Which iPhone 16 model should you buy?
That said, the larger iPhones tend to have the best battery life. The iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 16 Plus gave me more hours of use than their smaller siblings. You can easily get the larger phones into the morning of the second day on a single charge, even with heavy use. If battery life is a priority for you, go with the larger models.
All of these iPhones have an Action button, which replaces the Mute switch and is now configurable, so you can replicate the Mute switch’s functionality or perform another action, like turning on the flashlight or activate a shortcut. They all have a new Camera Control button (yes, it’s a button). You can use this button to open the camera and take a photo, but a light press will bring up different camera modes, and you can slide your finger left or right across the button’s surface to cycle through different modes, zoom levels, and so on. Finally, you can use this button to activate Visual Intelligence, Apple’s version of Google Lens—point your iPhone at something in the real world to get more information about it.
Photo: Julian Chokkattu
Every iPhone 16 model can now take advantage of a cool video feature called Audio Mix. This lets you change the sound of your videos as you edit them by choosing an audio profile. These include In-Frame, which focuses the audio on whoever is in the frame; Studio, which makes it sound like you’re in a studio, removing any background noise; and Cinematic, which makes sure whoever’s in the middle of the frame is clearly visible, with a little bit of background noise mixed in. This works a little better on the iPhone 16 Pro models because they have upgraded microphones.
Redesigned Photography Styles are also available across the range. They’re almost like filters but better—instead of changing the look of an entire image, Styles can preserve skin tones so they don’t look weird, and can adjust other parts of the photo like shadows and highlights. They’re among the standout features on the latest phones, so give them a try! Apple also gives you more control over how your skin tones look, rather than taking more of a one-size-fits-all approach like What Google does with its Pixel phones.
Apple Intelligence is the headline feature, and the only way to try out the new AI capabilities is with a phone that supports it: the iPhone 16, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max. I covered these features in more detail in Our iOS 18 guide and have rated many of them in my iPhone 16 Pro ReviewBut in short, it includes an improved Siri experience, real-time audio transcription in Voice Notes and Notes (even call recording), and writing support features like proofreading and changing the tone of messages. Other features like the ability to create images will come later.
