my new phone arrived I just have to choose it and I got to admit I'm a
little scared I don't know what's worse the Android Fanboys who are going to
tear me apart for choosing an iPhone or the Apple Fanboys who are going to tear
me apart for picking the wrong one in front of me I've got the 16 16 Pro 16
plus and 16 Pro Max and by the end of this one will have replaced my trusty
Galaxy Note 9 I already kind of missed
my stylist you know I use it as a camera shutter button more often than anything
else so you can use the rear camera and remote trigger but hey I'm not going to
need that because across the whole lineup we get Apple's camera slider
control button thing that I've heard about but haven't actually gotten a
chance to use yet in spite of the fact that a shocking number of people here at
the office have already upgraded to these phones dude Andy whipped his out
on my recent trip Bella you've already got one you guys are crazy and we'll
talk about that but first first let's decide whether a titanium versus
aluminum chassis is worth the additional money not to mention the extra
accessories that are included with the promo sorry I'm just kidding they all
just come with a standard USBC to USBC cable and a Sim removal tool even though
the Pro Models do support usb3 transfer
speeds with their type-c port they still only come with a USB 2 capable cable
because Apple wants you to spend a bunch of money on a cable I mean Apple wants
to say Save the Planet by including less copper one cable at a time oh wait I
didn't bring my 12 Pro so you guys don't know this but I'm actually kind of a
closet semi- Apple user already I have a 12 Pro for when I need to take a picture
where the quality matters so instead of just a 48 megapix Main shooter and 12
megapix Ultra wide you get a 48 Main 48 Ultra wide and a dedicated 12 megapixel
telephoto though it's possible that won't even matter that much to you
because the main shooter on the 16 can apparent ly operate in like a pseudo 12
megap telephoto mode with Optical quality digital Zoom whatever that means
anyway we've gotten off the point a little bit the camera bump is bigger and
thicker and the whole phone is actually a little bit thicker and more
importantly is a little heavier it's not a huge deal if I wasn't holding them
side by side I wouldn't care but this kind of reinforces my original leanings
that I think I want the regular 16 I don't think I'm willing to pay the extra
for the phone it took me until now I've actually had them on for about 10
minutes while I did retakes to notice the thinner pel I totally forgot about
it it's nice aluminum titanium don't really feel that different to me am I
missing something here there's also a slight size difference too aside from
just the bezels yeah oh so there is very
very small but you know what that's probably contributing to the difference
in the like weighty feeling of it okay not now Siri oh my God stop
oh the dynamic Island ha I get to experience that fresh Joy but I'm
probably going to get to that more in the full review over on LTT for now I
want to talk about a feature that genuinely excites me and that is the
action button it's not strictly speaking new we already saw it on the 15 Pro
Series but it's new to the regular 16 meaning this is the cheapest you've been
able to get an action button which is essentially just a macro that can be
programmed for all kinds of cool things so you pulled to by default but it can
be configured to launch various apps perform a variety of system functions oh
my God this menu is terrible just give me a scrollable list what the hell is
wrong with you no what do you mean no
this is awful no it's pretty I don't care I can't see what the all the
options are I have to scroll through the whole goddamn thing okay let's look at
what we got here focus camera wait don't
I have a don't I have a dedicated camera button okay well whatever I can also use
the action button to launch the camera because I'm into it like that accessibility options that's super cool
hold on a second can you can you set it to like double tap and triple tap and
long press no oh well um fine I'm going
to go with flashlight yeah
buddy wait what oh I got to hold it oh
you can can you configure it to be a toggle
no okay well wait I got to now I got to hold it
again okay well progress new across both
models though is the camera control I
don't know whether to call it button or slider or I'm going to call it interface
so you press it once and it launches the camera press it again boom you've taken
a picture that was pretty darn fast was
it that much faster than the double click on my Note 9 and then pressing a
volume button I don't know but it was definitely fast and it does more than
just that I can do a light press ooh
that is a really light press and I can adjust my zoom that is why does Apple
scroll everything backwards why do they do that does this
not feel backwards to you you're like a lifelong Apple user it's natural you're
pushing it away or bringing towards it's left and right it's not away or toward
you the bigger issue is that compared to pressing the screen clicking the button
causes a little bit more camera Shak so one of our camera guys Andy who already
got himself a 16 Pro is like yeah I'm not going to use it I'm just going to
use the on screen button wow it really doesn't seem more convenient it would
need to be here has anyone talked about the location of this button yet H I
don't know Apple I think you missed the mark by like 2
cm wow I can almost read the LT on that
cable tie I could probably find the Easter eggs that incriminated casify on
your laptop this is awesome the only problem for selling me a pro is that the
regular 16 is also like freaking awesome
I don't think I've seen anything yet to convince me to go with the pro so right
now we're comparing you know crappy digital Zoom to optical zoom oh dude
dude you look like trash but here look
at that glorious okay regular 16 you're
making him look too glorious right now stop it that's the rare shiny though
Shin it's cuz they're touching they're not touching the point is is that's a
lot better enough to spend another couple hundred I don't know especially
when you could spend that money on our sponsor debrand what are they featuring
today oh it's the new applicator thing
for the screen protector okay I saw their videos of this what this pixel
this is all pixel stuff uh yeah we don't have the iPhone on but we do have a
pixel and these are so easy that you can apply them with a blindfold
on Pyramid logo at the top and pull tab
near the charging port all
right oh buddy swipe wait 5 Seconds
remove the tray I peeled the whole thing off am I
an idiot oh dude the glass is on
it it's so easy I didn't know I successfully did it and this level of
perfection can be yours with the prism 2.0 atl.com we're going to have that
linked down below both of them support new photographic
Styles you can change your I don't know
your undertones yeah I could do that right
I'm sure my kids would love this you know one of the other big
differentiators for the camera is support for 120 frame per second 4K
recording on the Pro Models and one of Apple's justifications for this like why
you would ever need that is 120 FPS can
actually be perfectly reduced to any
other frame rate that you would want to use and I remember having a conversation
with one of our old camera guys Brandon like eight years ago I was like yeah we
should just shoot everything at 120 because then we can upload at any frame
rate we want and he was like that's the stupidest thing I ever heard lonus you
wouldn't get the proper feel during panning shots that you get from like
that cinematic 24 frames per second so we're going to put that to the test oh
since we're in here this audio mix stuff is kind of cool you can change it to
either sound like a standard phone camera or like more like you were in a
you know Studio or whatever else did I
say 100 FPS here let's let's play it
back at
25 yeah that's not what I meant by that
well I'm sure there's a way to do that and I will either figure that out for
the full review or I will not care about it because I don't care about it let's
talk about what's under the hood both the pro and non-pro are getting a18
class silicon which is an improvement from last generation where non-pro users
got last gen silicon but we're getting an a18 Pro versus a regular a18 the main
difference between which seems to be a slightely more powerful GPU a bit more
cache an upgraded display engine as well as image signal processor and video
encoder all of which are supposed to contribute to more of those pro video
features like that high refresh rate 4K recording I don't know if any of those
things are the kind of thing that the average person is likely to miss dayto
day although I will say that the differences are starting to add up let's
have a look at the screens now let's play a game I'm not going to tell you
which of these phones is which you're not going to look that closely at the
bezel okay you're just going to try and tell from the screen wow they look good
do you know which one is which if you said this is the pro congratulations
you're right but shame on you you're a cheater because to the eye the
difference between these is not discernible even Apple's own specs says
that they have the same performance when it comes both to Peak brightness and
even to sustained brightness and we recorded the same in our lab for both
the non-pro and the Pro Models which I think is a really good thing because it
means that content creators can Target One display essentially for this entire
generation of iPhones with the only difference being the slight size
difference and of course the elephant in
the room which is the difference in refresh rate so once again the non-pro
does not get a promotion display meaning that it will only run at 60
HZ have you seen the controversy around the pro where they took a high-speed
camera and found that it only ever reaches about 80 HZ instead of the
advertised 120 dude it's noticeable do
you see that stutter here come come look in person yeah I guess a little bit is
it just with the 16 Pro uh do you notice the difference between my 15 Pro and the
16 Pro do you notice the difference between the 15 Pro and the 16 Pro a
little bit I'm hoping that's a software thing the good news is that the other
standout feature of the display having always on display does work yeah that's
pretty cool and it goes all the way down to one knit which I am a huge fan of
because I okay I'm sorry I use my phone late at night in my bed I know I'm not
supposed to but at least this is going to make it I don't know less bad let's
continue the side by side but this time let's look at audio
that is an incredible amount of Rumble
for a tiny little phone
speaker Things Fall Apart a little bit once you get past about 80% but that's
outstanding okay Pro
now do you hear that it almost sounds like it has like a bit of subwoofer r
Rumble that should be
impossible my God these sound good are they vibrating the phone a little bit
dude it almost feels like like a little bit of that sensation of bass like H
have you heard of the baselet it's like a a wearable device that's supposed to
kind of like vibrate your wrist a little bit to make you feel more bass it wasn't
that effective but if they're doing something similar on this it's working I
can't to my ears tell the difference between these two they both sound
flipping awesome though they both have Wi-Fi 7 so that's a non-factor they both
get the ceramic Shield which is apparently Apple's toughest glass ever
and it was already freaking amazing they both get satellite messages both
outgoing and from a select contact emergency contact incoming and they both
have sensors that detect if you've been in an accident and will call 911 I guess
the last thing is for me to look at the ergonomics of the different sizes make a
final call here I guess now's a good opportunity to talk about base models
and pricing apple is still shipping phones so for the 16 and the 16 plus
with 128 GB of storage which is
absolutely pathetic in this day and age and then they are charging an obscene
amount to get more the pro Max starts at
256 but the regular Pro doesn't it
starts at just 128 gigs of storage as well so the amount of money that you're
paying to get a pro Max that starts with 256 you're better off buying a lower
spec phone and um I guess paying an
exorbitant amount for more storage I mean it's no secret why Apple's doing
this their customers will pay it and they will then turn around and pay them
even more for an iCloud subscription so that they have somewhere to put all of
their stuff but it's very frustrating for me and it does make the decision
more complicated because I feel like no matter which one I get I'm kind of
paying a lot more than I'm really comfortable with it's not necessarily
about whether I can afford it or not it just bothers me like they start over a
thousand dollars so what in for a penny in for a pound do I just go pro you can
still buy last generation iPhones and they're still G to get like you know
five six seven years of software support anyway so that's actually a viable
option on the iOS platform I could see why people wouldn't want to upgrade
these things very often dude you run into so many people that are like still
using their iPhone 8 or whatever and it's like yeah because the lineup is so
confusing now and it's not even that it's confusing it's that it's so
expensive weighing these different options against each other it's like
stressful they even all kind of look the same on the table in front of me they
all got the same ip68 water resistance oh they all have faster wireless
charging right Meg safe this will be my first time in the Meg safe ecosystem
kind of excited about that half an hour for 50% charge love that you know what I
think I'm going to go with my initial gut feeling 16 plus 256 gig and then
anything we left off here I guess we'll cover in the LTT review you know like
the video on the real Channel sorry about subscribe to ShortCircuit though