Apple iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max review: A work in progress smartphone

Note: This feature was first published on 26 September 2024 and was updated on 12 November 2024 with findings on Apple Intelligence and final ratings for the phones in the Conclusion section.

Only Apple could get away with releasing a flagship device that’s missing some of its most salient new features at launch. Even though the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max have been on sale since last Friday, it’s missing features like Apple Intelligence, Visual Intelligence, and the complete functionality of its new Camera Control button. Happily for Apple, customers clearly didn’t seem to mind since there were still queues forming outside Apple Stores last week.

The TL;DR version:



Larger displays, searing performance, mostly excellent cameras, and a host of other nifty updates make these excellent phones, even if it’s missing its headline feature Apple Intelligence.



Note: You can find the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max on Amazon, Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.

Maybe it’s because they saw through the AI hype and could appreciate the phones for what they are. They already know that whatever AI smarts Apple could conjure won’t fundamentally change these phones. And actually, if you take a step back and really get to know these phones, you’ll find that there’s actually a lot to like.

Upsized screens

There are subtle but significant physical changes this year. The displays of both phones have grown 0.2 inches to 6.3 inches and on the iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches on the larger iPhone 16 Pro Max. Though 0.2 inches sounds substantial, I had a hard time seeing a difference. Fortunately, the phones haven’t grown too much in size. They are slightly larger than last year’s phones, but not to the point of becoming unwieldy. I’ve been mostly using the iPhone 16 Pro Max and I didn’t find it too cumbersome to handle with one hand. 

The displays are as high-quality as ever. They are bright, sharp, and crisp, and have ProMotion technology, which means a variable refresh rate from as low as 10Hz to as high as 120Hz. Incidentally, ProMotion technology remains to be one of the key differentiators between the Pro iPhones and the regular iPhones.

Camera control: A new way to take photos?

This year’s phones gain a button called Camera Control. It’s a haptic button, much like a MacBook’s Force Touch trackpad, designed to give quick access to the camera and its controls. A press launches the camera and a second press takes a photo. You can also press and hold it to record videos. Where it gets interesting is that you can do a single light press and swipe to adjust settings like aperture, exposure, and zoom. Two light presses on the Camera Control let you switch between settings. 

Cynics will say this is a gimmick, and I suppose it is in some ways it is. The argument could be made that swiping right on the lock screen is quicker, and the position of the Camera Control button is awkward if you are shooting in portrait – particularly on the larger Pro Max model. Sometimes there’s a slight lag when you use it to invoke the camera, and there were times I introduced unwanted camera shake when using the Camera Control. Even so, I still found it useful in some situations, especially for adjusting settings like exposure and Photographic Styles. 

The Camera Control button will gain more abilities later this year when Apple issues a software update that would let it behave more like a camera shutter button, where a half press focuses and a full press takes a photo. Another feature that’s coming later this year via a software update is Visual Intelligence, which will let users use the Camera Control button to take photos and then have the iPhone instantly serve up relevant information or execute actions like create events in the calendar. This is the Camera Control feature that I’m most excited about, but sadly Apple only said that it is “coming later year”.

Since Camera Control is missing its full suite of features, it’s probably a bit too early to pass a verdict. I will, however, admit that, for now at least, it doesn’t fundamentally change the photo-taking experience of these new phones. 

A18 Pro

Inside these phones are the new A18 Pro chips. I’ve covered them extensively in a separate feature so I urge you to check that out. But in a nutshell, these are chips built using a second-generation 3nm manufacturing process and feature even greater CPU and GPU performance. They are fast with a capital “F”. Nothing will throw at it will faze it. Its CPU performance, in particular, looks to be years ahead of the competition and rivals that of Apple’s own M1 desktop chip.

Battery life

Apple said the iPhone 16 Pro Max will have the longest battery life of any iPhone and I found that to be true. It also claimed that the iPhone 16 Pro will last longer than the iPhone 15 Pro, and that’s also true. In my tests, which involved looping a 720p video at 100% screen brightness and volume with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on, I found that both phones lasted over 40% longer.

There are two reasons for this. As we now know, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max both have larger batteries. In the case of the iPhone 16 Pro, they have discovered that its battery capacity is up 9.4%, whereas the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 5.5% larger battery. When you combine this with the more efficient A18 Pro chip, you get longer battery life. 

In real-world use cases, the battery life gains are less dramatic but no less significant. My days are long. I would get up at 6am and only charge my phone at close to or after midnight. With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I was often left with less than 10% of charge after an entire day. 

With the iPhone 16 Pro Max, however, I would still have about 20% charge left. I could also make it through an entire day with the smaller iPhone 16 Pro. This was never possible with the iPhone 15 Pro, which required a mid-day charge. 

Since we are on the topic of charging, this year’s phones now charge more quickly. Wired charging is now up to 45W (up from 27-29W), wireless charging via MagSafe is up to 25W, while wireless charger with a Qi2 wireless charger is up to 15W. Apple doesn’t provide a charger anymore, so you’ll need something like this from Belkin to maximise charging speeds. Overall, I’d say that battery life and charging have been significantly improved.

Apple Intelligence

With the release of iOS 18.1, Apple Intelligence is finally available to the public. As reported previously, not all of Apple Intelligence’s features will be available at launch. As frustrating as this can be, readers who follow Apple closely will understand that the company is a bit behind its peers when it comes to AI and is playing catch-up in some ways. Consequently, the rollout of Apple Intelligence will be done in phases.

Here are the features that are available in this initial rollout:

• Writing Tools
• Siri
• Mail
• Messages
• Photos (Smarter search, Clean up)
• Transcription
• Focus modes – Reduce interruptions
• Notification Summaries
• Safari page summaries

The Clean Up tool is something that numerous Android phones have had for a while, and it’s good to see it finally come to iPhones. The feature works mostly as advertised and can be really handy for cleaning up photos. Just look at the example below.

Writing Tools is one of the features that Apple has been hyping up, and it is arguably the most useful – particularly for folks who don’t write so well. It can very quickly clean up text, rewrite it, and produce summaries. I use the proofreading feature the most because it's especially helpful for catching obvious typos and grammar errors. But it’s not without its problems; there were instances where it threw its hands up and said, “Writing Tools aren’t designed to work with this type of content.” I chalk this down to teething woes.

Notification summaries can also be handy, particularly for keeping track of the latest sports scores and news. It’s not perfect since it doesn’t know which piece of news or scoreline should be prioritised, but it’s still good enough to give a quick snapshot of the latest happenings.

Though these features don’t drastically change the user experience, they are undeniably nice and could be helpful in certain situations. Furthermore, some features, like call and audio note transcriptions, are features that users have requested for a long time.

On the whole, I view this as a promising start to Apple Intelligence. Word on the street is that features like Image Playground, Genmoji, and ChatGPT integration are coming with iOS 18.2, which will be available sometime in December.

Camera improvements

Smartphone photography has come a long way and most of it today is really good. Unless you have a trained eye or blow the images up, it can be hard to tell if a photo is taken by a smartphone or a large-sensor camera. Though advancements in smartphone photography have plateaued somewhat in the past few years, there are some meaningful updates to this year’s cameras – in terms of hardware and software. Let’s get into it.

The camera system is improved in a few ways. The main camera is unchanged but the sensor has twice the readout speed. This has important implications. It means there’s less shutter lag and photos get processed faster. However, unless you shoot mostly 48MP RAW pictures, it’s unlikely you’ll notice the faster sensor. The phone now shoots 48MP RAW photos incredibly quickly. It feels like you are taking a regular 24MP photo. If you can stomach the extra storage that 48MP photos demand, you can finally take them without the lengthy processing times.

The other benefit of the faster reading sensor is 4K 120fps videos – last year’s phones topped out at 4k 60fps. And by adjusting the video playback speed in the Photos app, you can create dramatic-looking 4K slow-motion videos. The app lets you go down to half-speed which reduces playback to 60fps and all the way down to fifth-speed which is 24fps. For creators, this is a nifty feature to have in a phone.

Creators should be delighted with the new Audio Mix feature. Using the Pro iPhones’ new “studio-quality mic” and AI, the phones can automatically create different audio mixes when recording videos. There are four modes and they are:

• Standard – Capture sound in spatial audio with no adjustments/processing
• In-Frame – Isolates voice of subjects in the frame, cancels out environmental noise
• Studio – Similar to In-Frame but makes it sound like they are in a studio
• Cinematic – Voices of subjects in-frame are centred in the mix while environmental noise is set in the surround audio mix

Even if you only record videos for fun, it’s impossible not to be impressed by the end result and what this feature can achieve. The In-Frame and Studio modes are surprisingly adept at removing unwanted environment noise in all but the noisiest of places. I could see this being a handy feature for creators who want to create impromptu content but may not necessarily have their audio rig with them to isolate their subjects' voices from the environment.

The other camera improvement is the ultra wide camera. Apple has finally updated it to give a 48MP sensor while keeping the same 13mm focal length and f/2.2 aperture. One thing to note is that even though the ultra wide camera now has a 48MP sensor, the photos it takes by default are 12MP. You’ll need to shoot in one of the ProRAW formats to get 48MP images from the ultra wide camera. 

But you need not bother, because even though it sounds like a huge jump from the iPhone 15 Pro’s 12MP ultra wide camera, the differences are negligible (just see the example above). Unless you pixel peep, the photos that this new ultra wide camera produces look similar to the ones I took with my old iPhone 15 Pro. It doesn’t matter if it’s wide shots or macros, it’s hard to tell the difference. Take a look also at this informal poll I conducted on Facebook.

The 5x telephoto camera on the Pro Max model is unchanged, but this camera is now on the smaller Pro model too. If you recall, last year’s Pro had a 3x telephoto camera while only the Pro Max got a 5x telephoto camera. This is good news for readers who prefer the smaller Pro model but prefer the greater reach of the 5x telephoto. When the light is good, the 5x telephoto camera serves up decent photos. Sadly, it starts getting noisy and grainy quick once it starts to get dark. If it’s any consolation, you can mitigate this somewhat by forcing it into Night Mode.

Overprocessing woes and revamped Photographic Styles

Though the main camera is unchanged, there are subtle differences in the photos it produces. To my eyes, it looks like Apple’s image processing is even more aggressive this year. Its proclivity to oversharpen images is greater and it really likes to brighten images and raise shadows. The end result of all this is that photos tend to either look like they were taken on a very sunny day, or they look flat and washed out. That doesn't mean it's incapable of getting things right, but on these phones, it does seem to happen with less frequency.

Fortunately, Apple is happy to cede control of how your photos will end up looking with a big update to Photographic Styles. Introduced in the iPhone 13 series, Photographic Styles is best thought of as an advanced non-destructive filter that is baked into the image processing pipeline. This means changes are not applied wholesale in post. Instead, they are brought to bear intelligently to the right areas and crucial aspects such as skin tones are kept intact.

Instead of just five styles, Photographic Styles now lets you choose from five “skin undertone” settings that adjust skin tones and nine “mood” settings that can alter the vibe of a photo. There’s even a control pad that lets you adjust “tone” and “colour” so that you can dial in your preferences more finely to nail the look you are after. 

Since you can set up a Photographic Style to be applied to every photo you take, I used the “Standard” style and turned down the “tone” setting and slightly raised the “colour” setting to force the iPhone to bring back shadows and produce more contrasty and punchy-looking photos. I think this works really well. And because Photographic Styles isn't a destructive edit, you can tweak it to your heart’s content in post.

If you are fussy about photography, you could argue that the updated Photographic Styles is the biggest thing about the new iPhones’ cameras this year. It’s certainly my favourite because I can finally tell the iPhone how it should be rendering photos.

Final thoughts & buying advice

It probably says more about our attitude towards new phones than it does about the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max themselves when we aren’t excited anymore by bumps in screen sizes, new processors that offer desktop-class performance, improved cameras, and longer-lasting batteries. I’m old enough to remember when this would be quite a huge deal. Still, it doesn’t detract from the fact that these phones launched without what is arguably their headline feature – Apple Intelligence – which makes them feel like they are unfinished and still a work-in-progess. Perhaps it’s this very point that’s dampening people’s attitudes toward these phones. 

This is especially true for owners of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Unless you care about the larger screens, the updated Photographic Styles, the Camera Control button, or improved video functions (4K 120fps and Audio Mix), there’s little reason for owners of last year’s Pro iPhones to upgrade – especially since the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are fantastic phones and are the only phones outside of the iPhone 16 series to be capable of running Apple Intelligence.

If you have an older iPhone – iPhone 14 series or older – the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max present a fantastic opportunity to upgrade. Even without Apple Intelligence, getting this year’s phones will offer you the convenience of USB-C charging, significantly more performance and battery life, and substantial camera updates. 

Owners of the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus are in a tricky spot. Last year’s regular iPhones are still great phones and the only reason you might want to upgrade is for Apple Intelligence, which isn’t available yet. My advice is to adopt a wait-and-see approach.

Is the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max worth the premium over the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus? This year, this question is down more to personal preferences than ever because the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus received very substantial updates this year and have closed the gap between it and the Pro models – at least for most casual users. Personally, I find it almost comical that Apple is releasing phones that cost well over a grand with 60Hz displays, so I’ll always go for the Pro phones. But if the 60Hz displays don’t bother you, the regular iPhones are actually great phones with great performance and cameras. Read my iPhone 16 and 16 Plus review here.

All in all, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max are solid phones with interesting features that I think some users will really like. Those fussy about photography will appreciate the freedom of Photographic Styles, while creators will almost certainly love the ability to be able to create 4K 120fps content with just a phone. And even if you don't care for these things, surely you can appreciate the improved performance and battery life.

Note: You can find the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max on Amazon, Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.

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