iPhone 16 / 16 Pro Impressions!

I've just spent the last couple of hours Hands-On with every new iPhone so that's the iPhone 16 and 16 plus as well as the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max so buckle up this is The Good the Bad and the Ugly okay let's start with the normal 16 and 16 plus and aesthetically aside from this I have to admit quite spicy new ultramarine color they're basically the same as the iPhone 15s including the same size screens so the base iPhone gets a 6.1in screen and then the plus is basically the same phone but stretched out to a 6.7 in screen with a bigger battery too there is an upgraded ceramic Shield covering those screens though which apple is saying is 50% stronger than the first gen ceramic Shield which is a large number and everyone wins when it comes to durability improvements but then they didn't really give any detail on specifically how that 50% was measured so it will probably be some really Niche test that's been done and the day-to-day difference won't be nearly as transformative as that but the one visual difference that you absolutely will notice are these cameras they've gone from the boxy squarer camera Arrangement on the 50 to now a straight line down the phone kind of exactly how they used to be on the old iPhones it really does make me feel like we're on some sort of roundabout when it comes to iPhone design where instead of just deciding that one thing is better and sticking with it we're actually just rotating between the different options to keep whatever's new feeling different but yeah the reason that Apple's saying they've made the cameras like this again is so that the main Cam and the ultra wide can work together kind of like your eyes to be able to record spatial video that you can watch on the Apple vision Pro so big moment for the uh seven people who own one of them they are also slightly better cameras than last year because the ultra white has now been given autofocus which means when you go super close to something your phone can still keep it in Focus which is not a new feature the pro phones have been able to do this for a while now but Apple does this dance every year the pros will always come with some new and exciting hero feature that the normal phones don't get but then as soon as the pros get the next hero feature then the normal phones are allowed to have the odd stuff which is I think it makes sense it means that Apple can differentiate their more expensive offerings but also then if you don't want to pay Pro prices you can still get the features you want by waiting another year and in the same vein you now also get the action button that last year's Pro phones had which I personally find pretty uncomfortably positioned I mean for me it's less of an action button and more of a slowly stretch as far as I can until I realize my fingers aren't long enough and then give up and then just resort to using my screen to open the app like on a peasant non-action button phone anyway but that's not to say that I haven't seen hundreds of fascinating ways that other people have used theirs there's obviously the basic stuff like using it to take photos but then also I've seen people use this button to specifically turn on a dim flashlight that they can use at night I've seen people use it to activate their insulin pump I've seen people use it to make fart noises on command so it's up to you what you make of it now the only other somewhat camera related feature is this the new camera control button so two separate new buttons in one year on an iPhone how many people had that on their bingo card I definitely did not so it's a new button on the right hand side completely dedicated to camera stuff and I'll give them some credit they are getting a lot of functionality out of this one button so tapping and holding will bring up the visual intelligence feature which is not yet live but it's kind of like Google Lens it's a way to analyze information using your phone's camera so like save the details of an event poster or find out what type of dog is in front of view which me I I just feel like we've seen so many companies do things like this but then hey I guess there is still room for a company to do it really well time will tell if that is this but then the other side of this camera control is photography stuff so one press can open the camera app and then it can actually detect two stages of press kind of like the trackpads on a MacBook if you've ever used one of those so you can light press to start using it to be able to zoom in and out by swiping but there's actually a lot more because then you can double Light press to bring up this submenu which basically lets you select what you want the swiping to control so it doesn't need to be Zoom it could be the exposure of your shot or the different photographic styles for example okay but honestly I am confused why this exists it feels like a really really good feature but for like 2% of iPhone users I mean for starters one of the things they showed in the presentation was how you'll be able to use this button to control focus by light holding down on it you know just like you would with a proper camera shutter button but when was the last time you actually wanted to manually focus your phone there's already like 100 pieces of hardware and software making sure that your subject is in Focus automatically we've actually been programmed out of needing to do that there's the fact that phones are becoming more and more portrait devices I take almost all of my photos like this now because every feed that I'd be potentially posting those photos on is vertical but this camera control while it does work in portrait is very clearly designed for landscape use it's really fiddly and a little painful to reach for when your phone is upright I wouldn't wish these finger gymnastics on anyone and like nearly dropped the thing trying it's actually quite reminiscent of my experience with the action button but then also yeah isn't this what the action button was meant to do now obviously yes the camera control button does the camera side of things better but it just feels like a really weird unapp thing to do to add yet another button that someone overlaps in functionality with what's also just been added and that's it for cameras on the normal iPhone 16s there's actually pretty huge camera upgrades to the pros which I'm getting to but it feels like the main changes here are actually the battery the power and apple intelligence so the battery is bigger that's actually all they said at the event they said it will be a big boost which is a technical term I guess so yeah that I need to test in our upcoming battery comparison in terms of power though it's quite cool cuz we're actually jumping forward two generations in in terms of the chipset the iPhone 15s have the a16 chip the iPhone 16s have the a18 chip which means 30% faster CPU 40% faster graphics and 100% faster machine learning AI stuff all with more efficient construction which means the chip will use quite a bit less power for equivalent tasks and you know what for today's fairly stable smartphone market these are Big Improvement numbers and considering that these aren't Pro phones the gaming experience is very impressive which is also helped by a new noral structure on the inside of the phone that gets rid of heat allowing for 30% better sustained performance but yeah there's no beating around the bush if there's one thing that Apple has made very clear about this generation of iPhones is that they want them to be known as the AI generation I read a report recently that said 300 million iPhones around the world have not been upgraded in 4 years so there's a ton of people out there who are due an upgrade but are likely holding off until it feels like a big Turning Point moment and apple wants now to feel like that Turning Point moment with Apple intelligence so what's it going to let you do well for starters there's a base layer of Apple intelligence sprinkled throughout iOS here things like if you go into an email app instead of the text by default just being the first few lines of whatever the email was it'll now summarize the entire emails content things like cleanup to erase distractions from your photos which is not something we haven't seen on other phones but it does work very quickly and effectively in my time with it or what I thought was really cool is reduce interruptions mode which uses AI to silence most notifications but then also allows what it thinks you need to see to still come through this might well become the permanent mode that I keep my phone in it's kind of like a lower risk version of do not disturb but is it good well based on an early play around I will say that it all looks very pretty it seems like the way that Apple will signal that something is an apple intelligence feature is by making it glow like this and every one of these animations is beautifully put together that said in terms of the actual output it doesn't feel like apple intelligence is doing much that others aren't already doing all these features like being able to proofread the messages you're writing and rewrite those messages in another tone it's all fine but it's all been done and I'm not sure it's stuff that I use very often to be honest like I am a really casual messenger so when I type things out to people I don't use like dear sir I would like to inquire I'm always like yo what do you think to this and apple intelligence like basically every other phone company's AI right now is not yet able to match that texting tone but one big thing Siri is finally getting Apple intelligence which is going to make it a lot smarter and thank goodness for that because I am reaching my limit with here's what I found on the web so the upgraded series should be able to rely much less on that and be much more able to directly answer the questions you're asking it and also completely understand the context of the last thing you asked it when you're asking continuous questions I would go as far as to say that Siri has been the weakest pillar of iOS for quite a while now like so many times I ask it to remember something or open an app and it like accidentally calls my mom however key key caveat here Apple intelligence like all this stuff you're seeing here isn't actually coming till later in the year which kind of makes this feel like a Google pixel event where the product comes first and then the feature later and that obviously takes something away from the excitement especially for an event where half the focus is these AI features but I assume it's the immense complexity of getting these features right combined with the awful consequences if they don't get them right so that's the base iPhone 16s I'd say decent all round upgrade nothing revolutionary the presentation was a lot of like telling you about some really cool stuff that the phone does but then you slowly realizing halfway through that the things they're telling you were already features on last year's iPhone 15s it feels like they're making it purposefully murky what was on last year's phone because if you actually focused on just what is different compared to that it's not actually a huge amount and the screens still have that 60 HZ refresh rate which makes them feel a little bit laggy compared to most similarly priced other phones but then at the same time I also wouldn't hold out expecting any revolutionary upgrades to the bass iPhones from now on like I think all the really cutting edge stuff Apple want to save to release on the pro phones first anyways so let's talk about those the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max now I would say these are actually quite a pretty set of phones from the back there's not a whole lot different except this new desert titanium color which is I mean how many times can you make a gold look different I like it I'm just finding it hard to love it because it's so safe but from the front the upgrade is pretty obvious because the displays are bigger for the smaller Pro 6.1 in has now become 6.3 and on the bigger Pro Max 6.7 has become 6.9 and I think that's a bit of a feat because these new phones they are a bit bigger but quite a bit of that size increase has actually come thanks to a further trimming down of the borders around the screen which mean these things look very fitting for the year 2024 they might actually have the slimmest even borders on any mainstream smartphone and yeah let's be very clear the new iPhone doesn't deage you it doesn't make you more successful we are talking about the millimeters of bezel on the display but it makes the phones look Cutting Edge while giving you some of the largest viewing areas in both the Compact and the jumbo form factors I'm just remembering the days when Android tablets had 7-in screens we are there with phones isn't that isn't that kind of wild there is also an upgraded battery on the pro phones 2o which as you know all about but again shockingly little detail provided about what and how all they said was it now has faster Wireless mag safe charging and that this is the best battery on an iPhone which is great it just probably means I'm going to be awake all night when it comes to the battery test so thoughts and prayers would be appreciated there's another new chip so while the bass iPhone 16s get the a18 the 16 Pros get the a18 well Pro which is a slightly Juiced up version also with improvements to calling that lets the phone do a few more things with a lot of those things being related to the camera and this is where it gets fruity so the main camera is still 48 megapixel like it was last year but the sensor has been updated to be able to capture information faster which means two things one they're saying that you can out capture photos with zero shutter lag something that the iPhone was already pretty good at but this might further extend its lead but then also it means the 16 Pros can shoot video faster and what I mean by that is that the 15 Pros could shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second these new phones can shoot that same 4K resolution but now at 120 frames per second which is enough frames that you can now slow that 4K down into slow motion territory and it feels like the way apple is selling this is basically that you can now just keep 4K 120 as your default recording option and what that then allows you to do is after you've taken any kind of video you can then just decide whether you want that to play back in normal speed half speed quarter speed or even 20% speed I do like how seamless they've made it to record this 120 FPS footage but then at the same time if you did actually want that to become your default you're going to need more storage than the 128 gbes still being offered as the default on the smaller Pro iPhone it's just it's just not enough for almost 2025 the ultra wide camera previously 12 megapixel is now also up to 482 to match that main camera which is a good upgrade I really like the freedom that comes with feeling like all the cameras on my phone are great and that all I need to worry about is which one do I want to use as opposed to which one is technically the best that I should try to use and the ultra wide is a bit of a two inone upgrade because upgrading your Ultra wide also upgrades your close-up macro photography cuz it's the same camera so that means up to 48 mapel macro photos which is pretty delicious the phones have four studio microphones around them now which is well it's actually really good for a number of reasons more and better mics means that your phone can hear you better so that's Obviously good for your audio quality in videos but also just generally like how well series can hear you and there's even now different audio mixing modes so after you've taken a video you can decide whether you want the focus on just the audio of the people in the shot or also if you want to get in more of that background chatter there's actually quite a few new very Advanced software features like this like a new control pad to adjust the color profile of your shots in real time and it has got me thinking this is all really cool stuff these are all technically very difficult to achieve impressive features but it also feels in a way like a few too many tools for any one human to be able to use it feels like a lot of the extra features now while impressive are tailored to actual industry professionals as opposed to the Casual user who just wants the best point and shoot camera and I'm not saying that that point and shoot experience is getting worse it just doesn't feel like Apple's attention is focused on making it significantly better anyway the final camera thing is now the smaller Pro iPhone now also inherits the five times optical zoom camera that last year only the pro Max got meaning this must be one of the smallest phones with a five times optical zoom lens it's usually something that only the big phones get because you have to create space between your camera sensor and your lens most companies do this by lying their cameras vertically across their phone but Apple's created that space by using a Tetra prism that's bouncing the light multiple times within a more compact space and slight segue for 30 seconds if you want to protect those shiny new cameras then esrs new mag safe stash stand case our sponsor just makes sense because you see this camera protector here well that also doubles as a stand to prop your phone up at any angle but it's even better because your stand is baked into the cameras it's allowed them to make the back of the case ultra thin giving these cases the fastest mag safe charging of any St case and to top it all off they're well priced with shock absorbing Air Guard Corners meaning that every case actually exceeds military protection standards so what's my take on the 16 Pros well I think so far that the new features this year are a bit of a mix because on one hand it feels like less Hardware improvements than usual because apple is relying on Apple intelligence to do the heavy lifting for sales but then Apple intelligence is both not ready yet and also not really seeming at least on first glance like anything groundbreaking right now but then on the other hand we are getting decent improvements to basically all the key pillars of a phone the screens the battery the camera even the microphones and so for me what a lot of it's going to come down to is how much better are these phones at all of that core stuff the testing begins and remember to check out the ESR mag safe stash stand cases in the description which you can get in three different flavors you've got the classic case the cloud case which is super soft and then the Cyber tough case which is no joke seven times military crate protection