The primary opinions of the iPhone 16 Professional and iPhone 16 Professional Max had been shared in the present day by choose media retailers and YouTube channels, forward of the units launching on Friday. Additionally try our iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus assessment roundup.
iPhone 16 Professional and Professional Max fashions function 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch shows, respectively, up from the 6.1-inch iPhone 15 Professional and 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Professional Max. Different new options embody a Digicam Management button, an A18 Professional chip optimized for Apple Intelligence, a 48-megapixel Extremely Large digital camera, assist for 4K at 120 FPS video recording, longer battery life, sooner charging over MagSafe, and improved microphones.
Critiques
The Verge‘s Nilay Patel on the Digicam Management:
It is fairly enjoyable to flip the cellphone on its facet and shoot with the button like a traditional digital camera, though the bodily button is a bit stiff — a couple of Verge staffers discovered themselves shifting the cellphone barely when pushing all the way in which all the way down to take a photograph, though I believed it was positive.
I discovered myself unintentionally opening the digital camera loads at first since I am left-handed and the button is positioned the place my fingers are inclined to relaxation after I maintain the cellphone. You possibly can set it to require a double-click, and that solved the issue for me. You may also set the button to open third-party digital camera apps; it really works properly with the brand new model of Halide that is been up to date to assist that performance.
He concluded that the Digicam Management will not be an enormous enchancment:
Total, the button may be very good to have, however that’s about it proper now — because it exists in the present day, it’s not an enormous enchancment over taking pictures pictures with every other iPhone.
He believes the iPhone 16 Professional has solely iterative upgrades at launch, with Apple Intelligence and extra Digicam Management capabilities coming later this yr:
Because it exists in the present day, it is a remarkably iterative replace to the iPhone 15 Professional — it is laborious to search out causes to improve from final yr’s mannequin. And I am in no way satisfied that it is value upgrading to the 16 Professional from older Professional fashions simply but, both — the Digicam Management and Motion Button are good, however not recreation altering, and until you are enthusiastic about dialing within the new Photographic Types and the brand new tone management, you would possibly discover the even-brighter-and-flatter pictures to truly be a step backward in picture processing.
The smaller iPhone 16 Professional fared properly in Tom’s Information‘s Mark Spoonauer battery-life take a look at:
On the Tom’s Information battery life take a look at, which includes steady net browsing at 150 nits of display screen brightness, the brand new iPhone 16 Professional lasted 14 hours and seven minutes, which is an enormous leap from the ten:53 from the iPhone 15 Professional, and sufficient to simply crack our checklist of one of the best cellphone battery life.
Whereas it was believed that the iPhone 16 Professional helps as much as 45W wired charging, Spoonauer didn’t really see any enchancment throughout his testing.
Gizmodo‘s Florence Ion on real-world battery life:
For now, I can let you know the iPhone 16 Professional, with its smaller battery pack, carried out impressively on a time out into town. I nonetheless had 20% battery towards the tip of my transit journey again to the automotive after six hours out and about with the AirPods 4 with ANC engaged in my ears. I additionally began the day with 83% on the iPhone 16 Professional, solely to finish up at 24% battery after seven hours of putting in software program, taking pictures pictures, taking a cellphone name, listening to a podcast, and enjoying just a little Apple Arcade.
Geekbench benchmark outcomes already confirmed that the A18 Professional chip is as much as 15% sooner than the A17 Professional chip, as Apple marketed. iPhone 16 Professional fashions proceed to have the quickest CPU in any smartphone, and that appears to be evident.
WIRED‘s Julian Chokkattu on efficiency:
These telephones are powered by the A18 Professional chipset, which is much and away probably the most highly effective smartphone processor in accordance with my benchmark checks, simply blowing away a lot of the Android competitors. It has one further graphics core in comparison with the A18 within the iPhone 16, however the CPU cache sizes are bigger, which implies as an entire, the A18 Professional continues to be usually sooner than the A18.
PetaPixel‘s Chris Niccolls touched on the iPhone 16 Professional’s new 48-megapixel Extremely Large digital camera in his photography-focused assessment:
The ultra-wide digital camera has additionally been improved to a brand new 48-megapixel sensor with autofocus that may ship respectable macro capabilities with extra element than earlier than. The aperture is similar as earlier than at f/2.2. I like now having the choice of 48-megapixel RAW recordsdata though, in real-world conditions, the decision doesn’t match that of an ordinary Bayer sample sensor at 48 megapixels. Oddly, Apple additionally determined to not implement the choice for a 24-megapixel HEIF file, which it does have on the principle fusion digital camera. The additional megapixels are pointless for social media purposes however not less than panorama and macro photographers can squeeze some extra element out of their RAW recordsdata.
He additionally touched on recording 4K video at 120 FPS:
On the video entrance, the headline addition is the flexibility to report as much as 4K 120p with a really high-quality look due to ProRes Log. You may also retime the 120p footage all the way down to 1/5 pace for a 24-frame-per-second timeline proper on the cellphone and it’ll present it to you in real-time as it’s rendering. Pace ramping will be achieved very merely throughout the similar interface permitting for some dramatic trying gradual movement pictures.
Engadget‘s Cherlynn Low on the brand new “studio-quality” microphones:
For probably the most half, going to Cinematic or Studio modes from Customary resulted in a noticeable discount in environmental noise. My favourite is Studio, which usually appeared to enhance voice readability as properly, making folks sound like they could possibly be speaking on a podcast.
Movies
