Apple’s latest iPhone feels a little naked without promised AI features that won’t ship for another month.
Apple iPhone 16 Pro (Starts at $999, as reviewed $1,099)Apple launched the iPhone 16 Pro in an unfinished state, and it remains to be seen if Apple Intelligence will be worth the wait, but performance is excellent.Outstanding LTPO OLED display with 120 Hz refresh rageVersatile camera system produces great resultsApple’s new AI features seem generally usefulGreat general-purpose CPU performanceiOS 18 customization options breathe new life into old UICamera button is far too stiffAI is MIA at launch without a beta OSBattery life is so-soExpensive
This year, something about the iPhone 16 lineup feels unfinished. You don’t have to wonder what that is, though — it’s the software. Apple has been talking a big game ever since WWDC when it announced Apple Intelligence, the company’s own take on AI using the purpose-built neural processor that’s been built into every iPhone for several years. However, the latest iPhones launch with the promise of AI yet to come.
Despite that nagging unsatisfying hole in Apple’s software ecosystem, the iPhone 16 family, specifically the Pro models, bring something new to the table. Slightly bigger displays, narrower bezels, a heaping helping of performance, and a curious new trackpad-like button for camera controls. Is there enough here for the Apple faithful to upgrade? Is the iPhone 16 Pro the phone to get? That’s what we’re here to answer today. But first, let’s meet the iPhone 16 Pro.
Apple iPhone 16 Pro SpecificationsFind The Apple iPhone 16 Pro @ Amazon
This year, Apple dropped the « Bionic » name from its SoC and instead, the iPhone 16 Pro (and the Pro Max, which is just a bigger version of this device) gets the A18 Pro. Like the last several iPhones, the A18 Pro has a total of six CPU cores, where two are high-powered performance cores, and the other four are power-sipping efficiency cores, all of which support Armv9.2-A, as previously predicted.
Like the iPad Pro’s M4 SoC, the A18 Pro is built on TSMC’s latest N3E process, and according to Geekbench 6 it can top out at 4.04 GHz and has 8 GB of memory. The M4 has LPDDR5x-7500, though it’s not yet known if the iPhones have similarly-rated memory. Apple doesn’t publish all these specs, much to the chagrin of hardware geeks like us here at HotHardware.
At any rate, there’s also a 6-core GPU on tap, and it has Apple’s second generation ray tracing engine on board. Last year, Apple bet big on AAA titles with ray tracing making their way to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, which debuted with Assassin’s Creed Mirage. There hasn’t really been a huge uptick of high-budget, high-fidelity titles infiltrating the Mac or iPhone just yet. However, that may change as the hardware is starting to make its way to the masses — even the base model iPhone 16 supports the latest graphics features of Apple’s Metal graphics API.
Of course, Apple Intelligence is the key feature for iOS 18 this year, and the iPhone 16 Pro has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine to date. The first Neural Engine dates all the way back to 2017, but the only non iPhone 16 users who will have access to Apple’s latest on-device AI will be iPhone 15 Pro users, and this year’s model represents a pretty significant step up in performance. We’ll measure just how much performance later.
Our review unit iPhone 16 Pro has 256 GB of NVMe storage, which has been the baseline required for the camera to capture ProRes 4K video at 60 fps; the 128 GB model is locked out of that fun. A maximum of 1 TB is available regardless of whether buyers go for the 16 Pro or the larger 16 Pro Max. Wireless connectivity comes courtesy of a Snapdragon X75 modem, which supports mmWave 5G and Gigabit 4G LTE. No, Apple still isn’t using its own modems, which it purchased from Intel more than five years ago. The Apple logo is almost invisible without a good reflection on the Titanium Black iPhone 16 Pro.
iPhone 16 Pro Design and Features
The iPhone 16 Pro is nearly indistinguishable from its predecessors, save for the new Titanium-themed colorways and the ever-so-slightly larger bodies. The iPhone has basically looked the same for the last four years, which is a little surprising for Apple, but we suppose a « rounded rectangle » can only look so different year to year.
