• 2 months ago
The new iPhone 16 Pro is a minor improvement over the 15 Pro, but a new camera setting makes for much better photos.
Transcript
00:00Let's just start with the camera.
00:01There isn't really that much else to talk about
00:02with the new iPhone 16 Pro right now.
00:04It is maybe one of the most unfinished iPhones
00:07Apple has ever released.
00:08Almost all of its highlight features
00:10are waiting on software updates
00:12that will likely stretch well into next year
00:14before they're here.
00:15That's big stuff,
00:17like the new Apple Intelligence AI features,
00:19which the company says will start slowly arriving in October,
00:22and little stuff,
00:23like the complete functionality
00:25of the camera control button on the side.
00:27Even really minor things,
00:28like that new Siri animation
00:30that inspired the name It's Glow Time
00:32for the iPhone's launch event.
00:34Yeah, it's not here yet.
00:35Now, the hard rule of reviews at The Verge
00:37is that we always review what's in the box,
00:39the thing that you can buy right now,
00:41never the potential or promise of software updates to come.
00:45And that means the iPhone 16 Pro today
00:47is one of the most incremental updates
00:49to the iPhone in a long time.
00:50It's a set of very nice,
00:51but ultimately minor changes to the iPhone 15 Pro.
00:54And the most notable change is to the camera.
00:57So like I said, let's just start there.
01:02There are two big changes to the iPhone 16 Pro camera system.
01:05There's the new camera button on the side
01:07and a new set of controls and software
01:10for how images are processed.
01:11The button itself is a hybrid.
01:13You can press it all the way down to take a photo,
01:15or you can give it a light press to trigger a haptic click
01:18and bring up a setting like zoom or exposure,
01:20which you can adjust with a swipe.
01:22A double light press lets you switch
01:23between all these settings.
01:25By default, a single click opens the camera
01:28when the phone is unlocked and another press takes a photo.
01:30The button is a little bit stiff.
01:32A few Verge staffers found themselves
01:33moving the phone slightly when pushing all the way down
01:36to take a photo, but I thought it was fine.
01:38You can click away pretty fast
01:39before you outrun the camera sensor in normal mode,
01:41but you can definitely outpace it
01:43if you're shooting in raw.
01:44I clocked it around four frames per second,
01:46which is respectable.
01:48That's not anywhere close to what a modern mirrorless camera
01:50with an electronic shutter can do.
01:52I was really hoping I'd find myself
01:53using the capacitive control on the button
01:55to adjust things like exposure and focal length,
01:58but it's all a little bit fiddly
01:59switching between everything with the light presses,
02:01and I just left it set on tone.
02:03More on that later.
02:05Like almost everything on the iPhone 16 Pro at launch,
02:07the camera control button is shipping
02:09in an apparently unfinished state.
02:11A future software update will let it emulate
02:13a traditional two-stage shutter button
02:15where a half press focuses and a full press takes the shot.
02:18I asked Apple, but there's no date for this,
02:20just later this year.
02:22I've had a lot of complaints
02:23about iPhone cameras over the years,
02:24but setting focus has never actually been one of them.
02:27I know a lot of folks are excited about a two-stage shutter,
02:29but I'm not convinced it's gonna be all that big of a deal.
02:32Out of the box, I did find myself
02:33accidentally clicking the camera control way too often.
02:35I'm left-handed and the button is just where my fingers land
02:38when I go to adjust the volume with my thumb.
02:40You can adjust the settings to require a double-click
02:42to open the camera,
02:43and that solved the problem for me right away.
02:45You can set the button to open third-party camera apps.
02:48I have a preview version of Halide
02:49that was updated to support it, and it worked great.
02:52Overall, the button is really nice to have,
02:53but that's about it right now.
02:55As it exists today, it's not a huge improvement
02:57over shooting photos with any other iPhone.
03:00The actual photos, on the other hand,
03:02yeah, that's complicated.
03:05It is safe to say that people did not love the cameras
03:08on the various iPhone 15s.
03:09Apple has gotten increasingly aggressive
03:11with its approach to computational photography
03:13over the past few years,
03:14and various forums and social media platforms
03:17have been filled with complaints about it for a while now.
03:19My husband just got the new iPhone 15,
03:21and the camera is so bad.
03:22I had no idea there was this problem with the selfie camera.
03:24Craziest hack I learned to fix your crappy iPhone 15 camera.
03:28So I just returned my iPhone 15.
03:29The camera was so bad on it.
03:31I don't wanna see myself in HD.
03:34Does anyone know how to fix this?
03:35The New Yorker published a piece
03:36about iPhone photos looking unrealistic two years ago.
03:39We've been on this ride for a minute.
03:41I've been reviewing phones and cameras for a long time,
03:44but no review I ever publish
03:46will ever have the same devastating impact
03:48as Alex Earle asking her seven million followers
03:51why her iPhone 15 camera sucks.
03:54Actually, what is wrong with the iPhone 15 camera,
03:56and how do I change it?
03:57Every time I take photos, I look like a gray ghost.
04:00If I had to sum up what's going on
04:01with all these complaints,
04:02it's just that Apple won't leave shadows
04:04and highlights alone.
04:06It uses its photonic engine image pipeline
04:08to boost the dark parts of an image
04:10and bring down the bright parts
04:11so you can see detail everywhere.
04:13But the side effect is that images seem flat
04:15because they lack contrast between light and dark.
04:18I always think about this like dynamics in music.
04:21If every part of a song is loud,
04:23then nothing actually seems loud.
04:25That's what's been going on with the iPhone camera over time.
04:27Everything's getting so bright that nothing is bright,
04:30and the photos are starting to look flat.
04:32So I regret to inform you that by default,
04:35the iPhone 16 Pro camera is even more aggressive
04:38about evening out shadows and highlights
04:40than the iPhone 15 Pro.
04:42It's subtle, but it's there.
04:44You can see it with basic photos of plants,
04:46with pictures of people, with street scenes.
04:48It's all just a little bit brighter, a little bit flatter.
04:51It's even brighter compared to the regular iPhone 16
04:54in almost every case.
04:55That's not to say that the regular 16 camera is better
04:57or even the same.
04:58The 16 Pro offers a much nicer depth of field,
05:01does less sharpening, and performs better in low light.
05:04I actually found it hard to make the 16 Pro
05:06go into night mode,
05:07while the regular 16 drops to night mode pretty easily.
05:09It seems like the 16 Pro can just capture more light,
05:12and Apple's default settings use all that extra light
05:15to wage war on shadows in a way
05:17that the regular 16 can't seem to do.
05:19Comparing the iPhone 16 Pro to the Galaxy S24 Ultra
05:22and the Pixel 9 Pro XL requires intense pixel peeping.
05:26The Pixel has the best zoom,
05:27while Samsung's color handling remains aggressively chaotic.
05:31I mean, just look at the sky here.
05:33But time and time again, all three cameras produced photos
05:36that looked essentially the same.
05:38All these phones are delivering small variations
05:40on the same ultra-processed look,
05:42and they have been for a while now.
05:44But here's the good news.
05:46The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro allow you to exclude yourself
05:49from this narrative entirely
05:50with a radically upgraded photographic styles feature
05:53that allows you to directly adjust
05:55how the camera processes colors, skin tones, and shadows,
05:58even after you've shot a photo.
06:00You can pick between five undertone settings
06:02that are meant to adjust skin tones,
06:03and nine mood settings
06:04that feel a lot like high quality Instagram filters.
06:07You can shoot with a live preview of any of the styles,
06:09and then you can tweak the settings
06:11or even switch styles entirely later on.
06:13In all of these styles,
06:15including standard and even in portrait mode,
06:17offer a new control called tone
06:20that lets you add shadows back to your photos.
06:24Apple tells me that tone is short for tone mapping,
06:27and it really does mean
06:27you can bring the iPhone's photonic engine HDR processing
06:31back to reality by turning it down.
06:34The control is semantically aware.
06:36It adjusts things like faces in the sky differently,
06:38so it's still doing some intense computational photography,
06:41but the goal is for you to be able to take photos
06:43that look a lot more like a traditional camera
06:45if you bring the slider all the way down.
06:47You can also go all the way up
06:48for some of the most intense smartphone process photos
06:50possible, but you know, don't do that.
06:53You can even adjust the tone setting
06:54using the new camera control button.
06:56You just give it a little double squeeze,
06:57slide over to the right,
06:58and you can adjust how shadows look with a live preview.
07:01I will just come straight out and say
07:03that dialing back the iPhone 16 Pro's tone mapping
07:06makes me prefer these photos way more
07:08than the default settings
07:09and the photos produced by the iPhone 15 Pro.
07:11It is such an improvement that it's possible
07:14to make the argument that this one single camera adjustment
07:17makes upgrading to the iPhone 16 Pro worth it.
07:21I don't think that argument is 100% convincing,
07:24but it's possible to make it, which is wild.
07:27Apple's complex photonic engine
07:29computational photography pipeline
07:31is basically the same on the iPhone 16 Pro
07:34as it is on the 15 Pro,
07:35but the order of operations has been changed
07:37to allow for photographic styles
07:39to be edited after the fact.
07:41In particular, the tone mapping step that boosts shadows
07:44has been moved to the end of the process.
07:46Apple's goal here is for the edits
07:48to be perceptually lossless.
07:50When you take a photo in a style,
07:52that's how the photo is saved,
07:53but the iPhone adds a little chunk of data to the image file
07:56that allows it to undo the style
07:58and revert the image to standard
08:00before applying another style.
08:02That bit of extra data results in files
08:03that are about 25% bigger than before,
08:06and the whole thing means that styles only work
08:08if you shoot in heath,
08:10which is going to break a lot of hearts out there.
08:12Styles overall aren't really made
08:14for professional workflows.
08:15The only way to adjust them
08:16is with this fiddly D-pad control.
08:18You can't apply a style to a bunch of photos at once,
08:21and trying to keep track of which photos
08:23have which styles applied
08:24requires staring into the absolute abyss
08:26of iOS file management.
08:28The Photos app in Mac OS Sequoia
08:29will be able to adjust styles when it ships,
08:31but Apple won't say if third-party apps
08:33will be able to support styles in the future.
08:35The more you play with styles,
08:36the more it seems like Apple has simply given up
08:38on having a point of view
08:39for what this camera should look like.
08:42Google makes a lot of noise
08:43about its Realtone project,
08:45which is supposed to allow the Pixel
08:46to capture accurate skin tones for all kinds of people,
08:49but Apple's solution is to simply let people
08:51choose their own skin tone using the undertone styles,
08:55which works, although it often changed more
08:57than just skin tone in our test photos.
08:59Undertones also apply to everyone in an image,
09:02so if you take a photo of people
09:03with a range of skin tones,
09:05they're all gonna get the same effect,
09:07which you can see here.
09:09Overall, I get the idea behind undertones,
09:11but the execution feels like it needs
09:13a little bit more refinement.
09:15The entire vibe of all these controls
09:17is very much, you figure it out.
09:20Every now and again, I'd be using this camera
09:21and find myself wondering where the line
09:23between complete creative expression
09:24and pure nihilism is.
09:26Like, do we even want cameras to capture reality?
09:29Is reality even objective?
09:31Can two people ever really experience
09:32the same thing at the same time?
09:33Can a single slider control absolve a camera
09:37for accurate skin tones?
09:38Are skin tones even something we can capture
09:40with camera lenses and physics?
09:42Are they actually complex collusions?
09:43Are they actually...
09:48I don't have a lot to say about the mood styles,
09:50which are very fun and expressive.
09:52They're a lot like the popular Fujifilm recipes.
09:54Viren basically fell in love with them.
09:56As a Fujifilm user, oh boy, do I love my film recipes.
09:59These are basically Apple's version of those.
10:02They're divided in two main categories,
10:04the undertones, which we have talked about, and moods.
10:07Moods are the ones with more aggressive edits.
10:10So you can get this washed out gold look
10:12with orange hues, almost like the Portra 400 film stock.
10:15Or this look with deep indigo blues in the shadows,
10:18like you were shooting on Ektachrome.
10:20Or you can go greenish blue cyan, like Cinestill.
10:24Or you could just keep it simple
10:25and just add back some of the shadows
10:27that your iPhone is desperately trying to lift.
10:30Apple says these are perceptually non-destructive edits,
10:34and I buy it.
10:35The edited photos look very clean.
10:37Even when adjusting tone and lifting their shadows
10:40as far as this allows you,
10:41you're not really introducing any noise
10:43or fringing on weird artifacts.
10:45If there's a specific style you like,
10:47you can set them as your default
10:49and never worry about it again.
10:50So that's all the photo stuff.
10:52Let's switch back to video.
10:56So there aren't that many changes to video this year,
10:58but there is one that I cannot get enough of.
11:01You can now shoot 4K in 120 frames per second,
11:03and I absolutely love it.
11:05At the festival in New York City,
11:06I asked a bunch of people to take their video portraits,
11:08and, well, here's what we walked away with.
11:14The F1.78 aperture of the main lens
11:16really helps to make people stand out
11:18with a subtle focus falloff.
11:20In daytime and good lighting conditions,
11:22it is such a joy to use,
11:24especially when reviewing these clips on an iPhone's display.
11:28Clips are sharp and vibrant.
11:29I truly could not stop filming in this mode.
11:32In low light, the iPhone's aggressive noise reduction
11:35will turn that footage a bit softer.
11:37It still looks great on your phone,
11:39but you will notice it on a larger display.
11:41It's still very usable, as you can see right now.
11:44You can also record this footage in ProRes lock,
11:47and it makes it much more flexible in post-production.
11:51But you'll need to come prepared.
11:53You'll need an exFAT formatted external drive
11:55with a Thunderbolt 4 cable to shoot 4K 120
11:59or even 4K 60 like last year.
12:02And this will absolutely eat up your storage.
12:04The slow-motion 15-second clip is 5.5 gigabytes.
12:08But if you're willing to go through the trouble,
12:10which in some cases means building out this silly rig,
12:14it is absolutely worth it.
12:15I do love how much flexibility log files give you,
12:18and as a videographer, I'm willing to go the distance.
12:21The 4K 120 mode only works on the main 24mm lens
12:25and in the 2X mode.
12:27It doesn't work for the other two lenses,
12:30the ultrawide and the 5X telephoto.
12:32I really wish it was available
12:34at least for the great 5X tele lens.
12:37I honestly wish it was available for both of them.
12:39That's fine, you can keep that in.
12:41Aside from the crispy slow motion,
12:42you're looking at a phone that performs
12:44almost exactly like the iPhone 15 Pro.
12:48I have noticed a tendency for the cameras
12:51to lean towards warmer color temperatures this year,
12:54just like it's doing in photos as well.
12:57Otherwise, the ultrawide is still noisy in low light
12:59and yeah, the camera reflections are still visible
13:03whenever there's a direct light source in front of you.
13:07Lastly, there are changes to the audio processing
13:10that is embedded into your video files.
13:11So let's take a listen.
13:13All right, so we're here at a street festival in New York.
13:15There's all kinds of activity going on.
13:17We've got the restaurant over here,
13:19we've got the Carnival Barker.
13:20There's some kind of juice press machine running.
13:22It's super loud.
13:23This is just the standard audio file.
13:26What we're gonna do now is we're gonna switch it to in frame.
13:30Your CV is gonna turn the camera over this way.
13:37When you bring it back to me,
13:38you should be hearing me again.
13:40Now let's switch it to studio mode,
13:43which should sound like I'm in a recording studio,
13:46even though there's all this activity around me.
13:48It should be able to get rid of all of these sounds.
13:51Okay, we have to stop it there
13:52because that really wasn't that good.
13:54But we ran the test again, which was a little bit better.
13:58Bring it back to me.
13:59We're gonna keep walking up the alley here.
14:02We're just gonna switch it to studio mode,
14:04which even though there's all of this noise,
14:06should totally focus you in on my voice
14:08like I'm talking into a podcast mic.
14:10Lastly, we're gonna switch it to cinematic mode,
14:13which should bring in more of the audio
14:15that's going around here, all of these sights and sounds,
14:17although lifting my voice
14:19to make it seem like I'm in a movie.
14:20So that was a little bit better,
14:22but it's still nothing that impressive
14:24as the thing they showed at the keynote.
14:25Real quick, I will have another in-depth video
14:28coming out in a few weeks to chat more
14:30about all things video and photo for the iPhone 16 Pro.
14:33So I'll see you then.
14:35Back to Neil.
14:36So that's the big overview of the camera
14:38on the iPhone 16 Pro.
14:40Now, if you've been paying attention
14:41to what's going on with smartphone cameras lately,
14:43you'll have noticed we haven't talked about AI at all.
14:46There's no video boost or face swapping,
14:48no drawing to add stuff with AI,
14:50like on the Pixel or Galaxy phones.
14:52Really, none of it.
14:53Apple says it is going to add a feature
14:55called Clean Up with Apple Intelligence
14:56that will let you remove objects from photos,
14:58like Google's Magic Eraser, but that's not shipping yet,
15:01and it also seems to be about as far
15:03as the company is willing to go.
15:05If you've been following The Verge,
15:06you know we've been asking what is a photo
15:08for quite some time.
15:09I asked Apple's Vice President
15:11of Camera Software Engineering, John McCormick,
15:12about Google's view that the Pixel camera
15:14captures memories instead of photos,
15:17and he told me Apple's definition of a photo is,
15:20a personal celebration of something that really happened,
15:23and that Apple tries to ground everything it does
15:25with a camera in the history and traditions of photography.
15:28The new photo styles, for example,
15:30reflect the long history of stylization in photography,
15:33which is something like 170 years old.
15:35So for now, at least, Apple's answer to what is a photo
15:38is things that really happened,
15:41even as its competitors make that line fuzzier by the day.
15:44Everything else about the iPhone 16 Pro
15:46is incredibly incremental.
15:48The display now goes down to one nit of brightness,
15:50which is very nice for not waking up your partner
15:52while you doom scroll in bed.
15:54Those displays are also bigger now.
15:56The Pro is 6.3 inches,
15:57while the Pro Max has a 6.9 inch display,
16:00the largest ever on an iPhone.
16:02The bezels are smaller, so the bump in screen size
16:05didn't make the whole phone that much bigger,
16:06and they're the same thickness as the 15 Pros.
16:09The slight increase in the size of the regular Pro
16:11isn't really noticeable, but the 16 Pro
16:13feels meaningfully bigger than the 15 Pro Max.
16:16I have big hands, and I've always picked the big phone,
16:19and the 16 Pro Max is definitely as big
16:21as these things should get before they start to fold,
16:23or whatever happens next.
16:25Inside, you're looking at an A18 Pro chip,
16:27which Apple claims is faster by various percentages
16:30than the A17 Pro.
16:32But as with all iPhones for the past few years,
16:34this performance headroom is mostly about longevity
16:36at this point.
16:37My iPhone 15 Pro doesn't feel slow,
16:39and the 16 Pro doesn't feel faster.
16:42Maybe this will all change when Apple Intelligent ships,
16:44but we'll just have to wait and see.
16:45Software-wise, my review units are running iOS 18.0,
16:48which mainly differs from iOS 17
16:50in that there's RCS support and messages,
16:52which is a huge win.
16:53Okay, there's more to iOS 18.
16:55The home screen, lock screen, and control center
16:57are all radically more customizable now.
17:00You can more or less theme the home screen any way you want,
17:02down to adjusting icon colors globally,
17:04and the lock screen now allows you
17:05to change the quick access buttons to third-party apps.
17:08The preview build of Halide I was testing
17:10supported this, so I switched in for the system camera,
17:12which is nice.
17:14Once more camera apps support this,
17:15you'll end up with a lot of ways
17:17to open the camera from the lock screen now.
17:18You'll be able to set the action button,
17:19the camera control button, and the lock screen button
17:22to different camera apps if you want,
17:23and still have the ability to open the system camera
17:25by swiping to the right.
17:27It's pretty neat.
17:28The new control center was a little bit of an adjustment.
17:31If you're like me and you've used it
17:32by pure muscle memory for years,
17:34even the switch from squarish buttons to circles
17:36is a little disorienting.
17:38The whole thing is now one of the most
17:39The whole thing is now organized into vertical sheets.
17:42Favorites, MIDI controls, home controls,
17:44and the various radio and network controls.
17:46You can move these controls
17:47and groups of controls around at will,
17:49resize them as you like,
17:50and generally create a little free-form command center
17:53of your go-to settings.
17:54This one is gonna come down to how much time
17:56you want to spend creating
17:57the perfect arrangement of controls.
18:00I'm a huge nerd.
18:00I cannot wait to spend an hour or two
18:02getting it just right.
18:03Apple says the iPhone 16 Pro
18:05gets significantly better battery life than the 15 Pro,
18:08although the company won't quote anything other
18:10than video playback time,
18:11which it says is four hours longer.
18:13The Pro Max is supposed to have
18:14the best battery life ever on the iPhone,
18:16a claim which is also apparently measured
18:18only by video playback.
18:20The battery certainly held up for full days
18:21during my testing,
18:22which was very heavy on-camera usage,
18:24but the real test is how well
18:26these batteries hold up over time.
18:28After about a year,
18:29my iPhone 15 Pro Max battery capacity
18:31has dropped to 93%,
18:32and it now struggles to make it through a day.
18:35It's something to keep an eye on.
18:36Apple did update the MagSafe charging system,
18:39which can now charge it up to 25 watts
18:41using the new Qi 2-compatible MagSafe puck
18:43and a 30-watt charger.
18:44I charged my review unit for a while at full speed,
18:46and it didn't even get warm,
18:47which I think is impressive.
18:49Price-wise, things are the same as last year.
18:51The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999,
18:53while the larger Pro Max starts at $1,199.
18:55You can get them in desert, natural white,
18:56and black titanium,
18:57which all look fine.
18:58I'm a little jealous that the regular iPhones
19:00get fun colors this year,
19:01but I just stick these things in cases anyway,
19:03so maybe it doesn't matter.
19:05Speaking of the regular iPhone 16,
19:06we've gotten a lot of questions
19:08about whether spending the extra money on the Pro
19:10is worth it this year,
19:11since the specs seem so close together.
19:14Alison's been reviewing the regular iPhone 16.
19:16Here's what she thinks.
19:17If you're thinking that this is the year
19:18to opt out of the Pro series
19:20and maybe pick up the 16 or 16 Plus,
19:23my answer is a resounding maybe.
19:27For someone upgrading from an older non-Pro iPhone,
19:31I think the answer is an easy yes.
19:32You get the action button
19:34that was only on last year's Pro models,
19:36the camera control is here,
19:37and the colors on the regular 16 this year rule.
19:41You also get an A18 chip.
19:43It's not the A18 Pro chip that's in the Pro models,
19:46but it's in the same generation,
19:48which hasn't been the case with the last few iPhones.
19:51Prices are the same this year.
19:52It's 799 for the iPhone 16, 899 for the iPhone 16 Plus,
19:57so it kind of feels like
19:58you're getting some decent improvements
19:59without having to pay a bunch of extra money.
20:01That's great.
20:02That said, there are still good reasons
20:05to pay up for the 16 Pro.
20:07You still don't get a telephoto lens on the regular 16,
20:10and yeah, you get that 2x crop zoom, and it's fine,
20:14but you don't get the quality or the reach
20:16of a dedicated 5x lens.
20:18There's no ProMotion display here either,
20:20so you're gonna have to settle
20:21for a standard 60 hertz refresh rate.
20:24For what it's worth, I got used to it pretty quickly,
20:26but the Pro's screen is noticeably smoother.
20:29It's 2024, Apple.
20:31What's the deal?
20:32Just put a ProMotion screen in these phones.
20:35But even if you don't love the camera control
20:37and Apple intelligence somehow never ships,
20:39I still think it's a good year to upgrade.
20:42If you're used to a fast refresh rate screen
20:44and a 5x telephoto lens,
20:46then I think those are gonna be hard compromises
20:49to make in the 16.
20:51If you don't mind crop zoom and a slower screen,
20:53then what you get here is pretty good.
20:55Plus, you've got that new action button to play with
20:57and some really fun colors to choose from.
21:00Not a bad deal at all.
21:03The regular iPhone 16 does seem great,
21:06but for me, I have to have the best camera
21:08and I have to have the best display.
21:10So the Pro is it.
21:11So that is the iPhone 16 Pro so far.
21:14It really does feel like Apple intended
21:15to ship these things with Apple intelligence,
21:17but it's simply not here yet.
21:18And the complete feature set Apple's announced
21:20with things like image generation and chat GPT integration
21:23won't be here until next year.
21:25And if you're in the EU or China,
21:27you might be waiting for quite a while longer than that
21:29as Apple navigates various regulations in those regions
21:31to even launch this stuff at all.
21:33All of that is to say that the iPhone 16 Pro
21:35as it exists today is a remarkably iterative update
21:38to the iPhone 15 Pro.
21:39And the 15 Pro will even be able
21:41to run Apple intelligence when it arrives.
21:43So there's almost no reason to upgrade
21:45from last year's model.
21:46And I'm not at all convinced that it's worth upgrading
21:48to the 16 Pro from older Pro models just yet either.
21:51The camera control is nice, but not game changing.
21:54And once you're excited about dialing
21:56in the new photographic styles and that tone control,
21:58you might find the default settings
22:00to be a step backwards in photo processing.
22:02If you can't tell, I am personally thrilled
22:04by the tone control.
22:05So this is an easy choice for me,
22:06but it feels like it's worth waiting a tick
22:08for everyone else.
22:09That's not to say that the iPhone 16 Pro is a bad phone.
22:12It's a great phone with some fascinating ideas
22:14about smartphone photography embedded in it.
22:17But like I said at the beginning,
22:18it's also clearly unfinished.
22:20And I think it's worth waiting to see
22:22if Apple intelligence can complete some of these thoughts
22:25before spending the money on an upgrade.
22:28Every year I watch a Packers game
22:30while shooting the iPhone review.
22:3513 to nothing Packers.
22:37Backup quarterback.
22:38We're doing great.

Recommended