Top pick
The iPhone 16 has a fast processor for better gaming performance (and AI features, which which are unremarkable so far). It also gains the customizable Action button, which was reserved for the Pro models last year; a Camera Control button, for quickly taking photos; all-day battery life with fast charging; and a redesigned rear-camera system with a new ultrawide lens, for shooting detailed macro photos.
If you want a larger phone, the iPhone 16 Plus has the same features as the iPhone 16, but it also has a bigger screen and longer battery life.
Apple usually saves its best features for its most expensive iPhones, but the iPhone 16 makes fewer compromises than we’ve seen in previous years. If you own an older iPhone, this model offers a dramatic improvement that’s worth the upgrade.
The latest iPhone has a similar design to the iPhone 15: a 6.1-inch screen with the Dynamic Island pill-shaped display cut-out for the front-facing camera, and a color-infused glass back with an aluminum frame. (The iPhone 16 Plus looks identical, but it has a larger, 6.7-inch screen.) The iPhone 16 is powered by Apple’s A18 chip, which enables console-quality gaming and will support Apple’s forthcoming AI features. It has a new Camera Control button, a redesigned rear-camera system with a new ultrawide sensor capable of macro photos, the Action button from the iPhone 15 Pro, and all-day battery life with faster charging. It doesn’t have the iPhone 16 Pro’s larger screen, always-on display, titanium frame, powerful processor, studio-quality microphones, or a camera system capable of telephoto zoom and high-quality slow-motion video. But those features are overkill for most people (and they cost more).
If you want a larger screen and longer battery life, the iPhone 16 Plus is an extra $100 over the base model. It doesn’t last as long on a charge as the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but Apple’s most-premium iPhone costs $300 more.
First things first: Apple Intelligence is promising, but it’s not yet ready for prime time. The early Apple Intelligence features rolled out in beta (i.e. unpolished) in iOS 18.1. I compared it against Google’s Gemini AI on a Google Pixel 9 Pro, asking each virtual assistant a series of questions about the best morning workouts, how to be more mindful, and fun things to do in Cupertino. On the latter question, Google’s assistant was more useful: It offered a summary with a list of activities, while Siri recommended specific locations, but without links or a way to export those recommendations outside of a screenshot. I also found Google’s AI-powered voice transcription to be more accurate than Apple’s.
The Apple Intelligence Writing Tools feature is slightly more capable than Gemini, however. Gemini can summarize and read highlighted text and documents aloud, while Apple can proofread, summarize, and rewrite emails or messages to sound more friendly, professional, or concise, in addition to reformatting text into key points, lists, or tables. The results were decent overall, comparable to services like Grammarly, and were processed relatively quickly. However, we wouldn’t recommend buying the iPhone 16 for the current Apple Intelligence features just yet. More AI features will be coming to the iPhone later this year.
The A18 chip powers more-impressive graphics while gaming. Along with 8 GB of RAM (up from 6 GB on the iPhone 15), the iPhone 16 feels noticeably snappier than the iPhone 15 for multitasking, speech recognition, image and video processing, and gaming without performance compromises. The latest iPhone also gains more-realistic visual effects and lighting in games like Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding: Director’s Cut, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which was previously available only for the iPhone 15 Pro and consoles. The A18 is also designed to power Apple’s new AI features, when those become available.
The new Camera Control button is useful, but it takes some getting used to. The entire iPhone 16 lineup has a new pressure-sensitive, physical button to quickly control camera features, including capturing photos and recording video. An initial hard press opens the camera app, an additional hard press will capture images, and a long press and hold will record videos (recording will cease once you let go). Swiping across the Camera Capture button cycles through additional controls, such as exposure, depth, zoom, camera angles, photography styles, and undertones.
We found the button was fairly responsive for swipe, half-, and full presses. But in the early days of using the new button, we found it was hard to remember which type of press activated which camera shortcut; the half-press functions to access the camera options particularly take some getting used to. However, you can adjust the controls in Settings > Accessibility > Camera Control, and you can also reassign the button to different tasks, like quickly launching a QR code scanner or Magnifier. You can also choose not to assign an action to the button.
A DSLR-like two-stage shutter feature—which will let you lock focus and exposure with a half-press of the Camera Control button and a full press to capture the photo—is coming later this year. Also coming soon is Apple’s Visual Intelligence feature, a Google Lens–like visual search tool that uses Google, OpenAI, and Yelp to give you information about the subject you’ve photographed. It’s disappointing that these features, like other Apple Intelligence features, aren’t yet available, but we’ll update this guide with additional testing when they roll out.
The upgraded cameras take excellent photos. The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus both have a vertically stacked dual-lens rear-camera system that includes a 48-megapixel main lens and a new, 12-megapixel ultrawide with autofocus.
The results from the main sensor are always sharp, vibrant, and full of detail, and they feature accurate colors. By default, these images are reduced to a 24-megapixel file, with the option to shrink it even further to 12-megapixels. However, Apple has added the option for full-resolution 48-megapixel images, which can be accessed by going to Settings > Camera > Formats, toggling Resolution Control on, and then tapping JPEG MAX for full-resolution images in the Camera app. It works only at 1x, and it can’t be used in Night Mode or Flash Photos. This won’t be useful for most people, and if you buy an iPhone with the base amount of storage, know that full-resolution images can take up a ton of space (around 8 MB per image).
The iPhone 16 uses a combination of software and an ultrawide camera to shoot 2x optical-quality zoom. This produces nearly the same image quality as the 16 Pro’s optical zoom, though in some cases you’ll see additional noise, and details won’t be as sharp. The new ultrawide sensor with auto-focus enables macro focus, which captures crisp, high-quality photos when you want detailed shots. The stacked camera setup also allows you to capture spatial photos and spatial 1080p videos for the Apple Vision Pro, if that’s a thing you’re interested in; both of those features were previously exclusive to Pro iPhones.
The entire iPhone 16 lineup supports new Photographic Style presets in the Camera app; these are kind of like filters, except they adjust the tone and color palette of specific parts of your photos. You can access Photographic Styles by opening the Camera app and selecting a new icon, on the top right, that looks like a grid of dots next to the Live Photos icon. You can swipe to cycle through a total of nine presets, and you can also adjust the undertone of skin colors in photos to more accurately reflect what they look like in real life—this has been a big emphasis of Google’s Pixel cameras, and it’s a welcome addition to the iPhone.
In my testing, Google’s image-rendering software handles darker skin tones slightly better than Apple’s new photographic styles, but it’s a step in the right direction for Apple. The photographic styles can help showcase darker skin tones more accurately, but they require some tweaking after applying them, to get the tones spot-on. Google’s software gets it right by default.
The iPhone continues to capture the best videos of any smartphone we’ve tested this year. The iPhone 16 has the same video quality as last year’s model, producing sharp, stabilized, detailed footage. It shoots 4K HDR up to 60 frames per second, slow motion in 1080p up to 240 fps, 4K cinematic mode up to 30 fps, and Action mode in 2.8K. And with the new ultrawide lens, it can capture macro-level video and slow motion up to 4K 60 fps.
Its battery lasts longer and supports faster wireless charging than those of previous iPhone models. With the A18 chip and a new ability to dim the display to just 1 nit, the iPhone 16 lasted an hour longer than the iPhone 15 in our testing. Wired charging speeds remain unchanged, hitting 50% in about 30 minutes and 100% in two hours. But wireless charging speeds get a big boost: If you use a MagSafe charger with a 30 W adapter, your iPhone 16 will charge about as fast as it does when charging via USB-C cable.
If battery life is your highest priority, Apple says the iPhone 16 Pro Max has the best battery life of any iPhone, and our real-world testing confirms that to be true—but the iPhone 16 Plus comes close. With light to moderate usage, the 16 Plus lasted a couple of days on a charge. On days of heavy testing—which included a total of 45 minutes of GPS navigation, streaming YouTube content for an hour, playing Call of Duty: Mobile and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard for over two hours, writing this review for an hour, 40 minutes of web browsing, and about 30 minutes of doomscrolling TikTok before going to bed—the iPhone 16 Plus was still at 40%, compared with 21% after a similarly heavy day of testing the iPhone 16. If you don’t need Pro-level features, the iPhone 16 Plus will last nearly as long as the Pro, and it costs a lot less (though it’s much larger than the basic iPhone 16, if size is an important factor to you).
The Action button comes to non-Pro iPhones. The Ring/Silent switch is gone from the base model iPhones, and it’s replaced with the customizable Action button introduced on last year’s Pro models. You can use the button to enable Silent mode or Focus mode; launch the Camera (for selfies, photos, videos, portrait mode, or portrait selfies); turn on the flashlight; open Voice Memo, Translate, Magnifier, Shortcuts, or Accessibility; or assign it to do nothing. You can also use it to Shazam a song or open the Control Center.
Apple’s iOS 18 adds several new apps and features, with many coming soon. iOS 18 enables deeper customization of your homescreen, lockscreen, and Control Center; RCS messaging (which makes texting your Android friends easier with read receipts and high-res images); a built-in Password manager; the ability to lock and hide apps; and more. Our full guide to iOS 18 is here, and you don’t need an iPhone 16 to take advantage of its new features.
It comes in fun colors. The iPhone 16 comes in black, white, and a jewel-toned pink, teal, and ultramarine, and the three latter shades are vivid and beautiful. If you don’t plan to cover your iPhone with a case, a dramatic shade is worth buying.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Apple’s first wave of much-hyped AI features aren’t exciting. The iPhone 16 lineup is designed for Apple Intelligence, but it launched without them, and the early AI features available in iOS 18.1 are underwhelming. They include a photo clean-up tool that can remove unwanted people or objects from photos; a smarter Siri, which can better understand your questions; new writing-assistance tools, for making your emails sound more professional; and email summaries. Additional features will roll out in December and throughout 2025. But given that Apple’s marketing for the iPhone 16 has emphasized artificial intelligence, we’re frustrated the phones launched without it and the early features aren’t that impressive.
