate and always-on display was a tough pill to swallow. If you can look past those flaws, the iPhone 16 might end up beating the Pixel 9, and it will definitely end up superior to the Samsung Galaxy S24 — I’ve used all three as my primary phone throughout the year.

About this review: I purchased an iPhone 16 myself, and no company had any input in this review or saw its contents before publishing.

Great compact phone

iPhone 16

The best base-model iPhone in years

The iPhone 16 packs a new A18 processor, an upgraded ultrawide lens, and a slight redesign of the rear camera bump. There’s also the Action button and the Camera Control button, which give you specialized control over your smartphone. Like last year, the iPhone 16 has a USB-C port and the Dynamic Island. It’ll also get Apple Intelligence later this year, though AI features aren’t available at launch.

Pros

• The A18 processor is two years newer than the A16 in last year’s iPhone 15
• The new camera bump redesign freshens up the look of this phone, which comes in great colors
• The Action and Camera Control buttons are excellent and useful additions

Cons

• The lack of a high-refresh rate display drags down what should be a fantastic phone
• 128GB base storage won’t be enough for everyone
• Apple Intelligence is marketed alongside the iPhone 16, but it doesn’t ship with the phone

Pricing, specs, and availability

Apple released the iPhone 16 on Sept. 20, 2024, and it’s now widely available everywhere phones are sold. The base model ships with 128GB of storage and costs $800, but you can configure the iPhone 16 with up to 512GB if you’re willing to pay extra. The iPhone 16 is available in the following colors: Black, White, Pink, Teal, and Ultramarine.

The standard iPhone 16 has a 6.1-inch display, but is identical to the larger 6.7-inch iPhone 16 Plus in every way except for size. It’s easy to find an iPhone 16 through Apple, third-party retailers like Best Buy and Amazon, or the major U.S. cellular carriers.

Design and display

The new camera bump and buttons make the iPhone 16 feel fresh

The iPhone 16 is similar to the iPhone 15, but sports just enough change. For the past half decade, the back design of the high-end iPhones hasn’t materially changed. This year, Apple changed up the iPhone 16’s rear camera bump, giving the phone a fresh appearance. The two camera lenses are now vertically positioned in a smaller bump, which now excludes the flash. It actually makes the phone feel slimmer than the iPhone 15, since that model’s square camera bump is gone.

Once again, the base-model iPhones have the best color options. You get the usual Black and White, plus the “real” colors: Pink, Teal, Ultramarine. Pink phones are trendy this year, and everyone’s raving about Ultramarine, but I fell in love with Teal. It’s an excellent sea foam color that can look more blue or green based on the lighting conditions. The aluminum rails and matte glass back feel great in the hand, and the 170-gram weight is slightly heavier than the Galaxy S24 (167g) but much lighter than the Pixel 9 (198g).

Again, a lot is similar to the iPhone 15, down to the USB 2.0 Type-C port for charging. The Dynamic Island is still here, and Face ID is still the only way to unlock the iPhone 16 with biometrics. The mute switch is replaced with the Action button, though, which is a hotkey that can be set to default presets or completely customized with the Shortcuts app.

It’s up to you to decide how useful it is. I experimented with 10 uses for the button last year, but ended up simply using it for skipping to the next track while listening to music. Of course, we shouldn’t forget about the new Camera Control button, which we’ll talk about more later.

The iPhone 16’s display, unlike the Pro models, stays at the same 6.1-inch size. That’s great for people who enjoy small phones, like myself. It’s not an iPhone mini, but it feels like one coming from a Pro Max. The screen does have one new feature this year — the 2556×1179 resolution OLED panel now has a minimum brightness of 1 nit. That’ll mean you can view it comfortably while using your phone in the dark, and it can reach 2,000 nits peak brightness outdoors.

The screen does look fantastic, and the larger bezels than the Pro phone didn’t bother me in the slightest. However, I can’t help but notice that Apple is falling behind with the iPhone 16’s display. The panel is still stuck at a fixed 60Hz refresh rate at a time when you can find cheap Android phones with 120Hz displays. The brightness really isn’t outstanding either, since iPhones lower their maximum value significantly when they overheat. The Google Pixel 9 and even the midrange OnePlus 12R have screens that feel brighter and smoother, thanks to higher peak brightness ratings and 120Hz panels.

I (a tech reviewer) and my partner (a normal person) switched from iPhones with ProMotion displays to the iPhone 16, and we both eventually noticed the slower refresh rate. For me, it happened while navigating iOS 18 and scrolling on TikTok; for my partner, it was swiping while playing Sudoku. Either way — tech enthusiasts and average consumers alike will notice the iPhone 16’s slow screen if they know better. But if they’re coming from a 60Hz iPhone, they probably won’t be the wiser.

Performance

The A18 chipset makes for a big upgrade, but one problem might remain

Normally, I wouldn’t get too excited about a chip upgrade in a smartphone. However, the iPhone 16 is actually jumping two years ahead in silicon, and that’s worth noting. It’s powered by the A18 — a lower variant of the A18 Pro with fewer cores — and doesn’t score that far behind the A18 Pro in benchmarks.

This new chip replaces the A16 in the iPhone 15. For what it’s worth, the A18 system-on-a-chip is made using Apple and TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process, which should help it avoid overheating. Oh, and the iPhone 16 scores higher than the iPhone 15 Pro Max on Geekbench 6, if benchmarks are your thing.

GeekBench 6 CPU scores: iPhone 16 Pro Max with A18 Pro (left); iPhone 16 with A18 (middle); and iPhone 15 Pro Max with A17 Pro (right)

It’s clear that Apple makes the best mobile processors in the world right now, but I’m unsure how much that will matter to iPhone 16 users. In my testing, the 60Hz screen will always be the limiting factor here. No matter how fast the A18 chip is on the iPhone 16, the display won’t be able to keep up.

You can do some cool things already with the A18 processor, like play select AAA games on mobile. I suspect we’ll really see the performance of this chip shine when Apple Intelligence launches, since it will push the Neural Engine to its limits for AI compute. The key is that the iPhone 16 is once again shipping with an industry-leading SoC, even if it’s a few steps behind the iPhone 16 Pro.

My time with the iPhone 15 Pro Max was chronicled with overheating problems and poor battery life, and I’m happy to report that these weren’t major issues while using the iPhone 16. The actual battery capacity is larger than that of the base iPhone 15. My iPhone 16 only showed an overheating warning once — while in the 112°F Arizona heat — but didn’t fully shut down. That’s an improvement, although I still think my iPhones get hotter than Pixels and Galaxy phones by comparison.

Software

iOS 18 is a nice upgrade in its own right, but where is Apple Intelligence?

You wouldn’t know it from Apple’s aggressive marketing, but Apple Intelligence isn’t here yet. I didn’t test Apple Intelligence while using the iPhone 16, nor did I consider it at all, because it’s not something that ships with the phone. In fact, I’d recommend against buying an iPhone 16 for Apple Intelligence, even though the features are set to debut on a rolling basis starting in October.

Some of the best AI tools and features won’t be available until much later than that, perhaps even into next year. By the time we get a complete version of Apple Intelligence, it may be time for the iPhone 17 series to be revealed.

With that being said, iOS 18 does ship with the iPhone 16, and it’s a pretty great update on its own. There are plenty of new customization features, from tinted app icons to a new app grid that lets you place things anywhere on the home screen. Then, you have the big changes, like RCS support. iPhone Mirroring, when paired with macOS Sequoia, is the best Continuity feature we’ve seen since Universal Control and Sidecar. Of course, plenty of older iPhones can use iOS 18 as well, but it’s a very nice update that comes pre-installed on the iPhone 16.

Cameras

There’s a new ultrawide sensor, and I think Camera Control is the real deal

Camera Control is the highlight of the iPhone 16 series, and it’s been a polarizing feature. Some users love it, and others just think it’s easier to use the screen. I’m in the first camp — I think the iPhone 16 has made it instantly easier to snap photos and record video thanks to Camera Control. Aside from functioning as a hotkey that opens the Camera app and can work as a shutter button, it supports swipe gestures and pressure sensitivity. There is some level of customization available in Settings for the key, too.

When your phone is locked or unlocked, a click of Camera Control opens the Camera app. The next click will take a photo, and a longer click starts recording a video. A light press opens a sub-menu with toggles like zoom, camera, tone, Photographic Styles, and more. You can swipe to make changes, tap to select, or double-light-press to change which toggle you’re modifying.

All the sub-menu actions feel gimmicky at the moment, and I wish I could disable some of them altogether. They’re also too easy to trigger while simply holding Camera Control in anticipation of using it as a shutter button. But as a shutter button, Camera Control is fantastic. I can hold my iPhone 16 and take one-handed shots without fumbling with my phone and trying to reach the screen.

As for the camera hardware, the iPhone 16’s main camera is unchanged. It’s a 48MP, f/1.6 sensor that can shoot in either 24MP or 48MP. The larger sensor size means that, using sensor crop, the main sensor can provide optical-quality zoom like a 2x telephoto. The ultrawide sensor was upgraded this year, and by all indications, it’s the same 12MP f/2.2 lens as the iPhone 15 Pro, with a 120° field of view.

Apple is pushing Photographic Styles hard this year, which are a set of film-like filters that can change the look of your photos. Here’s a peek at how four different Photographic Styles change the appearance of the same scene:

Every smartphone company is currently exploring how they can deliver personalized photography experiences for their users. Google and Samsung are using AI and computational photography, but Apple is taking a more traditional approach. Photographic Styles are an easy way to get creative with iPhone 16 photos. However, they’re not inciting the “what is a photo” debate like features such as Magic Editor, Best Take, or Add me might on the Google Pixel.

I tested the iPhone 16’s camera performance side-by-side with the Google Pixel 9, and both smartphones produced quality photos. The iPhone 16 was more likely to produce natural-looking images that matched the colors of my surroundings, while the Pixel 9 favored vibrance and saturation. Take a look at how these macro and detail shots turned out using the iPhone 16:

Landscape shots captured during the day are the best example of how the iPhone 16 favors real-world lighting and color reproduction. In the set of images below, the color of the sky and lake are a very close match to the hues I was seeing in real life. They might not pop in the same way that a set of the same photos from a Google Pixel would, but they’re more true-to-life. Also notice how, in most cases, even a strong ray of sunlight won’t overexpose the entire image.

The situations where the iPhone 16 consistently beat out similarly-priced flagship phones were in low lighting conditions. In the first photo below, you’ll see that even a bright streetlamp isn’t enough to blow out the dark lake and illuminated buildings across the water. The next image has a similarly-tough situation — a table lamp is scattering light in the center of the scene. There was only one instance below where I thought the iPhone 16 could’ve done a better job with low-light brightness and exposure, and that’s with the fifth photo. The string lights clashing with the dark nightscape was too much for the iPhone 16 to isolate perfectly.

Still, I found that the iPhone 16’s camera performance was stellar in low-light situations, even beating out the Pixel 9’s Night Sight mode. The camera is a big reason to pick the iPhone this year over a Pixel or Galaxy phone. All three phones will produce stunning images, but the iPhone matches the real world in a way that the other phones can’t.

Should you buy the iPhone 16?

You should buy the iPhone 16 if:

• You want a compact flagship with a lightweight design
• You need a fast processor and support for AAA gaming (or, want to gamble on Apple Intelligence)
• A phone camera with natural lighting and color reproduction is important to you

You should NOT buy the iPhone 16 if:

• You need a phone with a 120Hz, always-on display
• You want a device with a telephoto lens
• You prefer a bigger smartphone

The only part of the base-model iPhone 16 that doesn’t feel Pro is also the part you interact with most: the display. It’s quite difficult to recommend the iPhone 16 with a 60Hz display for $800 in 2024, but that’s really the one significant downside that comes with this smartphone. Everything else, from the performance to the camera quality, is standout. That makes this phone a very compelling purchase, despite that key limitation. People coming from an older iPhone will be thrilled with the iPhone 16 — especially if they’re yet to try a 120Hz phone.

Great compact phone

iPhone 16

The best base-model iPhone in years

If you can look past the lack of a high refresh rate display, the iPhone 16 is an excellent smartphone. It runs iOS 18, features an A18 chip, and includes a few key upgrades over the iPhone 15.