Apple iPhone 16 in for review

This is the iPhone 16 – the entry-level model in Apple’s new 16 lineup. But first – a peak inside the box – as before, you get a braided USB-C cable and a SIM tool and that’s that.

The iPhone 16 is more efficient thanks to the A18, a 3nm SoC to the 4nm A16 Bionic. You still get the same 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine, however.

The RAM is up to 8GB – increased from 6GB on the previous iPhone. You also get a bigger battery, which Apple says is good for 22 hours of video streaming – 2 hours more than the iPhone 15.

The ultrawide angle camera is new, but it’s not the same new ultrawide from the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max – it’s a 12 MP unit with autofocus and a macro mode. The realigned dual camera system looks better and can capture spatial video for your Apple Vision Pro.

The biggest addition is the new camera control button, which Apple uncharacteristically brought to the non-Pro phones as well.

It’s a physical button that recognizes both capacitive touch gestures and pressure. It is very smart. You can open the camera from locked or any screen and dive deep into photographic settings all without touching the screen.

The new camera button

The button, spec bump, new ultrawide, and battery increase shape up to a solid yearly upgrade. But we can’t let Apple’s stubbornness with the same old 60Hz panel slide for yet another year. It’s the old 6.1-inch unit with the fat bezels, too, not the 6.3-inch of the iPhone 16 Pro.

We get that the majority of vanilla iPhone buyers don’t need a high refresh rate, or care for it. But from a market perspective, this nearly €1,000 phone is put to shame by just about every midrange Android phone that’s launched in the past two years.

Apple iPhone 16