So, should you buy the Apple iPhone 16?
The answer is YES, and NO.
Yes, for the folks who are looking for the latest and greatest iPhones in their pocket, which perform better than what they would need in the real world, and it is also a capable camera and content creation tool. The camera app has a set of new features that will let you move back to the native app if you are someone who likes granular control over your videos and photos. The microphone’s also fairly well-tuned to capture audio to compliment your videos well.
But, if Apple Intelligence was a selling point for you, I would say wait. Until Apple releases the full version of Apple Intelligence globally, you should not bother getting the Apple iPhone 16. By the time it rolls around, you will see a couple of online sales pass by and the price will drop. Then it would make sense to invest your hard-earned money towards the “latest and greatest” iPhone.
Apple’s techtember is over, and they have released their “latest and greatest” iPhones, the Apple Watch, and AirPods. Now, the devices are hitting the shelves and have been at our test labs for us to evaluate. And what do you do when you get a phone that is being lauded as the best ever by the brand? Well, you put it through the churner to find out whether the phone, in this case, the Apple iPhone 16, is worth spending 80K on or whether you should hold back and buy it later.
Apple has added quite a few new features to the iPhone 16, with the main highlight for creators being the Camera Control button and for the regular folk, Apple Intelligence. The latter hasn’t made its way to iPhones yet, and we are expecting it to fully roll out next year. Until then, the marketing materials and clips of the iPhone 16 launch are all that you have.
Now, given that Apple marketed their iPhone 16 lineup to be the first iPhone designed for Apple Intelligence, its absence was duly missed and noted when I put the iPhone 16 through our rigorous test process. Join in as we find out whether you should take the plunge right now, or wait till the price drops and Apple Intelligence is here in its full glory.
In terms of the design, at the front, the iPhone 16 isn’t much of a departure from its predecessor, the iPhone 15 series of phones. The display hasn’t changed much since the iPhone 15, other than the fact that the 16 has a 0.4 per cent higher screen-to-body ratio. Good luck noticing that. Just like the last generation, you get a 60 Hz display, which is way behind its time now. Apple, please fix.
The biggest change that we get here is on the sides and the back of the phone. On the side, there is the much talked about Camera Control button, which works really well, only if you can reach it comfortably though. In my time of use, I often found it difficult to reach with my hands, so keep an eye out for that.
On the back, you get the new camera housing with the two cameras of the phone arranged vertically on a much smaller island, which has exiled the flash to the side. The microphone retains its residency, though. When rested flat on the table without a cover, the phone wobbles quite a bit. And if I were you, I would either keep it screen-side down, or put it in a case. That’s because the bottom camera housing makes direct contact with the table. And I am pretty sure, with time, it will pick up some scuffs.
The in-hand feel of the iPhone 16 is amazing, with the rounded edges of the phone giving it a nice grip and feel. The aluminium housing is cold to touch and provides enough structural integrity to the phone, despite the new camera button adding a potential point of failure. And if you are one for carrying your phone as a style statement, then you are in luck, as the iPhone 16 comes in 5 different colours to choose from. The one with me is the Ultramarine colour, and honestly, I like it quite a bit.
Enough about the build and design. Let’s talk about the features of the iPhone 16.
Right off the bat, the biggest highlight of the iPhone 16 series is Apple Intelligence. But, it won’t be making an appearance on iPhones until next year, with support for Indian English, coming even later. Why even talk about it when you are not shipping it at the time of release?
Apple could have easily held back and announced its arrival at WWDC, much closer to the actual date of it showing up on iPhones. With that out of the way, iPhone 16 ships out of the box with iOS 18, which comes with its own trinkets and features that Apple fans had been waiting for years.
You can hide apps, lock them behind FaceID, and customise your home screen with much more control in your hands. Look at that, I can change the colour of my icons! WHAT A FEATURE?! Eh, Whatever. I will let Boo-Man spell it out for me. Wait for his rant on the iPhones. I have been seeing him linger around my desk quite a bit and he has something cooking, I am sure.
The action button is the same from last year, and apart from that, there’s not much to say. The compatibility of the iPhone with the rest of the devices in the ecosystem is as good as ever, and there’s not much to complain about on the software side of things in daily use. iOS 18 is a much-needed step up, but it is not enough of a reason to upgrade to the 16. Now, on to the display.
The display of the iPhone 16 is same as that of the base 15 from last year. The 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED panel has great colour representation, and you get what you would expect from an iPhone – Vivid colours that are pleasing to the eye and deep blacks, making content consumption a fairly immersive experience when viewing high-fidelity content on platforms like Netflix.
In terms of the brightness, the iPhone peaked at 1568 nits of brightness in bright daylight and dipped to just 1 nit in dark environments.
When fiddling around with the settings, I found an always-on display option, but no toggle in the menu. What’s up there, no one knows.
The 60Hz display, rather, the lack of ProMotion is again a pain point that Apple has not addressed and if you are coming from a higher refresh rate screen, you will definitely notice the difference.
When it comes to the performance, Apple has aced it yet again. In the price range, the Apple iPhone 16 is one of the best-performing phones of all time! If you are one for the numbers, then here are the benchmark scores of the iPhone 16.
In AnTuTu, the phone scored – 16,31,715. In other benchmarks like 3D Mark, GFX bench, and Geekbench, again, the scores were impressive, and as you can see, the delta between the competing Samsung and Google flagships is almost always in favour of the iPhone 16. The storage is also snappy and even trumped its beefier cousin, the 16 Pro Max in our PC Mark sequential write test
Now, with the numbers out of the way, let’s talk about the real-world performance. Be it opening and closing apps, running fairly heavy applications or even gaming, the Apple iPhone 16 does the job really well. CoD mobile with Max settings works really well. There were a few frame drops once the phone heated up, but nothing major.
Given that Apple is positioning its new iPhones as the All-in-one creator-centric device, I used Adobe Premier Rush to render a quick 4K video, and the phone handled it with ease. I even hooked it up to a monitor using a USB C Cable for live preview when using the App, and even that task was a breeze for the iPhone 16. Staying on the topic of content creation with the iPhone 16, let’s talk about its camera performance.
The Apple iPhone 16 comes with a dual camera setup in the back, with a 12MP ultrawide shooter complimenting the 48 MP main shooter, both of which are pretty much the same as the iPhone 15. The iPhone 16’s camera shined bright in well-lit environments, be it selfies, portraits or scenery shots taken on the phone.
As you can see in the camera samples, the edge detection in natural light portraits is fairly on point, and the details and the dynamic range in complex scenarios are pretty well presented. In night-time photography, though, the Apple iPhone 16 struggled a bit.
When shooting complex scenes, the phone retained details and the dynamic range pretty well, but as you can see in this picture of my Jordans, there was pretty bad artifacting taking place when I switched to the ultra-wide camera. The phone tried to detail the shoe but failed spectacularly. I switched on the flash in favour of the 3-second shutter speed, and the results improved immediately.
As for the videos, the iPhone 16 pretty much does the job really well when it comes to recording videos. The videos are sharp, have detail in well-lit conditions, and a little bit of noise that creeps in at night or in poorly lit environments, but all in all, it is manageable. All in all, the iPhone’s prowess as a camera-centric phone, which has the potential to be a one-stop destination for creators, is shining through on the Apple iPhone 16.
The camera app itself has gotten a fair bit of customisations for the power users out there, bagging a few brownie points for Apple here.
The Apple iPhone 16 packs a 3561 mAh battery capable of fast charging which will top up the battery to 50 per cent in just half an hour. In real-world applications, using a 45W PD charger, I was able to charge the phone from zero to 100 in 98 minutes. If you are a fan of wireless charging, then you will get 25W of fast charging using the MagSafe puck, and 15W with a Qi2 certified charger.
Again, for the fan of the stats, the Apple iPhone 16 in our test, lasted around 18 hours in our 4K video loop test and reported fairly minimal drops in battery in our gaming and GPS navigation tests.
In real world, this translates to about one and a half days of power if you are a light user, mostly texting on your phone and in a good cellular and WiFi reception area. If you are a power user, shooting, editing and gaming on your iPhone 16, then you might be able to squeeze out about 7-8 hours of battery with some power management.
So, should you buy the Apple iPhone 16?
The answer is YES, and NO.
Yes, for the folks who are looking for the latest and greatest iPhones in their pocket, which perform better than what they would need in the real world, and it is also a capable camera and content creation tool. The camera app has a set of new features that will let you move back to the native app if you are someone who likes granular control over your videos and photos. The microphone’s also fairly well-tuned to capture audio to compliment your videos well.
But, if Apple Intelligence was a selling point for you, I would say wait. Until Apple releases the full version of Apple Intelligence globally, you should not bother getting the Apple iPhone 16. By the time it rolls around, you will see a couple of online sales pass by and the price will drop. Then it would make sense to invest your hard-earned money towards the “latest and greatest” iPhone.
