Review: Apple iPhone 16 - The New Baseline

New iPhones have, for several years now, come in two variants, regular and pro, with each variant available in two sizes. In recent years, the regular iPhone has been a kind of slimmed-down version of last year's pro model, certainly convenient and cost-effective, as long as you control the technology development yourself. However, this year something came up, generative AI, where Apple couldn't decide when it would happen, and therefore the Apple iPhone 16 doesn't have the chipset from last year's iPhone 15 Pro but a new chipset called A18. The Pro models, on the other hand, have received a faster A18 Pro chipset.

However, Apple's AI won't come until later, and it's unclear if and when it will come to the EU at all, so don't stay up waiting for it. As has been the case for many years now, it is difficult to perceive any real improvement in the increased performance of the iPhone 16 compared to its predecessor, the user interface flows as quickly as it seems to be able to, and it's probably only if you play certain selected games that you will be able to experience any difference.

Same price, new packaging

These are, so to speak, the reasons why there is an iPhone 16 at all instead of just continuing to sell the iPhone 15. But if you buy into the market logic that there absolutely must be a new iPhone every year, you can see it not so much as the best Apple can achieve but as what Apple in the fall of 2024 considers a reasonable set of features and design. For Apple has also not raised the price of the base model of the iPhone, the iPhone 16 costs as much as the iPhone 15 and 14 did when they were new, and that they in turn cost more than the iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 was due to a worse exchange rate for the krona against the dollar.

If you place an iPhone 16 next to an iPhone 15, they are incredibly similar, they have moved the cameras around a bit on the iPhone 16 so that you can take stereo photos for the Vision Pro headset, a feature that I guess a single-digit number of our readers will benefit from. Instead, the biggest innovation on the iPhone 16 is buttons. Regular physical buttons.

The Action button replaces the slide button that was used to put the phone in silent mode on all iPhones since the beginning of time. The difference here is that you can choose what the button should do if a quick shortcut to silent mode is not the most important for you. The options you can choose for the button are many and well thought out, from flashlight to voice memo to magnifying glass. But the Action button was already on the iPhone 15 Pro, and the fact that it wasn't used on the iPhone 15 felt mostly stingy of Apple, not so much cutting-edge technology in the top model as a way to punish the cheapskates who chose the cheaper iPhone.

Thankfully, Apple has not chosen to go the same route with the other button, the camera button is new for both iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. It is also a bit more technically advanced as it is both a physical push button and a touch button with haptic feedback.

If you press the button (physically) you start the camera, you press twice if the screen is off. Then the button works as a shutter for the camera. But if you press a little, so that only the touch function is activated, you instead get a camera menu. You can zoom by swiping over the button, or double-tap it to switch between different functions you can access by swiping over the button. This might sound complicated. It is, and it is definitely something that probably requires a lot of use before it feels intuitive. This also applies to the camera button itself. I find it slightly too easy to press by mistake, resulting in some unintended photos.

Small differences in the cameras

The main camera of 48 megapixels is the same as in the iPhone 15. Sometimes the new chipset in the phone means better image processing capabilities that provide better pictures, for example in the dark, but it's not something I see when I compare and not something Apple has talked about. So it doesn't offer any innovation, but it is a really good camera that takes sharp pictures with excellent color reproduction in most situations. Apple has by default chosen the image format of 24 megapixels, which is between the sensor's full potential and sampling down four pixels to one pixel for a 12-megapixel image. It is a successful compromise that gives images that can withstand zooming. If it gets too dark, the camera automatically switches to 12 megapixels for better light sensitivity.

The wide-angle camera, compared to the iPhone 15, has gained autofocus and is quite okay, but still has a significantly smaller camera sensor than the Pro series. And of course, a telephoto camera is completely missing. Apple refers to the ability to take photos with two times optical zoom with the main camera by making a 12-megapixel crop from the middle of the camera's 48-megapixel sensor. Compared to the 24-megapixel images, the gain in sharpness is minimal.

The screen on the iPhone 16 is probably the most anachronistic part of the phone, it is unchanged from the iPhone 15. This means an OLED screen with a maximum brightness of 2000 nits, which is respectable, but when I compare it with other new top models, it performs noticeably worse in direct sunlight. Above all, it still has a refresh rate of 60 hertz. By now, even Android phones costing a quarter of what the iPhone 16 does have screens with a 120 Hz refresh rate. For most iPhone users who have probably never experienced anything other than 60 Hz, it might sound like an irrelevant bragging feature, but it makes a surprisingly big difference for the user experience, with a feeling of how the image follows in a completely different way when you scroll and pan. We will be without that feeling on the iPhone 16, which the phone is absolutely alone in its price class.

Same system as in your phone

The system in the phone is iOS 18, and it is the same system you have in your existing iPhone if it is not at least seven years old. This is naturally a plus. Even though Apple does not make any promises on how long they update old phones, their history shows that they are the best in the class at this, and we can probably expect that even iPhone 16 will have the latest iOS version in six years. The downside is that for me as a reviewer, there is not much to say about the system. Most of you probably know iOS at least as well as I do, and it is therefore likely that you have exactly the same features in your phone as are available in iPhone 16.

If I should mention a feature that is still dependent on the new chipset, it is that when you edit a video, the system can identify different types of sound sources. You can use it to, for example, highlight speech sound or create a sound that sounds as if you were in a studio even though you are outdoors.

The battery life in the iPhone 16 is supposed to be significantly better than in the iPhone 15, because the battery is larger and the A18 chipset is more energy-efficient. According to Apple, it should last for two hours longer video playback with unspecified screen brightness. I assume Apple is telling the truth about this, but I have not been able to replicate this longer battery life in our screen time test.

No one is expected to replace their iPhone every year anymore, and when Apple talks about the benefits you can expect if you upgrade, they compare it to the three-year-old iPhone 13. I think it's a reasonable comparison, but at the same time, it's striking how small the updates are even with that time span. Slightly better camera, but not by much, slightly brighter screen but not by much, slightly better battery life.

Perhaps that's all one can ask for from a new iPhone 2024, at least from one that costs as much as the equivalent model did 3-4 years ago. It's undeniable that the iPhone 16 is an excellent phone. It's not like either the iPhone 16 Pro or the competitors on the Android side at the same price are much better either. But I still think it's high time Apple paid a little attention to the screen in the next iPhone.

Questions & Answers

How is the sound from the phone's speakers? Excellent, among the best if you play video clips.

Has anything happened with the durability? The water resistance is the same, but the iPhone 16 has a new generation of screen glass that is 50 percent more durable than the previous generation.

Is the iPhone 16 bigger and bulkier? Dimensions and weight are largely unchanged since the iPhone 12, however, the iPhone 16 Pro is larger.

An Alternative

iPhone 14: You save 2000 kronor by choosing the oldest iPhone model Apple still has in its range, and you don't lose much by doing so.

Camera Example

Night photography is one of the camera's strengths.