When you buy through our links, Business Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
It would be tough for Apple to match the iPhone 15's sheer number of year-over-year upgrades in the iPhone 16. Yet, the iPhone 16's list of upgrades isn't too far off, and it puts on an excellent show.
Premium features once exclusive to the iPhone Pro models continue to trickle down, like the Action button, macro photography, and ray tracing for games. Apple also gave the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus new features and improvements, like the new Camera Control button and faster MagSafe charging. All iPhone 16 users, not just iPhone 16 Pro owners, have access to Apple Intelligence features, which we've found increasingly useful and promising but in need of refinement.
Add a sprinkle of incredible performance that exceeds expectations, an improved ultrawide camera, and Photographic Styles you can add after taking a shot, and the base iPhone 16 models are remarkable devices that continue to blur the line between the entry-level and Pro options.
Apple spoils the mood with the iPhone 16's outdated 60Hz display, as high-refresh-rate displays remain an iPhone Pro feature for now. You also won't find a dedicated zoom camera or the more powerful A18 Pro processor in the base iPhone 16 models, but that's understandable. Either way, Apple is on a roll, and the base iPhone 16 models are well worth your consideration.
Note: Our review covers both the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, as both share the same performance and features except for display size and battery life. We tested the iPhone 16 in Pink and the iPhone 16 Plus in Ultramarine.
Design: Refined, with useful new buttons
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus have a similar design to the iPhone 15. However, the camera island on the back is now a pill-shaped, two-lens oval reminiscent of the iPhone X and iPhone XS. This lens alignment allows the iPhone 16 to shoot stereoscopic spatial videos that would be ideal for viewing with the Apple Vision Pro VR/AR headset.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
Apple introduced two new buttons to the base iPhone 16 models: the Action button that replaces the ring/silent switch (which was trickled down from the Pro models) and a brand new Camera Control button, which can be found across the iPhone 16 series.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
The Action button is a shortcut to useful functions and features, like toggling the flashlight or a Focus mode that limits distractions. With iOS 18, Apple added in-app functionality to the Shortcuts app for the Action button, like unlocking your car remotely from your carmaker's app.
It's more useful than the old Silent Mode switch, and I'm glad it's on the base iPhone 16, but I wish the button were more prominent to find by feel, as I often mistake it for the volume-up button. In its current iteration, the Action button also supports only a single press, which feels like a lost potential — it could do numerous Actions if it also supported long presses or multiple presses.
I've seen evidence in forums like Reddit where the Action button could perform multiple functions with various press combinations using the Shortcuts app, so it is possible. However, using the Shortcuts app to give the Action button multiple functions is infinitely more complex than a simple option provided by Apple.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
The Camera Control is a physical button with a capacitive sensor that supports various combinations of presses, light presses, and swipes when shooting photos or videos. I describe the new Camera Control button in more detail in the cameras section below.
The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are available in four new color options for the aluminum frame and frosted glass back, including Teal, Ultramarine, and Pink, with deeper saturation than the iPhone 15 series. There's also a new white option alongside the usual black colorway. Only the iPhone 16 Pro models sport a titanium frame with more neutral and less colorful options.
As with every new iPhone, the base iPhone 16 models won't fit older iPhone cases due to design changes and new buttons. See our guides to the best iPhone 16 cases and best iPhone 16 Plus cases for our vetted top options.
Apple Intelligence: Excellent at writing emails, but most of the rest needs refinement
Apple Intelligence is the biggest software upgrade in the iPhone 16; it's also supported on the iPhone 15 Pro models. It became available in the iOS 18.1 update that rolled out in October, and it received several upgrades with the iOS 18.2 update released in December.
It offers new features to help with writing and communicating that some may find useful (or even fun), as well as improved and streamlined ways of doing things most iPhone users have been doing in the last few years.
While Apple Intelligence features are effective overall, it's still early days for the technology, so there's room for improvement and refinement on most of the features.
Siri hands off some questions to ChatGPT, but not all of them
If you stopped using Siri to answer questions in the past because its answers just weren't that helpful, it's worth giving Siri with Apple Intelligence a fresh shot.
Now that Apple has integrated the popular ChatGPT AI chatbot into Siri in iOS 18.2, you can get straight, comprehensive, and generally reliable answers to most questions.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
For example, when I asked Siri with ChatGPT a simple question, like when the next full moon will be, it gave me the answer. Meanwhile, basic Siri on iPhones that don't support Apple Intelligence delivers links to articles, which is less helpful.
I say above that Siri and ChatGPT's answers are "generally" reliable because ChatGPT and AI chatbots overall, like Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot, can return with outdated or even factually incorrect answers at times. If something seems off about the answer you get with Siri and ChatGPT, it's a good idea to crosscheck the answer with a web search.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
The Siri-con-ChatGPT experience can be muddled and inconsistent, as it often feels like the two assistant entities are competing for your attention. Sometimes, basic Siri will answer questions; at other times, the ChatGPT integration will answer. It's never clear which entity will answer your question until you've asked it. You'll know if ChatGPT is going to answer your question if you get a prompt asking you if it's OK if Siri uses ChatGPT, and you'll see a notice saying "Working with ChatGPT."
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
From my experience, despite the occasional inaccuracy of AI chatbots, it's preferable for ChatGPT to answer questions. For example, basic Siri answered when I asked, "What are the top movies of 2024?," and it came up with a questionable result. Asking ChatGPT to answer the question brought much better results (pictured above).
If Siri doesn't hand off your question to ChatGPT, you need to tell Siri to "ask ChatGPT [question]." By default, you get a prompt asking you if it's OK to use ChatGPT, which can be bothersome, but there's an option in the iPhone settings to bypass that permission request.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
There's tons more you can do with Siri integrated with ChatGPT. I especially like getting article summaries in Safari (make sure to pick the "Full content" option instead of the default "Screenshots" option). You can brainstorm ideas, create full itineraries for a trip abroad (complete with restaurant recommendations), devise workout routines, get help writing an email or document, and much more.
However, remember that running ChatGPT isn't exclusive to iPhones that run Apple Intelligence — any iPhone that supports iOS 16.4 or later can run the ChatGPT app and all its features and functions, even making queries using your voice. The main benefit of iPhones with Apple Intelligence is the convenience of accessing ChatGPT through Siri rather than through the ChatGPT app, which is a more cumbersome experience.
Apple Intelligence also enables new Siri abilities, like sending a photo you're looking at to a contact by saying, "Siri, send this photo to [contact name]." You'll love this if you share lots of photos in Messages, as it's more streamlined than the usual way of sharing a photo, which involves a few swipes and taps.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
If you often do a web search to figure out how to do something on your iPhone, you can now ask Siri for the instructions. However, it's not that great. Sometimes, it'll show you an instruction list that unhelpfully disappears when you tap to start step 1. It can offer a shortcut button that takes you straight to the relevant setting, which would be more helpful, but whether the shortcut button is offered depends on the task or even how you word your question. It's a prime example of something that needs improvement and refinement.
Writing Tools is the most impactful Apple Intelligence feature
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
Writing Tools is superb for writing emails based on a prompt (which uses ChatGPT), changing the tone and improving what you've written in an email draft, and proofreading. It's also excellent at summarizing emails, which is one of my favorite Apple Intelligence features. If you take a lot of notes, it can convert shorthand and notes into full prose.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
While Apple says Writing Tools is available in third-party apps, some don't have it, like Slack, Instagram, and Reddit. If you wanted to use Writing Tools to write or improve a post or reply in one of these apps, you'd need to do so in Apple's Notes or Pages apps. The feature is available in Gmail and Google Docs, but you have to tap and hold inside an email or document to bring up the Writing Tool menu. It's odd that Apple doesn't simply include the Writing Tools button with the iOS keyboard at all times, and the disparity of bringing up the Writing Tools menu in certain apps makes for an inconsistent experience.
Genmoji and that weird-looking new app with a cat. Or is it a dog?
Genmoji is a new Apple Intelligence feature in iOS 18.2 that lets you create a new emoji if you can't find an existing one that fits the mood of what you're trying to communicate.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
For example, I used Genmoji to make a "mind blown" emoji, but with a happy expression instead of the existing version with a surprised expression, and it works. However, authoring a prompt to get what you want can be somewhat tricky; it took a few tries to get my Genmoji above. For reference, my effective prompt was "an emoji with a happy expression and a brain exploding upwards."
The feature is incredibly conservative — nothing sexual, violent (understandable, although exploding brain was OK), or even mildly crass seems to be allowed. For the sake of example, and at the risk of seeming immature, it won't create an emoji with the prompt "butt." You can occasionally circumvent Apple's puritanical limits with prompts like "two yellow-colored circles slightly overlapping," but your success will depend on prompt wording, which is a learned skill.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
The new Image Playground app — the one with the weird app icon with a cat or a dog that suddenly appears on your home screen with iOS 18.2 — can be fun, but it's more of a novelty at the moment. It can create AI-generated cartoon-like images of pretty much anything, like scenery, objects, people, and more, from prompts or existing images in your library. For people, it often overexaggerates the size of teeth (like mine above), but I can easily identify the people the images are based on.
The Photos app is better with Apple Intelligence, but Apple needs more to compete with Google Photos
The new Photos search feature is meant to find photos based on your description, and it works quite well to find a specific photo in a vast photo library. It's not perfect, as it can struggle to pinpoint photos with more complex searches, like "baby with something in teeth," but you can usually find the photo buried in the results. It actually works better in this regard than Google Photos' search function.
A new Cleanup feature in photos designed to remove unwanted objects or subjects works quite well for smaller details. However, as illustrated below, it struggles with larger details, like cars.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
