iPhone 16 vs iPhone 16 Pro: Biggest Differences Explained!

iPhone 16 vs iPhone 16 Pro [Music] hey guys what's going on I'm here with the Tom's guide team and it is the day after the Big Apple event I know we're going to take you through some of the biggest announcements of the new Apple devices but more specifically we're going to hopefully take you through some of the decisions that you should keep in mind when it comes to actually what you're going to want to buy this year specifically when it comes to the iPhone 16 versus the iPhone 16 Pro but before How was the event? we get into that let's check in with everyone how are we doing I'm going to say a little overwhelmed with all the announcements why are you overwhelmed well I think there was a couple things that we didn't get that we thought were going to get like the iPad Mini 7 and the second generation or third generation Apple watch se but there were still a lot of devices especially like on the airpods front I think the fact that there were two airpods 4 and we're going to like help people figure out which one to get and when it comes to the iPhones I think I was really impressed with the iPhone 16 Pro and pro Max with the larger displays but I think as we get into it we're going to find that the regular iPhone 16 is more Pro than ever which is why we want to help people try to make the best decision for them how about you John yeah know a little bit tired after yesterday's big event but it's always exhilarating but yeah like Mark said you know there's a big surprises that we saw and some stuff we didn't see I particularly was hoping to see maybe you know cheaper iPhone iPhone SE 4 fourth generation iPhone se but what they did show was pretty cool and some the new stuff with it too I was personally most shocked that we didn't get the Apple watch Ultra 3 I was like fully convinced I was ready to get that Hands-On session with it but instead we just got the new satin black color did you guys get a chance to check that out I didn't but I I was impressed with the Apple watch 10 design and just like how thin it was on the wrist and the larger display so I think partially because it's the 10th anniversary of the Apple watch that's maybe the reason why that got the soulle spotlight any like huge Any surprises? huge surprises things you just simply weren't expecting well I mean for me I think the the camera control button like and they say don't call it a button because it's not a button I think how it works like because obviously we saw the rumors heading into the event in terms of the fact that there would be that so-called button there but in terms of what you could do with it it's a lot more versatile than I thought it would be but I also feel like there's a little bit of a learning curve yeah I gota agree with Mark that one because you know trying our first time it does take a little bit you know it has that physical response also the capacitive switching between modes it's kind of interesting how they do it you know you do that light T light light hold and then you scroll around but for everyone who going to be seeing the iPhones for the first time it's going to be I want to say a little bit of a shock it's just different from how a normal you know taking photos on your phone goes it does give creators a little bit more control I do like you have stuff like the aperture control the exposure adjustment you have even the zoom controls right at your fingertips so as someone who frequently shoots a lot of video a lot of photos it's definitely What's a hands on like? helpful we obviously know what a Hands-On area after an Apple event is like but for those who have not been able to experience that firsthand can you tell me a little bit about what you actually get to do in that area I know that you each went Hands-On with the with the new iPhone 16 family tell me tell me what the energy is like in there what what do you get to do what do you get to see who's helping you things like that I think initially it's like rugby for nerds you know just like trying to get your hands on the devices themselves and you're you know jockeying for position but after that like things calm down a little bit you your turn in line and then you go Hands-On with the devices and at first it's about just getting your hands on Impressions and that's what I tried to do and get the walkthrough from the people who are there from Apple because they've all been trained like to tell you like here's all the new features and they walk through you know for you but then it's your chance to go Hands-On with it and then explain to people what it's like to go Hands-On with the devices for the first time so I think it's very well organized but I think there was probably more people than there's ever been in the Hands-On area and I've been coming to lots of iPhone events for me it was a lot of waiting online uh you know there was a lot of waiting I remember there's one guy in front of me I was just waiting there for like maybe almost close to 10 minutes I gave up because this guy was taking so long I'm like let's get to the point I wish there was a little bit of a timer you know most people pretty quick but this one person was just really taking their time but yeah like Mark said a lot of energy um a lot of people you want to get right to it you want to get your hands on get the first impressions you want to also you know get a feel for all the new features because that's going to be you know part of the new experience for this devices and how about you Kate well you talked about lines when it comes to the Hands-On area the biggest line that is always in the Hands-On area is that to take a selfie with Tim Cook and I usually do try to make my way into that line it's just you know part of the tradition I think of coming here to try but uh that was not happening for me instead I actually got to meet Steven neros the olympion pommel horse guy maybe some people know him as you guys have you seen him on Tik Tok yeah can we take a quick picture of course you can thank you yeah he's going to be on Dancing With the Stars I was over the moon that was like my highlight moment of the day yesterday even though I probably should be saying that about the devices those two though but he was over by the uh Apple watch devices checking them out which makes a lot of sense because Olympians need to be tracking their Fitness and their health and something like an Apple Watch can certainly come in handy then you go look at something like the Apple watch Ultra more specifically that's really like an ultimate Ultimate Sports watch so I love seeing those things come together yeah no Tim no offense no offense now that we What do you need to know about the new phones? kind of have set the vibe of what it's actually like to come to an Apple event and go do the hands on area let's talk more about the new iPhones Mark I know that you got to go Hands-On with the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max John you went Hands-On with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 plus tell me about what we need to know about these new phones well I think it's it's important to start with like what features the iPhone share right so all new iPhone 16 models have an a18 chip inside so while the chips vary a little bit different there's the a18 and the A8 Pro they're all designed you know supposedly from the ground up for Apple intelligence so even though we learned about a lot of these features at WWDC Apple reiterated some of them and and like saw them like come to life with the new iPhone so some of the features that they showed off that we went Hands-On with are things like the ability to summarize like long notes so like if I have a long note like this I could just like Auto summarize that and literally within a couple of seconds you get a summary so like apple intelligence I think is pretty smart there or if you have a long email thread and I get lots of them where I sort of dive in after the fact you can get that summary um real quickly you know so and I think the new Siri even though it's not going to be coming until next month I think it has a lot of people excited about like how much better can the assistant get um especially when you're able to tie in things like chat GPT as a third party those apple intelligence updates those are what blew up on Tik Tok for us if you guys haven't checked out at Tom Godot on Tik Tok yet you can see some of the highlights that were showcased in in the keynote and it seems that that's kind of like the the underdog of the announcements yeah so visual intelligence in particular so a lot of people are saying that like you know derisively calling it like a Google lens on steroids but I think it's actually it's a good step in the right direction in terms of like what can you use your camera for when you're not taking pictures so the ability to get information on a restaurant let's say just by pointing your camera at it or if you see like a concert flyer and you take a like a not even take a photo just hold up your camera you can add that to your calendar seeing a dog breed in real time that sort of thing so I I actually think it opens a lot of like cool possibilities in terms of what a smartphone can do John does that have Why is the iPhone 16 more pro than ever? anything to do with why you're calling the iPhone 16 and I quote more Pro than ever that's what John titled his handson review which is live at tomsguide.com right now and also on our YouTube channel they have a dedicated video with the iPhone 16 so tell me tell me why the iPhone 16 is more Pro than ever you know every year there's always the struggle which iPhone to get should go pro should you get the standard and this year I feel like the Divide between the two series is lessening so now there's like I said in my handson it's more Pro than ever before because to Apple's credit they brought the same Apple intelligence features on the 16 Pro with to the standard iPhone so you're going to get those similar features right there and I guess that's it's a good thing because you look at the competition you look at what Samsung has done with Galaxy AI you look at what Google has done they made it so it's accessible with the entire lineup but as far as the other stuff that makes you know the iPhone 16 series the standard ones more pro this year is because it gets also the camera control and has also the a18 chip but yeah it just feels like it's more Pro than ever and given the price differences it makes it a little bit tougher you're looking at what $7.99 $8.99 for the iPhone 16 and 16 plus and for $100 more you do get the iPhone 16 Pro which I don't know it's it's a tough one because I feel I'm not sure how you feel about this Mor Kate but the 16 Pro might be the iPhone to go with because you look at the 16 Pro 16 Pro Max ask yourself $200 difference between the two phones what do you really getting bigger screen yes probably longer battery life yes but what else there anything more well there's a couple of things so one is the fact that you're still getting a true telephoto zoom on the iPhone 16 Pro and the fact that you're getting the 5x tetra Zoom for like that came over from the iPhone 15 Pro Max so there's finally like parody between the iPhone 16 Pro and the pro Max the other like Pro feature although I think this is probably more of a niche thing is like the promotion display so the fact that you have 120 HZ display on both the pro and pro Max and the regular iPhone 16 series is still stuck at 60 HZ which I I think you could argue that it's no longer a pro feature given the fact that you can get 120 htz on lots of Android phones under let's say $700 or so so those are a couple of things that stand out but overall I I kind of agree with you I think if you want like the best value in terms of a new iPhone I would say the regular iPhone 16 but I I don't think you can ignore that you're getting the larger display so it's not a huge difference between 6.1 and 6.3 in but when you go up to the iPhone 16 Pro Max it's 6.9 in and the fact that it has a like a narrower like bezel around it you're actually not getting that much of a penalty in terms of getting the largest iPhone ever and do you guys think this is a good thing do you think that Apple should have made more differences between the standard and Pro Models I would say yes you know when you get a pro model You're Expecting bigger features you know we expect better performance better battery life brighter display yes but I feel like especially the Apple intelligence features I know like I love like I said earlier it's great that they've kept it uniform between all the devices but when you're paying a little a lot more um between the two series you just want to get just something extra special the telephoto lens yes that's the biggest differentiator I think the promotion display absolutely uh but besides that it's it's you know I just wish there was a little bit more yeah I'm not in marketing but if I was going to pick one feature that I would withhold for the Pro Models it would probably be the camera control because it's something that I don't think you necessarily need on the regular iPhone 16 and you were just saying like how it's really good for creators so I feel like it's a nice to have feature for the regular iPhone 16 buyers but I think it would been a nice thing to brag about if you had an iPhone 16 Pro or Pro Max well looking back to last year with the iPhone 15 launch only the iPhone 15 pro and pro Max got the action button I know that was something that came into play when I was deciding which phone I was going to get because the ability to have a dedicated button to launch a new feature have something that's there for convenience was a huge selling point and I kind of was expecting that I would have something in that regard for the new iPhone 16 Pro as as well so I'm quite surprised yeah I mean ultimately I Longest battery ever? think it's good news for consumers so like we put together a story on tomsguide.com about like the difference so iPhone 16 versus iPhone 16 Pro which new iPhone Should you get and we break down like here's all the similarities here's what's the same and then here's what's different including all the specs and one of the things that's actually on there that's worth talking about is battery life so apple is saying that the iPhone 16 pro and pro Max are going to have like larger batteries and because of some of the efficiencies both within the display technology and the a18 Pro chip they're saying that the iPhone 16 Pro Max in particular is going to have the longest battery life of of any phone at Tom's guy we actually do a battery test on every phone that we review and we do a battery rundown over 5G to see like how long it lasts on a charge and even though the last iphone 15 Pro Series was good I would say the Android competition has surpassed the iPhone especially with the Galaxy s25 Ultra or 24 Ultra and the pixel even the pixel 9 Pro Series has gotten a lot better so I feel like apple needs to catch up a little bit there I don't know if you agree yeah no the one phone that really stands out is the OnePlus 12 that thing is I think ranked second all time on our list as the longest lasting battery life and also speaking of battery life the recharge time too that phone just gets to 100% in under I want say under 30 minutes which is just incredible for a device like that so yeah the Apple definitely needs to catch up in the battery life to Farin yeah John correct me if I'm wrong you did a video earlier this year about our phone battery life tests and compared some of the most competitive models on the market right yep do you think that you might want to do that again let us know in the comments if that's something you'd want to see with maybe the iPhone 16 Pro with maybe the whole family and maybe compared to some of the other flagships that came out this year yeah absolutely um it's it's something I'm going to definitely look at you look at some of the other devices on the horizon you know towards next year but Apple's wrapping up this pretty much 2024 as far as what new phones we're going to be expecting and hopefully it does exceed you know more than an hour compared to last year but yeah there's still just some catching up to do okay so we talked Camera Specs about battery life as a key spec let's run through some of the other kind of key factors someone might consider when buying a new phone we touched on cameras but can you guys clarify a bit more about what the actual camera spec differences are between the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro let me know if I get this right so with the regular iPhone 16 you're still getting the 48 megapixel main camera um which is very powerful and you get the equivalent of a 2X optical zoom but I think it's a 12 megapix ultrawide so the big difference in terms of the ultra wide between the regular iPhone 16 and the 16 Pro Series is a 48 megapixel Ultra wide so not only you're getting sharper Ultra wide images at wide-angle images it's also used for macrophotography and we saw some samples up close and of course these are like professionally shot uh but they looked really amazing in terms like some of the close-ups that I saw especially one of a flower so those are the types of things that we're excited to test when we do that camera face off versus other phones you know John's going to be going out taking the iPhone 16 Pro versus the pixel 9 Pro and the Galaxy s24 and I'm excited to see how much better are the macro shots uh this time around what kind of things are you going to be looking for in those photos um for me every year um the biggest one's going to probably be how they perform in low light because I want to say every phone just about every flagship phone could take excellent photos in perfect conditions no matter what whether it's an Android or iPhone they take great photos when the conditions are right but the biggest difference I see is probably usually in the low light department especially when there's like no ambient light whatsoever pitch black they all have their respective night modes the reason why I specifically mentioned that is because it shows how much the sensor is able to absorb light and of course the old the image processing algorithms that's going in the background to really bring out those details that you can't see in the dark so low light's always for me the bar that sets the difference between good and bad I've been looking for that too and I think to a certain degree the low light performance has gotten so good that like a lot of the images look fake so I think striking that balance between something that is bright and inviting and something that looks natural is I think is like that really Holy Grail for lowlight photography speaking about bright and New Colors inviting did you guys get to check out the iPhone 16 colors I did yeah good good good seg sideway cuz I'm looking in the background here and you see the glow Time logo and you know we you know I asked Google Gemini what it thinks about the uh the logo that Apple sent out in the invites and yes the colors the colors of the new iPhone 16 not the 16 Pro Series but the regular 16 they're bright they're vibrant and I I really love the colors I'm not sure how you guys feel about that I mean I personally like the ultramarine just because it's it like pops it's like the best like blue that I'm a sucker for blue obviously um but I I think if you're getting a new iPhone you want something that looks new and this is something that I think has a lot of energy behind it and I think a lot of people were taking photos of that one in particular for a reason yeah can vouch for that as well ultramarine is the hot color that's also un social although I will say the hot pink color I posted a Tik Tok it got like over a million views overnight just showing off showing off that phone people still love pink Tech and I think it's nice that it's like a really bold statement making Barbie like pink versus maybe some more of like the pastel colors we've seen in the past how about the colors for the pro Max what do you think of those or pro and pro Max I should say I think the desert titanium is the one that stands out because that's the one that's new and I think it's more subtle than some of like the renders and like the dummy units that were out there before which I think is a good thing um it's pretty close to a rose gold but not quite there so it's probably the one that I might get although I think there's something like really clean about the white one the natural titanium is which I have here I think was a really good statement color for the iPhone 15 Pro Max because it kind of looks like titanium all the way around AG but now that we're sort of into the second generation of titanium I think it's good to experiment and I think desert titanium is is a good look and we'll have to see like how many people like it it's wild this might be the first year in at least six or seven years that I expect I'm going to go for the non statement color of the iPhone the largest iPhone that that there is I've always gone for you know if it's a blue or remember that green color that was amazing I also have the natural titanium of the 15 Pro Max but I think I'm going to go with the white titanium this year yeah I mean the black one looks really cool too but it's like like up close but then like further away it's kind of plain so I would probably go for the desert titanium I don't know which one would you go for um since I to take a lot of photos of the phones for me it's probably going to be white it's the best contrast really so you know under or maybe the desert titanium it's a neutral color it's not know too dark it has a nice contrast to it especially if you're putting against something you know lighter you know darker countertop so for me making a phone look good on on a photo it's better probably with the white one I don't know how much you guys follow color news I happen to to be really locked into like the panone color of the year and it does seem in a way that desert titanium is supposed to reflect the peach fuzz Pantone color of the year we saw that material lies in a lot of tech products this year Motorola did uh the razor in in peach fuzz and also I checked out one of the new airpods Max color and it was giving peach fuzz that like orangey color it was it was cute and a lot of people online seem to seem to be into it so is that the one that you would so if you were going to match your new iPhone with airpods Max which one yeah maybe I don't think it's a perfect match I would have to look at both side by side and hopefully we'll get the opportunity to do that in the coming weeks but that would be nice I like the idea of kind of having a matching Suite of products bring it right down to the Apple watch man too right the rose gold Apple watch series 10 that's that's the way to go this year match match match yeah lot of new colors for pretty much the airpod Max and also the Apple watch 10 although I would like to see colors for the regular airpods I know white is Iconic but give us a little bit of choice okay so we wanted to make this Which iPhone are you getting? video to help you decide between getting the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro from people who are perhaps going to be buying these phones when they're available on September 20th we're going to go down the line and see which phone each of us are getting we're going to start with you John which which iPhone you buying as much I said the iPhone 16 is very Pro likee I think this year it's going to be the 16 Pro for me as someone who shoots a lot of video I like the fact that there's 4K 120 frames per second capture so you can just shoot in that mode and then later on you have a lot of flexibility in slowing it down slowing down the footage get those epic slow down moments um and yeah for those really fun active uh activities jet skiing in the Hudson that'd be perfect for that so price point the same $999 and has the same telephoto lens as the 16 Pro Max I'm surprised to hear that cuz you're usually the top advocate for the budget entry level phone yes yeah you know you're paying $200 difference this time between the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro and it's just that telephoto lens it just definitely helps out you know your Suite of uh cameras so being able to have near far very close in just one camera system it just helps it out how about you Mark I would say probably the iPhone 16 Pro Max for two reasons one is I like the idea of having the largest display on an iPhone and I think the other is just having the longest battery life I know that there's like battery cases and Chargers out there but I really need that extra endurance especially when we're running around you know Tech shows like this and CES so like the endurance in every like every second counts so I'd probably get it for that reason but for a lot of people I think the regular iPhone 16 Pro because you're getting that telephoto Zoom um might be like the best value of the bunch in terms of like if you're going to be holding on to your phone for three or four years and you're getting like what is now a midsize iPhone instead of a small one I agree which one do you think I'd get I given your Lu ahead you go 60 Pro Max yeah you guys know me so well yeah I'm with you just there's so much that these phones are able to do now I do a lot of content creation so that's happening all in my phone I want that biggest display possible I want the longest battery life I want the best performance and best cameras so I'm going to go I'm going to go with Pro Max the big question is going to be which What do you think? color I get so let me know which one you think I should go for maybe I'll put a poll up on Instagram and let let the fans decide for me uh thank you guys so much for taking some time this morning to talk about the Apple event and the iPhone 16 family as well as some of the other announcements that came up Hands-On reviews of all of the devices from yesterday are currently live on tomsguide.com you can also check out our Hands-On videos from the Hands-On area after the Apple event they're on this channel right now so be sure to check them out let us know in the comments what you want to see from these devices we're going to be reviewing them in the coming weeks going to do a lot of follow-up content a lot of our great photo features battery life testing all that good stuff that we talked about so be sure to let us know what specifically you would like to see otherwise everything from the event is on Toms guu socials at Toms guide everywhere and that's it from us thanks for watching we'll catch you next time