iPhone 16 and 16 Pro have 1 change to the boxes. Goodbye, stickers.
Protect your smartphone’s screen perfectly and effortlessly at https://dbrand.com/store/prism
MKBHD Merch: http://shop.MKBHD.com
Tech I'm using right now: https://www.amazon.com/shop/MKBHD
Intro Track: Jordyn Edmonds https://lnk.to/jordynedmonds
Playlist of MKBHD Intro music: https://goo.gl/B3AWV5
Phones provided by Apple for review.
~
/ mkbhd
/ mkbhd
/ mkbhd
Protect your smartphone’s screen perfectly and effortlessly at https://dbrand.com/store/prism
MKBHD Merch: http://shop.MKBHD.com
Tech I'm using right now: https://www.amazon.com/shop/MKBHD
Intro Track: Jordyn Edmonds https://lnk.to/jordynedmonds
Playlist of MKBHD Intro music: https://goo.gl/B3AWV5
Phones provided by Apple for review.
~
/ mkbhd
/ mkbhd
/ mkbhd
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00So it's a bit of a tradition around here to unbox the newest iPhones on the day they come
00:07out and we're upholding the tradition this year to find one single difference versus
00:12last year's unboxings.
00:14So we've got four iPhones here in new colors, iPhone 16 and 16 plus, which the boxes show
00:19the back of the phones and then 16 pro and 16 pro max, which show the front.
00:23And I'm totally going to start with the base phones, the crowd favorites this year.
00:27Definitely some colors back in the iPhone lineup.
00:30So I'm going to call this one, the flagship color.
00:33This is the ultramarine iPhone 16.
00:35And in the box you get the USB-C cable again, braided and high quality, and then a tiny
00:41little bit of paperwork in this pill shape.
00:44And then you'll notice no SIM card tool, same as last year and no stickers this year.
00:51There are no stickers included in the iPhone 16 box at all.
00:57Truly the end of an era.
00:58They just can't stop removing things, they can't help themselves, but let's get a look
01:02at the pink plus size phone too.
01:05These phones are the same size as last year, 6.1 inches for the base, 6.7 inches for the
01:09plus, but with the bigger batteries inside, that's something I'm really happy to hear
01:13about and very curious about in my testing, but really I'm just happy we finally have
01:17colors back.
01:18So the back of the phone, it's a little more pale, but the glass around the camera is a
01:22bit darker.
01:23The rails of the phone are a bit darker.
01:25So this is nice.
01:27Same stuff in the box.
01:28Now with these pro phones, I think there's a reason they show the front of the phone
01:32on the box because if they show the back, you literally could not tell the difference
01:36versus last year, but hey, at least this one has slightly thinner bezels they can show.
01:43And yeah, this year is going to be the natural titanium 16 pro.
01:47And aside from the lack of stickers in the box, it's going to look and feel basically
01:51exactly like a titanium iPhone 15 pro.
01:56Same USB-C cable as the base phone as well.
01:58Great.
01:59But then this is the new flagship pro color.
02:02The renders we saw at first were kind of weird, but this is the official desert titanium color.
02:07And you know, all of Apple's phones are again, a bit more pale on the back, but they have
02:12more color on these rails.
02:14And that's definitely true again here.
02:16It's kind of a, like a light sand color, but also feel similar to the gold of the past.
02:22But there you have it.
02:23That's the iPhone 16's unboxing experience.
02:25So by the time you see this uploaded, that means I am deep into my iPhone 16 testing
02:30and working on the full review.
02:31So definitely get subscribed to see that when it drops.
02:34But if there are any things that you specifically want to see talked about more or that haven't
02:38been talked about enough for the review of the phones, let me know in the comment section
02:43below.
02:44But I can still give you now some quick things that I've noticed in my first couple of days,
02:47my first week of testing some FAQs.
02:49So first up, there is a size difference versus last year.
02:52The base phones are the same sizes, like I said, 6.1 and 6.7 inch in the same body sizes,
02:58but the pro phones are both bigger.
03:01The 16 pro goes from 6.1 to 6.3 inches.
03:04And even though it has thinner bezels, yes, the phone is slightly taller and slightly
03:09wider.
03:10And then the 16 pro max goes from 6.7 inches to 6.9 inches diagonally, which is now just
03:17an absolutely gigantic phone.
03:18I mean, it was already huge, but it's now even taller and wider, biggest phone they've
03:22ever made.
03:23If you look at it next to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, that's another absolutely huge phone for some
03:27context.
03:28And that phone has a stylus in it.
03:29So obviously Apple's put more battery in this phone, which is great to see.
03:32I'm glad they're not going the opposite direction of like making it thinner or shrinking the
03:37batteries.
03:38But yeah, it's definitely good to know if you're going with the new pro max this year,
03:40you are getting a truly huge like borderline tablet size phone.
03:44Also random tidbit, thanks to these new cameras up in the corners, these new iPhones are big
03:49time table rockers, like big time, uneven camera on the back.
03:54It's annoying to me because I type on the table sometimes.
03:57Anyway, I've also been taking some pictures and videos with the new cameras.
04:00I'll be taking and posting many, many more.
04:02If you want to follow me on Instagram, that's where you'll see some more in the next couple
04:05of days.
04:06But I'll link that below.
04:07My first impression is it's kind of remarkable how consistent Apple's image processing pipeline
04:13is to get the same look every year.
04:16Like a lot of times you see companies switch sensors, even the pixel switch sensors after
04:20using the same old one for a while and the whole look kind of changed, but it really
04:24feels like year over year, no matter how many hardware changes, no matter how many sensor
04:28changes these phones go through, they still just have very much have the iPhone look,
04:32which I mean, makes sense.
04:34This just shallower depth of field from the larger physical sensor.
04:36I have also run some benchmarks.
04:38So these are the new geek bench six scores for the new A18 and A18 pro in these phones,
04:43which are new versus last year.
04:46So you're probably not noticing like a huge difference in performance with these brand
04:49new phones.
04:50Obviously you're going to feel that more at the very high end and in the longterm as these
04:53phones age.
04:54But what geek bench also did reveal is all of these phones across the board have eight
04:58gigs of RAM now.
04:59So there's typically been different amounts of RAM in the pro phone versus the regular
05:02phone.
05:03Now there's not.
05:04Now they all have eight gigs of RAM.
05:05So Apple was giving us a lot of talk in that keynote about how these are the first phones
05:10built from the ground up for Apple intelligence.
05:15Is that what this means?
05:16I mean, you clearly need a lot of memory to run these AI models.
05:19And there's also a more powerful neural engine on all the phones versus last year.
05:23So maybe that's a part of it too.
05:25But all that talk and these phones all launch with iOS 18.0, which has exactly zero Apple
05:33intelligence features on them at launch out the box.
05:38But that's a rant for another day.
05:39But clearly the biggest physical new change on these new phones is this added button here.
05:46And Apple refused to call it a button in the keynote and then doubled down.
05:51They also, they did a bunch of like executive interviews on various YouTube channels that
05:54you can go watch from that day.
05:56And even in those interviews, they continue to refuse to call it a button.
06:01It's so weird to just put out the biggest burning fire right up front in the discourse.
06:07It is a real button, right?
06:10It's a physical thing that depresses, right?
06:13I think it's a first of its kind.
06:14It's there's a, there is a tactile switch that gives you that, that final click.
06:19So just to clear it up, it is an actual moving clicking physical button that is called camera
06:25control, but it's also, it's more than a button.
06:28It's also made it to all these phones, not just the pros.
06:31So let me jump into that.
06:32This camera control button, as the name implies, only controls camera related things.
06:38So it's not like another action button.
06:40It's a camera control button.
06:41You can hit it once it opens up the camera.
06:44You can hit it again to take a photo and then you can hold it down to start recording a
06:47quick video.
06:48But it's also a large capacitive touch sensitive surface with a vibration motor underneath.
06:53So it doesn't actually half press, but with that vibration motor, it can mimic the feeling
06:57of a half press like a real camera would have.
07:00Then you can double tap to flip through various camera controls like zoom or photographic
07:05styles or tone.
07:06It takes some getting used to, I mean, these swipes, they also, you can see how momentum
07:10physics too.
07:11So you can swipe too fast or too far and go past what you were aiming for or zoom past
07:16where you thought you would.
07:17So it can feel a bit finicky and silly as you start using it, especially since you can
07:21literally do all this stuff with the buttons already on the screen.
07:24But when you use camera control, all of the rest of those buttons just fade away and disappear,
07:29kind of encouraging you to continue using the camera control to find what you're trying
07:33to do.
07:34It's really interesting.
07:35The placement feels like it was made with landscape in mind, but landscape ideally would
07:40have been at the corner.
07:42But they also know a lot of people take photos and videos like this, so it can't be all the
07:45way at the bottom.
07:46So they moved it up.
07:47So it's kind of splitting the difference here.
07:50And also third party apps will be able to plug into it if they use the camera.
07:55So this is already working with Kino and it's supposed to start working with Snapchat pretty
07:59soon as well.
08:00And you can imagine other apps that use a camera will just decide what they want to
08:03do with it.
08:04I was also curious though, and I said this in that original impressions video, how cases
08:08would deal with this new button surface thing.
08:11So it turns out there's basically two options.
08:13Option number one is just a cutout in the side of the case.
08:18Just cut it out, expose it to the finger.
08:20So it's fine.
08:21That's probably what most cheap cases will do.
08:23But that also means it's no longer going to be flush with the side of the case.
08:28But then there's option number two, which is what Apple's first party cases do, which
08:31is putting in this little insert, which has glass and transfers the capacitance from the
08:37button outside of the case to the camera control of the phone itself and maintaining that flush
08:42feel.
08:43And it feels like it works pretty well.
08:45The half press still works fine.
08:46The swiping still works fine.
08:48The vibration motor transfers through.
08:50And the Beats by Dre cases also already have this.
08:54Yeah, I'm just going to say that again real quick in case you were just phasing out for
08:58a second.
09:00There's Beats by Dre iPhone cases now.
09:03Like since when does Beats make cases?
09:06Like why does Beats make cases?
09:08I thought, I don't know, there was a theme of like Beats being audio products, but there's
09:12something new going on here.
09:14Maybe now they're just iPhone accessories.
09:15I don't know.
09:16But yeah, they've got a nice little camera control button thing on their new iPhone cases,
09:20which is nice.
09:21I kind of wish, and I'm not alone, that this was also Touch ID, but then they couldn't
09:29call it camera control, I guess.
09:31I wonder if that's in the future of this button.
09:35But anyway, speaking of third-party accessories, that's where dbrand stepped in to sponsor
09:39this video.
09:40So for this sponsored segment, we're going to be doing something a little bit different.
09:43See screen protectors, not my favorite thing.
09:46They're kind of a chore to install between the dust and the alignment and getting it
09:50perfect.
09:52That's why I don't use them all the time.
09:53But that's where channel sponsor dbrand comes in.
09:57They seem to believe that I can install their PRISM 2.0 screen protector blindfolded.
10:04So that's what I'm going to try to do.
10:08Instructions have been told are pretty simple to just get the screen protector, get the
10:15phone, and then line it up, which is like that, and then pull the tab, like that.
10:30And then just swipe down the middle to press it down, give it a couple seconds, and then
10:40that should be it.
10:44Let's see, take this off, and that doesn't even look like it's installed, but it is.
10:57It totally is.
10:58And it's perfect.
10:59Nice.
11:00Okay.
11:01Yeah, every PRISM comes with two of these, so if you get the first one wrong, you can
11:04get a second try.
11:05But if you want to check these out for the iPhone or any number of phones that they make
11:09for it, I'll have a link below.
11:11All right, that's been it.
11:13Thanks for watching.
11:14Catch you in the next one.
11:15Peace.