Up-Close Look at the iPhone 16 Pro

Each fall, Apple aims to set a new standard for the best mobile phone on the market, introducing new features to its flagship iPhone model on an annual basis. Where the iPhone 15 Pro had some significant developments — including its A17 chip, lighter build, new USB-C port and Action Button — the iPhone 16 Pro, in all of its iterations, boasts more subtle yet still effective upgrades, like Apple Intelligence, a larger display, new pro camera features, improved graphics and more.

Upon picking up the titanium device, which boasts the thinnest borders on any Apple product to date, it’s clear that Apple has mastered its durable-to-lightweight ratio. Finished in four high-shine tones — black titanium, natural titanium, white titanium and desert titanium — the phone’s physical appearance is just as sleek as its predecessors. The iPhone 16 Pro measures 6.3 inches, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max measures 6.9 inches, which is the largest iPhone display to date. Immediately, you’ll notice a new Camera Control button on the side of the device, which has been added to intuitively streamline the user’s interactions with the advanced camera system: a 48MP Fusion lens that has a faster quad-pixel sensor for 4K120 fps video recording in Dolby Vision. With two light taps on the button, users can scroll through various controls, including zoom, exposure and depth of field, in such a way that makes the camera experience feel even more like the real thing.

Additionally, the device houses new Photographic Styles, which adjust color, highlights and shadows in real-time. Apple says the tool has a stronger understanding of skin undertones, so users have more control over how they (or their subjects) appear in images. In practice, the feature appeared to effectively update Apple’s on-device imagery, though it’ll be interesting to see how the features work on personal photos taken outside of their offices.

Built with the advanced A18 chip, the device is equipped with increased performance capabilities and power efficiency thanks to its second-generation three-nanometer technology, which further accelerates Apple Intelligence — the tech giant’s new digital assistant that’s able to understand and create both languages and images, take action across various applications and take clues from personal context to make everyday actions easier. Upon demonstration, the tool works flawlessly: it was able to instantly summarize a passage of text in the Notes app, create realistic message responses in Mail, change the tone of specified text with ease and transcribe and summarize audio.

Notably, Apple Intelligence uses Private Cloud Compute to maintain privacy for user data, safely maximizing the synergy between on-device processing and larger processes running on Apple silicon servers. The tool will launch as part of a free software update next month.

With the A18 chip, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max now have 17% higher memory bandwidth, which benefits the six-core GPU (which is now up to 20% faster, too). It’s the fastest in a smartphone, per the company, and it makes for an impressive addition when you consider its ability to run identical workloads to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models at a 15% faster rate with 20% less power. Additionally, the device’s battery, made with 100% recycled cobalt and over 95% recycled lithium, increased substantially to support 33 hours of video playback.

Overall, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max devices are fine-tuned additions to Apple’s ecosystem, and they come as the ideal upgrade for the more tech-savvy individuals capable of integrating advanced performance models like such into their daily routines or those who would simply like to upgrade their phone camera experience.

Pre-orders for the iPhone 16 Pro (starting at $999 USD) and iPhone 16 Pro Max (starting at $1,199 USD) began on Friday, September 13, and the device will officially launch on Friday, September 20. Take an up-close look at the devices in the galleries above.