The iPhone 16 is here. After months of rumors and waiting, the keynote arrives, and Apple surprises us with many new features and details about the latest phones. The first reviews are coming in, and we will continue to discover new details and exciting perspectives on the new iPhone. Then, you open your iPhone on launch day, and, like every year, you find out that nothing you have read or heard prepares you for the surprise they present.
Thus, with the perspective that a week of use provides, let’s talk about the iPhone 16 Pro. While easy to classify as a continuation, this phone surprises in every detail and every new feature. With its best hardware and software that helps it shine in almost everything it does, it is here to surprise us and allow us to do much more.
Camera Control: a fundamental change for any type of photography
One of the most talked-about features of the iPhone 16 Pro is the new Camera Control. The most straightforward description is a button, but calling it that overlooks many details. Just as we don’t call a trackpad a button, the first thing to keep in mind is that the Camera Control allows us to interact with our iPhone’s camera in a comprehensive way through a single point. Open the camera, adjust the framing, modify settings, and take the photo all with one finger and in one place.
Before the iPhone 16, making adjustments while framing a photo meant interrupting, even if just a little, the process. Touching the screen involves moving your hand, obstructing the view, and thus losing a significant part of the control over the framing. Now, with this physical control, everything is simplified. It allows us to make adjustments like exposure or zoom without taking our fingers off the shutter button, making it easier to focus on the shot. And if we need to take the photo without having finished adjusting the variables to not miss the moment, our finger is right where it needs to be.
A small detail? This should be left to individual opinions, but for a device that often acts as a camera, the ability to focus on shots, centralize control in one location, and have quick and clear access to a good number of options makes a big difference.
Best cameras: much more than megapixels
The iPhone 16 Pro’s camera system follows the trend of recent years, improving key aspects without drastically changing the design. The main camera retains the fantastic 48 megapixels, but now offers us a 5x telephoto lens thanks to the new tetraprism technology, which means more powerful optical zoom and better stabilization. This feature was, until now, exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but now it comes to the smaller sibling of the professional range. Excellent news if among our preferences is a more compact-sized phone.
The ultra wide-angle lens has also changed from 12 to 48 megapixels. The difference becomes more than evident when taking shots in low-light conditions. And allow me a parenthesis here. Almost all indoor shots have too little light. We just have to look at how a photography studio or a television set is to see that the amount of light in those spaces is not something we usually find indoors. So, we are not talking about shots in the middle of the night. We are talking about an everyday photo that will now offer us a much superior result.
The quality in those scenarios is much sharper and with less noise. The new A18 Pro chip also plays a crucial role here, of course, with much faster and more efficient image processing. Remember that Apple has integrated improvements in the Photonic Engine and Smart HDR 5, which optimize photos and videos to achieve more realistic colors, a greater dynamic range, and less oversaturation in challenging lighting scenarios.
Screen: fewer bezels and a noticeable increase in size
The other notable change of the iPhone 16 Pro is the screen, which has grown to 6.3 inches. The screen edge is even thinner, and although it may seem like a minor change on paper, the difference is noticeable in person.
The screen elements are somewhat larger. The icons, menus, and other parts of our daily use of the iPhone increase in size. A lot? The size difference is not huge, but those extra millimeters and the almost non-existent bezels translate into a very noticeable perception of spaciousness. It is noticeable from the home screen to the videos or full-screen content that we may view.
A familiar design, but optimized: strategic changes that make a big difference
The design of the iPhone 16 Pro is already familiar to us, but it is full of details that improve key points. It retains, of course, the elegant titanium finish and the frosted back glass that makes it practically immune to fingerprints.
Cameras with an anti-reflective coating or improved screen glass resistance are also details to consider. Inside, a thermal redesign improves heat management, keeping the phone much cooler even during setup and data download, one of the moments under the most pressure. Recording video or during charging —mention here the 5 extra hours of battery life— the temperatures are far from what we saw in the iPhone 15 Pro, and it is appreciated.
After a week of use, the iPhone 16 Pro presents itself as a strategic evolution that, although visually familiar, offers us key improvements in hardware and the supporting software. The Camera Control button transforms the way we take photos. The larger screen and improved cameras give us an even more capable phone. The changes may seem minor on paper, but once you have it in your hand, it becomes clear that this is a phone to seriously consider.
