The last few years have seen the regular iPhone fall behind its pro sibling.
In camera, of course, but also power and capability, and it's made it a much less appealing option
in the lineup. So when Apple's announcement showed a greater upgrade for the regular iPhone than the pro
model, I was curious. I mean, new camera control button like the pro, a processor that's not a year old at
launch, the same amount of RAM as the pro, things that will be helpful as Apple Intelligence
rolls out. If you're thinking about upgrading to a new iPhone, it's a great year to get it on
pro.
The main reason for this chip upgrade is Apple Intelligence, which will be trickling out
over a bunch of software updates in the coming months.
But this iPhone is ready because it gets the fully up to date A18 chip.
This is a two-generation jump from the iPhone 15.
My Lightroom export test showed 2 minutes and 45 seconds, though something is weird
with our iPhone 15 because it's remarkably slow. And even when I run the test on an iPhone 14 Pro with the same A16 chip as the 15, it
performed equal to the iPhone 13, which has an A15.
Geekbench numbers, however, showed a more gradual improvement, with the A18's graphics
pushing M1 MacBook Air territory.
I think the biggest news, though, is memory. Thanks to the requirements of Apple Intelligence, the iPhone now has 8GB.
That's the same amount as found on all entry-level Macs sold in the past few years.
Now I do agree that it is a small amount on a PC, but on an iPhone?
The way iOS deals with memory is by purging apps you haven't used in a while.
This means if you're swiping between different apps and browser tabs, they'll have to
reload. I have to confess, I've always hated this, because a lot of the time I'd be midway
through an article or feed in the app or website would not remember where I left off
when it reloaded. Well, there's a lot less of that now.
It's not something I noticed initially, until I really thought about it and then tried
to open up older tabs and apps and yeah, they're still there where I left them.
It also means I'm not waiting for them to load too, even though they do load fast.
The real reason to care though is that iPhones with big memory and chip upgrades are likely
to benefit from longer OS support, and so it means that this iPhone could get 6 years
of updates like the XR and 6S before it.
You know, underneath the case, these colors don't really look like the images you see
online. They're somehow less saturated in real life.
I thought I'd like the teal, but it's just not doing it for me, and the aquamarine is
missing some sort of blue punch too. Phones are important on the iPhone, Ariana Grande elected to forego pro features to get
an iPhone 15 in pink.
I wonder what she thinks of the 16's pink color.
About color, let's talk about the iPhone's camera.
They've renamed the main camera the fusion camera, despite there being no change in specs
that I can see. I thought it was deep fusion for processing.
The ultra wide camera, however, now has autofocus, so it supports macro photography like the
pro iPhone, though every time I try and use the macro feature, I'm so close with my iPhone
I'm blocking the light I need to take a photo.
The headline feature is the new camera control button.
As a avid button pusher, I'm glad to see a new button introduced to the iPhone, but
the execution on this one leaves something to be desired.
First, I'm not sure about the position. It's on the correct side of the phone, but for landscape photos like this, it's very
far in. My finger wants to rest naturally here.
Now, it's likely they placed it up here for vertical photos, especially selfies.
It works ideally for when you're stretching your ARM out to get everyone in the shot,
and can only hold the phone with one hand. Now you can take a horizontal photo and hold the phone without blocking the front camera.
I fear that Apple's engineers were too insecure to have the button simply act as a camera
app launcher and shutter button, so they had to add a layer of interactivity to it.
If you lightly press on the button, it brings down a camera control from the screen's bezel,
allowing you to dial in exposure, depth, zoom, cameras, which is zoom, but less granular,
styles and tone, more on those later.
It's a strange assortment of options, but strangers still adjusting them.
Remember the trackpad in that HP laptop I was complaining about in our last video?
This kind of feels like that. While the haptics feel nice, swiping and adjusting them feels bad, though not everyone agrees
with me. I find it to feel slow when I'm trying to be fast and imprecise when I'm trying to
be slow.
There have been times where I'll bring the camera control down, try and make an adjustment,
and it keeps disappearing. It's really annoying to use.
Light pressing the shutter button is a mainstay on traditional cameras to activate the autofocus
and exposure reading before taking a photo. Because no adjustments are being made, they have a really light actuation.
The iPhone camera control on the other hand requires a lot of force just to take the photo.
In dark environments where you need the camera to be still for longer exposures, I worry
that holding the phone with one hand will introduce camera shake that will impact the
clarity of the photo. Looking at this button, it appears a lot like the Touch ID button found on less expensive
iPads, and honestly that's the button feature I'd be waiting for.
But that functionality would be more ideally placed on the traditional side button.
If you have an iPhone 15 and feel like you're missing out on the camera control, don't.
Yes, there are times where it will be handy, but you'll be surprised how infrequent that
is. The next new feature they added to the camera is photographic styles.
Wait, wasn't that added to the iPhone 13?
Yes, but this is the latest generation of photographic styles.
So there. The idea with photographic styles is that you can tune the iPhone's camera processing
to better suit your tastes. So if you find that they over sharpen and run too cool, you can dial that back.
On the iPhone 13, any photos you took with photographic styles would get burned into
the photo destructively. Not anymore.
Because your photo style can be changed in the photos app after the photo has been taken.
Nice. It's just like the iPhone's Instagram style photo filters introduced over a decade ago.
Actually, the latest gen photographic styles is a strange combination of the first gen and
those filters. Swipe to the left of standard and you're playing mostly with color undertones.
Swipe to the right and they really look like modern interpretations of the previous iPhone
filters and they have a dramatic effect on the way color is rendered.
This white background can go from purple in the luminous style to yellow in the quiet
style. As an indecisive person, I always get antsy when trying to decide how to tune a photo,
which is why I never picked a photographic style on previous iPhones.
They get burned in. Now that they're available after the fact, I feel more comfortable.
And Apple even has a little tutorial to help you dial in your preferred style before you
begin too. When I did it the first time, I took on the Amber Hue mainly because it makes me look
less pale, but I actually prefer cooler, more natural photos.
Sure enough, when I finally got that dialed in, I prefer the results of my photographic
style. As much as I wish the regular iPhones would take RAW photos like mainstream Android equivalents,
I know that for most people RAW is a waste of storage space.
This is a happy medium.
There are still many day-to-day improvements to the iPhone worth noting.
The 16M Plus have larger batteries than the last, which for me meant I was able to run
for one and a half days and six hours of on-screen time, and the on-board speakers are notably
loud and clear. The regular iPhone does still have irritating limitations, though.
Lots of people complain about the iPhone's maximum 60Hz refresh rate.
Yes, the animations are buttery smooth at that frame, but similarly priced Android phones
have been getting a high refresh rate screens for years, at least give us 90Hz.
Also this USB-C port is great, but despite the fast chip, it only supports USB 2 speeds.
It's 2024. That's like putting a serial port on an Intel MacBook.
Finally, this iPhone has been weirdly glitchy. One of them, which was apps and things just refusing to deal with touch inputs, got fixed
in a recent update. But I still get a weird visual glitch if the phone tries to turn the screen off itself.
It flickers pink like crazy, sometimes.
At $800, the iPhone 16 is just as expensive as ever, here in Canada it's over $1100.
But at least the price hasn't gone up. If you have an older iPhone and are contemplating upgrading, this is the generation to pull
the trigger on. At these prices, most people can and should keep their phone for at least four years.
In fact, I found this funny tweet recommending you take the case off and watch the announcement
of the phone you have. Wow, new phone. Works on me.
I also recommend replacing the battery, too. If it's not lasting a full day, it really does feel like a new phone when you do that.
If you have an iPhone 12 or 13, I recommend doing that.
If you're upgrading from an iPhone XR or 11, though, this will feel great.
Thanks for pressing the buttons of this Mac Address. I'm curious in the comments below how many of you are upgrading from an iPhone XR or
11 or even earlier to one of these. And if you want to watch another video we did, you should watch the one where I talk
about the history of Wi-Fi and how instrumental Apple was to it.