Apple iPhone 16 review

That’s why I will straight jump into the performance of the iPhone 16. If you want a deep dive of the Camera Control and Photographic Styles then scroll down or head over our iPhone 16 Pro Max review. The Stuff team has come to a consensus over the Camera Control but I’ll brush over it in this review as well.

According to Apple the new A18 Bionic chip is 30% faster than the A16 Bionic chip in CPU performance and 40% faster in GPU performance for gaming. You can tell immediately that the Apple iPhone 16’s performance headroom is massive over the competition and it truly makes the iPhone 16 one of the best performing smartphones under a lakh. It’s not just the raw horsepower available under the hood but also meaningful support across apps. The iPhone 16 now renders videos a bit faster in Adobe and other apps, Instagram Reel edits don’t toast the insides of the phone and camera shutter is snappier thanks to faster innards and a new Image Signal Processor.

Ray Tracing coming to the base iPhone has to be one of the crowning features about the iPhone 16. Games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, although not Ray Traced supported, run at playable quality at 30FPS for a smartphone. It does have texture pop-ins from time to time when flying with Enkidu and overall it looks much lower in quality than what you’d get from a Steam Deck but even then, it’s remarkable what smartphone hardware can achieve. The point is to play games that are made for a smartphone. Genshin Impact and Diablo Immortal look and run absolutely the best here and the iPhone 16 has improved thermals and a slightly bigger battery. If you want recommendations then Hades, Katana Zero, Balatro and Raji: An Ancient Epic are some of my favourite games to play on iPhone with Netflix Games and Apple Arcade subscriptions.

The iPhone 15 was never a sloucher so it’s really hard to notice the performance gains in everyday use. Apps, editing and gaming feel the same and for good reason. The Apple iPhone is the most optimised smartphone you can have in your pocket. Selfies from the iPhone 16’s Instagram and Snapchat camera look better than selfies taken from the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL Instagram and Snapchat app. It’s these little quality of life optimisations that help the iPhone keep its edge over the competition.

The display is still 60Hz which might upset some techies but having used iPhone 16 Pro and 16, I really don’t miss 120Hz. The animations on iOS are buttery smooth and the scrolling on any app feels smooth enough. The only place you could wish for 120Hz is gaming but most games don’t hit above 60Hz on the highest graphic setting. Unless you play competitive shooters like BGMI to deliberately reduce textures to spot enemies easily.

Besides that, the resolution, colour and brightness are the same as the iPhone 15. Only now you can take the brightness down to 1nit for doom scrolling under the sheets. Colour quality and HDR brightness remains as good as before. Speakers are now louder and have a lot more throw. I noticed the speaker volume increased on the iPhone 15 also after the iOS 18 update.

There are a total of six buttons on the iPhone 16 series now starting with the Action Button that comes from the Pro models of last year. The Action Button replaces the Alert Slider on the top left and can be customised as a macro key for anything you want to launch. The Camera Control, as the name suggests, is a dedicated camera control button and is available on all the iPhone 16 models. Apple is very angsty about not calling it a button but it is very much a button. It looks like an iPad fingerprint reader but has the features of the circular home button from the iPhones of yore. It can input touch with soft and hard presses along with swipe to control various camera functions. It even supports acceleration and judges the speed of your swipe gesture to scroll quickly. It’s a very, very brilliantly engineered piece of tech but one that I won’t be using.

The position and the use of the Camera Control are very conflicting. Firstly, it feels like it’s made for landscape photography because the button is either too low down or too high up depending on who you ask. I feel it’s a bit too low because I shoot everything in portrait mode. Someone used to landscape mode might feel it's too high up. There’s all sorts of divided opinions over this button. It even introduces some shake while pressing the button which all photographers want to avoid.

Secondly, the button really makes everything slow. Why would I want to use a button when the touch controls are faster to switch between settings? Swiping and soft pressing through a list of settings with your finger just seems like a waste of time. Apple and other smartphone brands have spent more than a decade perfecting a smartphone camera viewfinder, the Camera Control feels like a step back to retro for the sake of being new and different. I wish Apple put this engineering fund and effort into fixing the in-lens reflection which would actually make a difference to the camera. Yes, those annoying green dots that you see when pointing the camera at a lightsource? Those are still here. Vivo (and others) has really pushed smartphones into better photography standards by adding a Zeiss T* lens coating to reduce glare and reflections.

Lastly, the Camera Control does let you switch between Photo and Video. You have to press and hold to take a video and if you let go, the video will stop recording. If you want to switch to video recording and want some camera control, then you must switch to video from the touchscreen and then control settings like zoom and exposure from the Control Button. This is just another example of how the button cannot effectively control the whole camera and the bits it can control, those are best operated from the smartphone’s touch-supported viewfinder.

That said, if you compare the iPhone 15 and 16 camera quality there’s little to no difference for the average user but the iPhone 16 isn’t for 15 or 14 users. It’s the folks still using three or four year old iPhones. Everything looks pretty and the camera shutter is wicked fast. The camera quality is very good and still very Apple. That means, no matter where you point this camera, you will never get something unexpected. Blacks will be controlled, sharpness quality is always maintained and HDR is done right every time. Apple’s processor enables really impressive shutter speeds which means you can really point and shoot unlike the 1-inch sensor of the camera phones from various Chinese makers that often have a very alarming shutter lag.

Colours, tones and highlights are all brilliantly maintained and now with the new 12MP ultra wide, the camera can take in more light thanks to the ƒ/2.2 aperture. Apple has also added Macro mode to the iPhone 16’s 48MP Fusion camera. What is a Fusion camera you ask? Well, a marketing term of course but there’s a solid feature to back up the claim. Both the cameras on the iPhone 16 support the new and improved Photographic Styles. These are like filters but with a bit more scene recognition to understand human skin tones and pet fur and not paint everything all the same. Think of it like a Lightroom colour, blacks and tone control but for dummies. I really like Photographic Styles because it gives you more control over what you’re shooting and adds more character to your photos without going into the editing menu. These are very subtle as well and I wish I could add my own LUT to them.

Video has been improved as well. You can now shoot Macro videos and regular videos with impressive audio capabilities. There are three presets to choose from after you shoot the video. The Standard is regular, In-Frame will keep the audio that is in the frame of the video, Studio gives your voice a more podcast polish and Cinematic will retain all the background sounds but lower them to emphasise the voice of the person talking in the frame. More features are always good. Compared to the Audio Eraser in the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, the iPhone’s features don’t work with external microphones. The Pixel works with any mic and will also let you adjust the volume of speakers in and the background manually. Both these features are great but the Pixel gives you more control over your choice.

You can also shoot Spatial videos to watch them on the Apple Vision Pro. Yup, that’s precisely why the camera has been moved to a vertical design. This year’s colours are bold and stunning. Our UltraMarine blue is gorgeous. The Ceramic Shield on the front glass is stronger than before but in our opinion, Apple iPhones tend to catch scratches easily so it’s better to put a scratch guard.

WiFi 7 has been added to the iPhone 16 which will deliver faster network speeds but the Type-C port still remains sluggish for transfer speeds with cable connection. Even charging is a measly up to 30W with compatible chargers and MagSafe is increased to 20W. These numbers are not clear though, the iPhone 16 charges 20W with cable at times and sometimes goes a bit up. Don’t expect sustained charging performance or any major improvements in speed from before. The iPhone maintains battery longevity by controlling the wattage and heat. Speed is not a priority.

Battery life is also pretty much the same as last year. I am a power user and for me the iPhone still hasn’t improved in terms of standby battery saving and fast charging. It still remains at an average of 6 hours of on-screen time but everyone uses their phone differently so realistically your mileage may vary.

We went through the entire review without mentioning Apple Intelligence and that’s because it’s not here. Apple said the iPhone 16 series is made for Apple Intelligence which is bound to launch before the end of the year so we might revisit this review to update it. For now, this is a solid smartphone with plenty of hardware grunt and software polish to be the top choice for anyone and everyone.

Besides the slow charging and average battery life, the iPhone 16 is almost too good. It’s an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a good and capable smartphone that always works and has the most optimised app support from third parties.