My new phone arrived, I just have to choose it.
And I gotta admit, I'm a little scared.
I don't know what's worse. The Android fanboys who are gonna tear me apart
for choosing an iPhone, or the Apple fanboys
who are gonna 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 miss my stylus. 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 gonna 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.
Well, you've already got one. You guys are crazy. And we'll talk about that.
But 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 Pro...
Sorry, I'm just kidding. They all just come with a standard USB-C to USB-C cable
and a SIM removal tool. Even though the Pro models do support USB-3 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 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 megapixel main shooter and 12 megapixel ultra-wide,
you get a 48 main, 48 ultra-wide, and a dedicated 12 megapixel telephoto.
Although it's possible that won't even matter that much to you
because the main shooter on the 16 can apparently operate in like a pseudo 12 megapixel
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 bezel.
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.
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. Not now, Siri.
Oh my God. Oh, stop. Oh, the dynamic island.
I get to experience that fresh joy. But I'm probably gonna get to that more
in the full review over on LTT. For now, I wanna 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 hold to ring 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?
What do you mean? No, this is awful. Oh, it's pretty.
I don't care. I can't see what the fuck all the options are. Just scroll through the whole goddamn thing.
Okay, let's look at what we got here. Focus, camera.
Wait, 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 set it to like double tap and triple tap and long press it?
No. Oh, well, fine. I'm gonna go with flashlight.
Yeah, buddy. Wait, what?
Oh, I gotta hold it. Oh, can you configure it to be a toggle?
No. Okay, well, wait, I gotta, now I gotta 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. I'm gonna 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 nine 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 naturally pushing it away or bringing it forward. It's left and right.
It's not a way or toward you. The bigger issue is that compared to pressing the screen,
clicking the button causes a little bit more camera shakes.
So one of our camera guys, Andy, who already got himself a 16 Pro is like,
yeah, I'm not gonna use it. I'm just gonna use the onscreen 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?
Hmm, I don't know, Apple. I think you missed the mark by like two centimeters.
Wow. I can almost read the LTT on that cable tie.
I could probably find the Easter eggs that incriminated case defy on your laptop.
This is awesome. The only problem for selling me a Pro
is that the regular 16 is also like fricking 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 thing. The shiny thing.
It's because they're touching. They're not touching. The point is, that's a lot better.
Enough to spend another couple hundred dollars? I don't know. Both of them support new photographic styles.
You can change your, I don't know, your undertones.
Oh 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 Linus. You wouldn't get the proper feel during panning shots
that you get from like that cinematic 24 frames per second. So we're gonna 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, treated studio or whatever else.
Did I say a hundred FPS? Here, let's play it back at 25.
Hmm. 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 slightly 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 day to 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 gonna tell you which of these phones is which.
You're not gonna look that closely at the bezel, okay?
You're just gonna 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 Pro motion display, meaning that it will only run at 60 Hertz.
Have you seen the controversy around the Pro where they took a high speed camera
and found that it only ever reaches about 80 Hertz instead of the advertised 120?
Dude, it's noticeable. Do you see that stutter?
Here, come look in person. Yeah, I guess a little bit. Is it just for the 16 Pro?
Do you notice the difference in 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.
That's pretty cool. And it goes all the way down to one nit,
which I am a huge fan of because I, okay, I'm sorry.
I used my phone late at night in my bed. I know I'm not supposed to, but at least this is gonna 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 rumble.
That should be impossible.
My God, these sound good. Are they vibrating the phone a little bit?
Dude, it almost feels like a little bit
of that sensation of bass. Like, have you heard of the basslet?
It's like 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 bass models and pricing. Apple is still shipping phones.
So for the 16 and the 16 Plus, with 128 gigabytes 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 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 $1,000.
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 gonna get like five, six, seven years
of software support anyway. So that's actually a viable option on the iOS platform.
I can 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've all got the same IP68 water resistance.
Oh, they all have faster wireless charging, right? MagSafe, this will be my first time
in the MagSafe ecosystem. Kind of excited about that. Half an hour for 50% charge, love that.
You know what? I think I'm gonna 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 that.
Subscribe to ShortCircuit though.