iPhone 16 Series: Features, Improvements, and Innovations Explained

The iPhone 16 series impresses with enhanced audio features and gaming capabilities, but major camera upgrades are reserved for the Pro models.

### Unboxing and Review of the iPhone 16 Series: Features, Performance, and Innovations
* 📦 The iPhone 16 series includes the iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max, with Apple claiming a **6% smaller packaging** compared to last year's models.
* 🔌 Inside the box, users will find a USB-C cable and SIM ejector, but notably, **no Apple stickers this time**.
* 🎨 The iPhone 16 Plus introduces appealing new colors, resembling **true blue and pink**, which adds a **fresh touch** to the lineup.
* 🔊 A standout feature is the **audio mixing capability**, allowing users to **prioritize audio from different sources** during video recording, enhancing the **overall experience**.
* 🎮 The iPhone 16 boasts a chip upgrade, providing access to a **wider library of console games**, with **impressive performance in gaming**, although some visual settings may be **dialed back**.
* 📸 Camera updates include a new layout and features like spatial video, which, while **lower in quality**, offers a **unique experience** for users with Vision Pro devices.
* 🔍 The ultrawide camera now has **autofocus**, enabling **closer macro shots**, and while the main camera hasn’t changed drastically, improvements in **low-light performance** and **detail** are noticeable.
* 💡 Despite the introduction of Apple intelligence, many features are not exclusive to the new models, leading to a perception that the iPhone 16 series, while solid, may not be **revolutionary for current users**.

this is the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Plus, the 16 Pro, and the 16 Pro Max. So, every new iPhone, as well as a bucket load of new accessories, and this is where we find out if these things are actually good or not. So, let's unbox the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus first and notice Apple did say this is now an even smaller package compared to last year's phones. I have to be honest, I can barely tell the difference. It's about 6% smaller in reality, but it does look like they have rearranged the entire inside to accommodate this shrink. So, now you get the phone, there's a USB-C cable combined with a SIM ejector, and it looks like no Apple stickers this time around. And here's our iPhone 16. These are also apparently the first iPhones to have 100% wood fiber-based packaging, which is good, although last year's phones had 99%, so let's not get too excited. And this is the iPhone 16 Plus, and I'm actually kind of happy about these.

colors. This is the closest we've been in a long time to, well, just actually proper blue and pink. Very expensive gender reveal anyone? So, having actually used the phones, I would genuinely say the audio mixing feature is unexpectedly crazy cool. So, you guys start having a conversation now, and while they're talking behind the phone, I'm talking to you guys standing in front of the phone. So, this is kind of like the equivalent of me being on a movie set, and I'm the cameraman, and they're the actors that I'm filming. Hey, let's see what that clip looked like. So, open it up, head into the edit, and then click audio mix. So, there's four options here. We'll start with a default way that the iPhone sounds, and while they're talking behind the phone, I'm talking FR bit of a mess, right? But then you click in frame flow. So, you want flow, it's like really fine and eggs, you want really rich. My audio basically disappears. It's like a magic trick. There is more to this feature, but I'll

get to it when we talk about the pro phones. Okay, so what about gaming? Because the iPhone 16s have jumped forward two generations in terms of their chip this time around. This should be one of the biggest changes and now also means that these phones have access to that same library of console games that only the pros could play last year. So why don't we see how they run? Man, the idea of playing like proper console Assassin's Creed on my phone is basically a childhood dream. Okay, really impressive draw distances meaning that like it's kind of crazy that I can see stuff happening on the other side of this massive city. The game is running smooth. It's a very consistent 30 frames per second. I would say you can tell that a lot of settings have had to be very far dialed back from the console versions to the point where it does kind of still look like a mobile game. But then the upside is that it doesn't feel like a mobile game in terms of the scope of it.

it's massive. I'm impressed. I'm not blown away, but I'm impressed. Now, two of the most obvious changes on the iPhone 16 are both camera-related. One is the new layout of the cameras, which unlocks this new option in the camera app called spatial video. And I have played around with it. It's lower quality than normal video. It only shoots in 1080p. But if you do somehow happen to have a Vision Pro lying around, it is surprisingly transportative. It really does take you there. But then again, you know, this was the first time I used my Vision Pro since my review 6 months ago. This isn't a useful enough gadget for this feature that only works on this gadget to mean anything, but that might change in the future. The second thing is this new camera control that you get on the side. This is the thing that's in all the TikToks. This is what people are talking about. So, a heavy press on it takes a photo. A light press activates the Zoom slider. So, you have full control over

Zoom by swiping along it, and then a double light press opens up a menu which, if you don't want the swipe gesture to control Zoom, allows you to select something else that it can control. And when I first went hands-on with it, my very first hot take was why, like who asked for this. So now that I've had some proper time to get to know it, how has my opinion changed? Well, it has allowed me to appreciate the attention to detail that's gone into it. I like the fact that it's flush with the body of the phone, so it's not yet another protrusion that makes a thing uncomfortable to hold. I like that you have a surprising amount of control over how the control works with settings like how firm you need to press to activate the thing. I like the little bit of haptic feedback you get every time you hit a key magnification number as you're zooming in. It is quite cool that the official Apple cases cover and protect the camera control while keeping the swiping gestures completely.

usable, but no, my opinion has not changed. I think this is dumb. You have to lower your grip to reach it. You have to arch your thumb in a way that genuinely causes me hand strain. You got to hold your phone tighter than usual 'cause you're now supporting it less. And after all that, you're more likely to get last-minute camera shake because you're heavy-pressing a button as opposed to lightly tapping your screen. And if that wasn't enough, it also feels like in trying to make this camera control work for both the portrait orientations and the landscape orientations, they've just made it not good with either. Because for portrait, it needs to be higher up so you're not going like this, and for landscape, it needs to be lower like here so you can actually reach it without using some weird unconventional hand claw. Separately, though, I will say I appreciate how you can now pause a video recording so you can have multiple separate clips in one video as opposed to having multiple videos, and also how you don't need to stop whatever music is

playing on your phone when you start recording. These are both overdue but good improvements for creators in iOS 18. But what about the photo quality? Because while the main camera hasn't changed on this 16, you know that new A18 chip that the phone has does contain a brand new image signal processor, which every year is becoming a bigger factor for your photos. So I thought this would be a fun thing to do. This is the iPhone 16, this is last year's iPhone 15, and then this is an iPhone 12, which I imagine is closer to what most of you might be upgrading from. Okay, I'm a jump in the shot and finger guns. Why did I say that right? Yeah, there's basically zero difference between the 15 and the 16. You can definitely see substantial upgrades from the 12 in terms of detail, texture, color. That's not really something to brag about, that's expected. And between the 15 and 16, I can't see anything. The 16 though can get way closer to things to

take macro photos now that the ultrawide camera has autofocus, and there is some improvement to the colors and the overall smoothness when it comes to night photos. I guess because there's more processing in low light shots, you notice the difference in the processor more. Oh yeah, and the other thing, because the chip is faster this time around, these new iPhones can do way better quality quick take video. You know when you're in photo mode, but you just need to capture something right now. You can hold down on the camera button, and iPhones used to take a squarish-looking lower resolution video. That's what most phones do because when you're in photo mode, your phone is ready and geared to taking photos, not video. But the new phones can just go straight into full resolution 4K recording. But let's be very clear, if what you're after is big camera improvements, this ain't it. That's coming on the 16 Pros, which I'm getting to. The only other camera feature that Apple did spend a fair bit of time

talking about is photographic Styles and how this year they're splitting these Styles into mood, which are more the Striking filter-like settings, and then undertones, which are more about how you want to look in your photos. Traditionally, iPhones have always tended to make skin tones a little warmer than they are in reality, but the idea of these undertones is to give that control back to you to decide. That said, I've tested all of them, and all it did was make me come to the conclusion that I prefer the standard one that iPhones have been using by default since the beginning. Okay, only other thing that I wanted to mention before we go to the pro iPhones is at the launch event. Apple said that the glass on the front of these phones is 50% stronger than last gen, and that meant basically nothing to anyone because they didn't explain it. But I think I've managed to find out how now. So, the problem with glass on its own is that the atoms within glass have a pretty weak structure. Their Arrangement is

disordered, which means that if you apply pressure to glass, the atoms can't smoothly glide over each other, so the material doesn't flex; it shatters. And so, a few years ago, Apple realized that by infusing that glass with tiny clear pieces of ceramic, which has a much more organized 3D matrix of atoms, they could create more structure within the display and therefore more ability to withstand pressure. And so, the new thing this time round is they've improved the organization of ceramic within the glass, which increases the compressive stress capacity of the display. Or, in other words, this might not be significantly less likely to crack, but if it does crack, that crack is a lot less likely to spread out across the entire screen. So, there you go. I had to make sure I got to the bottom of that one, and that's basically it for all the new stuff that the iPhone 16s do, except for the action button, which the pro phones had last year, a better battery, and Apple intelligence. But I'm getting to that. Okay, time for the top-end phones, iPhone

16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. They used to do this cool thing where the base phones had white packaging, and the pros came with black, but I guess that's officially buried now. Maybe the colored dies were adding to the pollution. So, this is the 16 Pro, which we have in the same natural titanium color as last year's phones came in. And then for the Pro Max, this is Desert titanium, which is the only new color this year. I feel like Apple is really spacing out the innovation here, and honestly, to me, this feels disappointingly stale for the one flagship new color. But then, while we're here, this is what the new cases look like. So, it seems like fine woven cases are officially dead. That's probably for the best, but it's quite funny how much of a disaster that was. So, we're back to silicon now, and this is, I mean, it's good quality, but it is expensive for a case. There's the new clear case, which I would personally never go for 'cause they just get sticky and fingerprint, and these are

the new AirPods 4 with noise cancellation, which come with a set of papers for some reason, and then it's just the earphones in their case. And I have tested these, by the way, so quick mini-review: good product. They don't feel too big in your ears, so you completely forget they're there. They're super light, but then at the same time, they give like zero indication that they could fall out when you shake your head around. The noise cancellation is the best I have ever heard for earphones with no ear tips, and there's practically zero leakage either, even for people sitting right next to you. The sound quality isn't as good as the AirPods Pro, and I'd say that even though the noise cancellation does make them sound quite a bit better than the previous standard AirPods, you wouldn't have to look hard to find better-sounding earphones for $180. But they sound a lot better than the previous-gen standard AirPods, mostly thanks to the noise isolation. So, I'm still going to stick to the Pros, but I'm

Glad to see that there is now a decent Apple-made option for people who don't like the feeling of pressure that you can get from ear tips. Okay, and then finally for this unboxing, this is the upgraded MagSafe charger. It is cool how every single product, down to the accessories, has the same peeling experience and that it always seems to work. And then the kind of chunky 30W power brick that lets you get the best speed out of that MagSafe charger. More on these in a bit. So first thing I want to look at with these phones is audio. You know how we looked at the audio mixing feature on the base iPhones? Well, while the feature does completely work both on the non-pro and the pros, it's even better on the pros thanks to four supposedly studio-grade microphones. And so I thought these phones would be a really cool way to show you this other type of audio mix called Studio that makes the microphones sound like they're really close to your mouth. Check this.

out so this is me talking to you using normal phone audio, and it sounds phone-like. You hear a little bit of everything. This is what it sounds like when we switch over to studio. And as someone who spends a lot of time messing around with microphones, trying to get the best out of every scene, I find this absolutely mind-blowing. It is crazy that this is recorded on a phone and nothing else. That said, you can have the coolest, most unique, innovative feature in the world, but will I actually use this audio mix stuff? Probably not that often. It's nice to have the reassurance that at any time I want, I can, 'cause every iPhone 16 is recording spatial 360 audio by default anyway, so it's not like you're having to do or think about anything extra. But yeah, I am struggling to see the average user trolling through their entire library of videos, tweaking whose audio they want to prioritize in each clip, but different story entirely if you're buying the iPhone as your main filmmaking tool for most of our videos. I

still prefer the way that Sony camera looks and the way that a road microphone sounds. But if you're looking at the iPhone 16 Pro to be your primary content creation device, then the audio on them just got very quickly very good. But camera quality should actually be the biggest upgrade this year. So this is an iPhone 15 Pro Max. This is an iPhone 16 Pro Max. And that is a particularly challenging lighting environment. We are shooting against the sun. All right, hit me. And that looks basically the same. Although the 16 Pro Max is actually slightly better at keeping the blue sky looking blue even through the trees. But the main benefit of the new phone over the old phone is not actually meant to be picture quality. It's meant to be the fact that the new phone has a faster sensor that can capture more information quickly. So can you take photos faster? Little known feature of the iPhones, by the way. If you tap and hold the shutter button and drag it to the left-hand side, you rapid fire. And nope, they have shot.

the exact same number of photos. I will say though, if you just mash that shutter button, then the new iPhone is definitely taking more shots and it's freezing up less, but no one does that. What actually would be useful to see though is if you just wanted to take one high-resolution 48-megapixel photo. Can the new phone take it faster? So, I'm going to stand in front of these phones, I'm going to throw this ball in the air, and we're going to capture at exactly the same time. So, in theory, whichever phone's photo has the ball lower in the air has captured the photo faster. 3, 2, 1. Oh my God, you took these at the same time. Yeah, it's actually so quick you don't even see the shutter. That's actually a much bigger difference than I was expecting. It looks like I've used AI to remove the ball on the first photo, but it's actually just disappeared out of the frame. Man, I swear this is like the coolest thing I own, but the main tangible benefit to this faster

sensor according to Apple, at least, is meant to be video where the iPhone 15 Pros can shoot a max of 4K video at 60 frames per second. The new phone can do 4K 120, but let's actually investigate that. So, this is a water balloon. I'm actually pretty scared this is going to be explosive. Oh God. Also, separate note, even though the screen on the new phone is meant to be just as bright as that of the old phone, we can't get it to the same level of brightness. It seems to be consistently slightly dimmer. But hey, at least as far as the video quality is concerned, it looks like there is basically zero compromise. Even though we've doubled the frame rate from last year, I have seen 4K 120 on other phones before, but it has never looked this good. And the nice thing about this frame rate is you can slow that footage down four times and still get a smooth result. The previous 60 frame per second footage kind of falls apart here, right? So what

about how much storage space it takes up. So, the clip is 1 minute 25 on both phones, and the storage size is not quite double but very nearly double. So, 1 minute 25 is nearly a gab. That means that the entire storage of the iPhone 16 Pro base model, so 128 gigs, will be taken up with less than 3 hours of footage on the camera. That is not good. Also, another thing that I thought was interesting was, let's say I take a video at 12 frames per second. I slow that down to 25% speed on my phone, but then I want to share that video with someone else. You get options. You can either share that video with no metadata, which means that the other person will just get the video as you intended it to be, or you send with everything, which means that they get all of this info associated with that file, and they can reverse engineer it themselves. And same thing for photographic styles. You can take a photo in one style. You can decide later if you

want to shift over to a different style, and then if you share it, the other person can also completely reverse any tone changes you've made or tweak it in a different direction, all without any loss to image quality because the details of the original image are baked into the data of the shot, even when it's edited. However, it's actually the ultrawide cameras that I'm most curious about. The new phone has a 48-megapixel ultrawide camera, which will still actually shoot 12-megap photos like the last phone by default. So, what you need to do is to tap Heath Max here, and once you've done that, once you never need to do it again. It means that from now on, your phone will always shoot the highest resolution photo that it possibly can, depending on what Zoom magnification you're using. Although it's not for free because everything is going to take up more storage space, and also, even though the main camera, as we've seen, has this faster sensor that can capture these high-resolution photos quicker, the

ultrawide does not, so that takes longer to capture on this mode. That said, if the quality is much better, then worthwhile tradeoff. Let's see. Oh yes, actually substantial detail upgrade, and actually if you look at the fabric on my hoodie, you can see quite a bit less noise as well. Not to mention, it's managed to brighten my dark joggers a little bit. So the high dynamic range is better. It's actually just all around a vastly upgraded photo, and also a more detailed ultrawide camera should also mean more detailed macro photos. Ah okay, this is working a little different to how I expected. So I was expecting that because this is a 48-megap Ultra wide camera, you would actually be able to take 48 map macro photos. But when you're on the automatic macro mode of the phone and you take a shot, it's still actually only taking a 12-megap photo because the phone is actually cropping into that 48-megap sensor to get as close as possible.

that said, because you're cropping in using a higher resolution base, the new phone's macros are still noticeably more detailed than the old phones. I also took a bunch of night photos to see if I could spot any trends, and there is definitely an improvement, but it's definitely not a massive improvement. Right before we get to the real elephant in the room with this whole Apple intelligence shenanigan, let's talk charging. And by the way, if you want to have basically unlimited power on the go, then this MagSafe power bank from ESI, our sponsor, is kind of wild. It's got a 5,000 mAh capacity, it can charge your phone with a wire, but it also supports the new CH2 wireless charging standard, and that means it will charge your phone about 30 minutes faster than other power banks like it, while being 38% slimmer and having a kickstand built into the thing. They also have this separate range of Cryoboost chargers, which solve the biggest problem with wireless charging: it generates a ton of heat, and so every

cryoboost charger has a cooling fan. Oh, I can actually feel the air coming out of a heat dissipation chamber, as well as AI wizardry to keep temperatures down and therefore wireless charging fast and your phone healthy in the long term. And this one charger can handle your watch, your AirPods, and your phone at the same time. But yeah, I use ESR stuff on the daily because of how much you get for the money, so link below for the full lineup. So these new iPhones are kind of weird when it comes to charging. Like I said, the next-gen industry standard for wireless charging is CH2, which allows phones to charge with 15 watts of power. These phones can actually charge with up to 25 watts if you splurged on almost $100 combo of Apple's 25W MagSafe charger and 30W brick. You need a higher power brick because some power is lost when you're wireless charging, but then at the same time, Apple's wired charging speed is so slow compared to the

competition that they are maybe the only company whose wireless charging is apparently the same speed as their wired charging feels like yet another indicator that Apple is really eyeing up the idea of a completely portless iPhone one day. Okay, so the final question that we need to answer is Apple intelligence. Is it good? Does it save the iPhone 16s from becoming what would otherwise be a very minor update? Well, here's where I have a couple of bones to pick. Firstly, if you buy an iPhone 16 now, you will not get Apple intelligence straight out the box. It's coming in a software update later, although I've set up a beta so that I can show you now. And secondly, it's not exclusive to these FMS, which isn't in itself a problem. It's good when more people can experience these features, but it just makes the launch event feel a little misleading 'cause Apple spent half of the iPhone 16 section talking about Apple intelligence, but then the fact that almost everything also works on the iPhone 15 Pro means

that those features have very little to do with iPhone 16 hardware. Anyways, here's my rapid-fire thoughts having spent some time with Apple intelligence. Now, the summaries that it gives you to your emails are actually a really useful way to quickly catch up with a full context of a conversation. Cleanup is a really quick, snappy way to remove distractions from photos, but I would actually say its results seem less good than they do on my Google Pixel. I really like the way that smart replies are integrated, but it only works for answering specific types of questions and doesn't exactly do it with much pizzazz. It's a little flat with how it responds. One of the key categories of features is writing tools. They're available system-wide, so whatever app you're in, if you highlight a bunch of text and tap writing tools, you get these options. And I don't really use any of these rewriting tools 'cause I just, for me, tone is so important, and something in my tone always seems to get lost whenever I try it. The key points and summary

features, though, are really cool at distilling big chunks of text down to smaller bites. I just I don't use them myself because I don't quite trust them. Like if I'm saying something on a video to potentially millions of people, I need to double, triple check that that information is right. Whereas getting my information through an AI's interpretation of a source as opposed to the source itself is like a fast track to something getting lost in communication. And that's basically all I can really test properly with the current beta. I've got high hopes for Siri once it gets chat GPT integration, but right now it's not doing much more than the Siri you're used to. So as for what I think to all of these new iPhones, even though it feels like we're on the precipice of transformative change to the software, most of those things aren't here yet. And what was meant to be one of the biggest hardware changes, this camera control, is I think a bit of a stretch in both senses of the word.

said while they're not the most exciting phones to upgrade to. If you're on like an iPhone 12 and you've been holding out for the next thing, they are safe phones to upgrade to. They're fast. The base iPhone 16s have good screens, and the pros have great screens this time. Although the base iPhones do still have that 60 Hz refresh rate, which if you're used to having better will make them feel laggy. But also, battery improvements are always very appreciated over here, and the battery has been great on all of these new phones. But more on that in my battery test, which is hopefully going live in a couple of days. So see you there.

iPhone 16 / 16 Pro Unboxing - Testing every new feature!

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The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus have a slightly smaller package and feature 100% wood fiber-based packaging.

The new color options for the 16 Plus are a closer match to traditional blue and pink.

The iPhone 16's audio mixing feature and gaming capabilities have significantly improved, while the new camera layout offers spatial video and enhanced camera control.

The iPhone 16 introduces a new camera control feature that allows zooming and menu selection through swiping and pressing, although the reviewer finds it uncomfortable and unnecessary.

The phone's design and settings provide a surprising amount of control, but the grip and hand strain caused by the control's placement are problematic.

While there are some improvements in video recording and photo quality, the reviewer notes that the differences between the iPhone 15 and 16 are minimal, with more significant upgrades expected from the 16 Pro models.

Apple's New Photographic Styles and iPhone 16 Features

Apple is splitting photographic styles into mood and undertones, giving users more control over their skin tones in photos.

The front glass of the iPhone 16 is 50% stronger, with improved ceramic infusion for better pressure resistance.

The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max offer a new color and updated cases, but overall, the innovation feels stale.

The AirPods 4 feature noise cancellation and a lightweight design, making them comfortable to wear without the feeling of falling out.

While they offer better sound quality than the previous standard AirPods, they are not as good as the AirPods Pro.

The iPhone 16's audio mixing feature, especially on the Pro model, uses studio-grade microphones for impressive audio recording, with spatial 360 audio being recorded by default.

Comparing iPhone 15 Pro Max and 16 Pro Max

The iPhone 16 Pro Max offers improved audio and a faster sensor for better photo capture.

While the camera quality is similar, the new phone can take photos and shoot 4K video at 120 frames per second, doubling the frame rate from the previous model.

The faster sensor also allows for smoother slow-motion footage, making it ideal for content creation.

Storage and Camera Features of the iPhone 16 Pro

The iPhone 16 Pro's 128GB storage can be nearly filled with just 3 hours of footage.

The phone offers options to share videos and photos with or without metadata, allowing for reverse engineering of edits.

The new 48-megapixel ultrawide camera shoots 12-megapixel photos by default, with the option to switch to higher resolution, but it takes longer to capture and requires more storage.

Apple's iPhone 16: Key Updates and Charging Innovations

The iPhone 16's macros are more detailed than its predecessor, with a slight improvement in night photos.

The new MagSafe power bank offers faster wireless charging and has a cooling fan to combat heat.

Apple's charging strategy is unique, with wireless and wired charging speeds being similar, and the upcoming Apple intelligence features will also be available on the iPhone 15 Pro.

The iPhone 16's new features, driven by Apple intelligence, include useful email summaries and a photo cleanup tool, though the latter's results are not as impressive as on the Google Pixel.

Smart replies are integrated for specific questions but lack excitement in their responses.

The writing tools available system-wide are not personally useful, and while the key points and summary features are cool, they are not trusted for important information.

The iPhone 16 offers safe upgrades with fast performance, good screens, and improved battery life, but the base models still have a 60 Hz refresh rate.