Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max review

Apple The iPhone 16 family of phones will hit stores Friday. In anticipation of their launch, I spent the last five days testing the top-of-the-line iPhone 16 Pro Max.

It’s a great phone with some nice updates like a dedicated camera button, and it charges faster via MagSafe than previous Pro models. The screens are also slightly larger than previous versions.

But that analysis is tricky, because one of the headline features Apple has been promoting — on stage and in its new ads — is Apple Intelligence. That’s Apple’s suite of artificial intelligence features for the iPhone, and it won’t be available until later this year.

There’s plenty to be excited about. Some of the new AI features, like tweaks to Siri, photo editing, and the ability to let AI rewrite text for you, will launch in beta in October. Other additions, like Apple’s image and emoji generator, more personal Siri responses, and integration with ChatGPT, will come later.

I was able to test some of the beta features for this review. Others were not available. These limitations make it difficult to provide a full assessment of the new device or suggest whether the upgrade is worth it.

Apple shares fell earlier this week after analysts suggested weaker demand for the iPhone 16 Pro models this year. The problem is that Apple Intelligence is not available at launch, according to TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Barclays also fears it may be because the Chinese-language version of Apple Intelligence won’t launch until 2025.

Here’s what you need to know about the new iPhone 16 Pro Max, right now.

The biggest change you’ll notice is the new camera button. I’m still getting used to it after a few days, but I’ve already gotten used to just taking the phone out of my pocket, pressing the button, and taking a picture.

My wife rightly asked me why I don’t just press the camera button on the lock screen like I did on early iPhones. I don’t have a good answer for that. It feels more natural to me to press a camera button.

I enjoyed half-pressing to access camera controls like zoom during my son’s first soccer game, though I sometimes found it easier to just pinch to zoom. The new 48-megapixel wide-angle lens delivers sharper images in zoomed-out shots that can capture more of the scenery.

Videographers will probably appreciate the 4K recording at 120fps offered by the iPhone 16 Pro Max. However, I try to keep my clips at lower quality since I share them via text messages with family and friends.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max has the best battery life of any iPhone yet. Apple’s new A18 Pro processor paired with a larger battery delivers up to 33 hours of video playback, up from 29 hours on last year’s iPhone 15 Pro Max. I could usually get through dinner before needing to charge the 15, and I can get through bedtime—or beyond—with the new phone depending on how often I use it.

I love that Apple has increased the charging speed of its MagSafe. I used MagSafe when it first came out, but eventually went back to traditional wired charging because it was faster. Now, MagSafe offers up to 50% charge in 30 minutes when using a 30-watt charger (not included).

The screens are slightly larger on this year’s Pro models. The iPhone 16 Pro Max has gone from 6.7 inches to 6.9 inches. I didn’t notice a difference, and I could only tell when I placed the two phones next to each other. It’s still a fantastic screen with a high refresh rate, which means scrolling is smooth. It’s colorful and bright, and I love the always-on display so I can see notifications without picking up my phone. It’s not new this year, but it’s still useful and limited to the Pro models.

With no Apple Intelligence at launch, I’m limited to a few beta feature tests. They’re hit and miss, as you’d expect in a beta.

Apple Intelligence could help kick off a new round of iPhone upgrades. Apple reported $39.3 billion in iPhone sales in its fiscal third quarter, about 46% of the company’s total revenue and down 1% from a year earlier. CEO Tim Cook said the segment grew on a constant currency basis.

I like the email summaries provided by Apple Intelligence. They are accurate and give you just a few lines that summarize what is said or relayed in an email. This only works in Apple’s Mail app, though, so it won’t work if your company requires you to use Outlook or if you prefer Gmail. Similarly, I found that Apple Intelligence accurately summarized long passages of text (including the introduction to this review) and returned an accurate excerpt.

In notifications, it’s perfectly fine. The news alert summaries were fine. The text message summaries were sometimes useless. In a text from my wife, for example, Apple Intelligence suggested that I had thrown a dinosaur at my daughter and made her cry before apologizing. In reality, my son was the culprit. The original text message would have sufficed.

In a daycare app notification I use, Apple Intelligence did a good job of summarizing that my daughter “napped, ate Cheerios, and is happily playing.” That would be a perfect amount of information to receive while driving.

Another Apple Intelligence feature can help you create movie memories, which are short clips of photos and videos set to music. In a TV ad, Apple shows a young woman using it to create memories of a dead goldfish with the help of Siri.

I couldn’t use Siri to create movies like that. Instead, I opened the Photos app, tapped Memories, and wrote a prompt asking for a photo memory of my son “learning to fish at Skytop to a fishing tune.” The app correctly displayed photos from a family trip to the Poconos, but didn’t include any photos of my son fishing there. The music was called “Fishing Tune” by Jiang Jiaqiang, but it didn’t sound like fishing music to me. Another test, asking for a photo memory of my son “playing soccer,” worked better, but also included a photo of him as a baby holding a soccer ball.

There’s also the all-new Siri interface that lights up along the edges of the screen. I like how it looks compared to the globe, and it’s easier to write to Siri by tapping the screen indicator at the bottom of the screen. Siri doesn’t feel radically different to me right now, though I did appreciate being able to ask iPhone-specific questions like “How do I use my iPhone to scan a document?” and “How do I make a screen recording?” Siri presents the answer in a simple step-by-step guide at the top of the screen.

You can now talk to Siri even if you’re interrupted. So if you get stumped while you’re thinking and say “uh” or “wait a second,” you can keep asking questions along the same lines, like “How tall is the Eiffel Tower?” and then “And when was it built?” But that doesn’t always work. I tried “How far is Boston?” for example, followed by “And what’s the weather like there?” Siri gave me the weather for my current location.

Apple Intelligence can be useful and I’m excited to see where it takes us.

I focused this review on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The iPhone 16 is slightly smaller and has slightly less battery life, but is otherwise identical. My colleague used the regular iPhone 16.

There are a few differences between the two. The iPhone 16 comes in more colors and is built from aluminum instead of titanium like the higher-end Pro models. It also has the new camera button, but it lacks the higher refresh rate and always-on features of the Pro model’s displays.

The iPhone 16 will support all of the Apple Intelligence features I mentioned above, as well as those that are yet to come. Apple has also upgraded the processor for faster performance and added a new macro mode for close-up shots of objects, as well as support for spatial image capture for the Apple Vision Pro headset. It offers up to 22 hours of video playback compared to 20 hours for last year’s iPhone 15.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is a solid upgrade, but you’ll likely see the biggest changes if you’re coming from an iPhone 14 Pro Max or earlier. The biggest improvements over last year’s phone are the added camera button, a faster chip, new cameras, and a slightly larger display.

As for Apple Intelligence, we’ll all have to wait for features like using Siri to ask about past calendar events, questions that require personal context, using Siri to control your apps, or Apple’s integration with ChatGPT. So if you buy now, it’s for everything except AI.