- iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max finally made their launch with a powerful A18 Pro SoC under the hood.
- The chipset alongwith 8 GB of RAM and a myraid of optimizations gives the Pro series exceptional fire power to hail Apple Intelligence features.
- iPhone 16 Pro Max is currently the largest iPhone ever with the thinnest bezels ever and of course, top-of-the-line starting a $1,199 in the US.
The all-new iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max stole the limelight at the Apple’s ‘It’s Glowtime’ event held on September 9 (Monday). The event was a blast, with a tonne of launches aside from iPhone 16, iPhone Pros, and a heavy inclination towards Apple Intelligence (AI) features.
Here, we were able to cover the essence of the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max Plus launch on True-Tech. From natural titanium to huge battery life to Camera Control and the supercalifragilistic Apple A18 Pro chip, here’s everything you need to know about this epic duo of the year.
iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max Powered by A18 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro series uses the all-new Apple A18 Pro chip fabbed on a second-gen 3nm process. It is comparatively faster than the A18 found on the non-Pro iPhone 16 siblings.
Apple has incorporated a 16-core Neural Engine on-board A18 Pro that makes AI processing faster and more efficient than its predecessor. The NPU can handle 35 trillion operations every second and has 17% faster memory bandwidth which translates into incomprehensible performance at the user’s disposal.
Luckily, you need a lot of firepower to run Apple Intelligence (AI) features. It is slated to run 2x faster hardware-accelerated ray-tracing combined with increased memory bandwidth. When combined, the A18 Pro chipset has a 15% faster CPU and consumes 20% less power compared to its predecessor making the iPhone 16 Pro duo more powerful.
The Advanced Media features on the A18 Pro now get Always On display support, ProMoTion display support, ProRes video recording, and faster USB 3 speeds, to name a few. Turns out all these features are not available on regular or non-Pro iPhones. 128GB to 1TB of internal NVMe storage offers access to a huge surface to store your data without reaching out for the cloud.
Apple Intelligence On The Roar
Addressing the elephant in the room, Apple Intelligence is here but isn’t fully baked. Turns out Apple might have rushed into rolling out Apple Intelligence so early and thus, most of the features are slated for arrival in the coming updates and in most regions and not something right built in.
Apple Intelligence will roll out a set of features in US English in most regions including recording, writing tools, transcribing and summarizing audio, Priority Messages in Mail, summarized notifications, and a completely redesigned Siri co-powered by AI, among others. Most of these features have been slated to come later this year. There’s a feature called Playground that uses AI to generate emojis and images based on the contextual meaning of your texts.
One such feature in the works is ‘unlock visual intelligence’ where you can simply point your phone towards the places or objects. Click and hold the Camera Control button and viola, it will pull the information off the internet using Google and ChatGPT for that matter. It can identify the breed of an animal or plant, add events from a flyer, and a plenty of other things making it a truly stunning feature to hone.
Titanium Body with an Aluminum Chassis Design
Apparently, the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Series hasn’t changed much in terms of design at a glance. It does, however, have larger screens than their predecessors. iPhone 16 Pro is now at 6.3” instead of 6.1” while the Pro Max gets a larger 6.9” instead of 6.7” on the 15 Pro Max. Apple calls it the largest display on any iPhone ever (which is true though) giving Pro Max an edge over its rivals.
Apple is using a grade 5 titanium body with an aluminum chassis. This does make the phone durable and I like that. An IP68 rating protects the phone from water and dust damage, though it’s not advisable to test this by intentionally submerging it.
You get access to four colorways and luckily, all are ‘titanium’ based. There’s a new color option in town dubbed ‘Desert Titanium’ although I would assume it will be sold out as soon as the shipping starts because that’s what happens with every new color each year.
Overall, the phone looks well-polished, the weight seems well-calibrated, and the tiny bezels ensure you get more screen real estate without getting too bulky like an iPad.
Largest Display on the iPhone Yet
Get ready to witness the world’s largest-ever iPhone screen (like ever). Well, I am talking about the iPhone 16 Pro Max that now has a 6.9” LTPO panel instead of 6.7” on the 15 Pro Max. This ultimately makes Pro Max the phone with the largest display ever under Apple’s Umbrella.
Don’t worry if you can’t or don’t want to shell out a fortune on the Pro Max and still want to use Pro because the iPhone 16 Pro is here too. iPhone 16 Pro took some metaphorical steroids to jack up a 6.3” display instead of the 6.1” found on the predecessor. It is also the phone with the thinnest bezels on any Apple product which allows it to maximize on screen real estate without increasing dimensions.
The Ceramic Shield on top of the displays uses advanced formulations (that’s what Apple said) to unlock twice the toughness of any glass protection you would usually find on smartphones. Exactly how it translates into real-life remains to be tested though so let’s keep fingers crossed until we try out an iPhone 16 Pro/ Pro Max ourselves.
iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max Camera Features
What’s more interesting is the camera setup onboard the iPhone 16 Pro duo. We have a 48MP Fusion Camera capable of reading 2x faster data, a 48MP ultra-wide snapper that can accommodate wider shots, and a 12MP 5x telephoto camera that has been enhanced further to take detailed zoom shots for you.
Note that the telephoto snapper is no longer limited to Pro Max (yesssss!!!). I am talking about the tetra prism design that Apple heavily marketed as an iPhone 15 Pro Max-only feature.
The Cupertino-based giant has introduced a new camera feature that lets you capture videos in 4k at 120fps. This is perhaps the highest resolution and frame rate on iPhones ever.
iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max Camera Control
One of the highlights of the iPhone 16 Series is the Camera Control. No, it isn’t some kind of software thing but rather a physical (but not actual) button. It is a perfect blend of hardware and software integration that uses a tactile switch coupled with haptic feedback that gets you the feeling of a button. Plus, it is capacitive in nature and thus, lets you use it like a MacBook’s trackpad making it an exceptional feature when you are using the iPhone 16 Pro/ Pro Max for photos and videos.
For the unversed, Camera Control lets you launch the camera app on your iPhone. You can take an instant photo or start with short videos. You can use the Camera Control to adjust and fine-tune a myriad of settings within the Camera app such as brightness, tone, etc. You can zoom in and out on the Camera Control cutting down on the jitter produced by using the on-screen zooming feature.
It gets even better though. With time, you will gain something called ‘Visual Intelligence’ which is an extension of Apple Intelligence. The feature lets you shoot subjects or objects using the Camera Control and hold to pull information about the same. It can add calendar events, pull information from ChatGPT and Google, identify animal breeds, and so on. You’ll essentially love this feature for sure.
Related
iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max Battery Details
Here comes the ‘juicy’ part. Technically, smartphone makers announce battery capacity and life during the product launch, but it’s not the case with Apple. The Cupertino-based giant withheld the information revealing only the ‘upgraded battery stats’ during the initial launch with the information on capacity coming a few days later.
Apple says both iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max made a huge leap in battery life. It could be because of the new and improved SoC or the iOS 18 optimizations and a combination of both but in the end, you get excellent battery life on the Pros.
According to Apple, the iPhone 16 Pro is capable of up to 27 hours of local video playback or up to 22 hours of streamed video playback. The iPhone 16 Pro Max, on the other hand, is capable of up to 33 hours of local and up to 29 hours of streamed video playback. If these figures intrigue you, be sure to check out the pricing before buying yourself a new iPhone 16 Pro / Pro Max and you are good to go.
Pricing and Availability
Just as we thought, the pricing for the US market is as sweet as it can get. The iPhone 16 Pro is pegged at $999 for the base 128GB variant which is loosely around INR 83,845/- (not the Indian pricing though).
The iPhone 16 Pro Max, on the other hand, gets a higher $1,199 keeping in line with the predecessor but with a base 256GB of storage. You can choose up to 1TB of storage with this Pro lines to satiate your hunger for more storage.
iPhone 16 Pro India pricing starts at INR 1,19,000/- and the iPhone 16 Pro Max fetches a price tag of INR 1,44,900/-. Check out for HDFC Bank offers among others to get a sweet deal.
Just like the non-Pro variants, both Pro duos are up for pre-orders on September 13 followed by shipping on September 20 as a part of first wave which includes 58 countries.
You can select from four color variants — Black Titanium, White Titanium, Natural Titanium, and yes, the all-new Desert Titanium. Buyers living in countries listed in the second wave will have to wait till September 27 to get their hands on the new units.
