Key Takeaways
- The Apple iPhone 16 Plus sticks to a familiar design with an updated camera layout and new colors but doesn’t significantly differ from its predecessors in terms of aesthetics or form factor.
- Apple introduces meaningful, if modest, updates like the 48MP camera and second-generation Ceramic Shield, though overprocessing remains an issue in detailed shots.
- Despite solid battery life and smooth performance from the A18 chip, the 60Hz refresh rate feels outdated compared to competitors offering 120Hz displays at similar price points.
2024 will be remembered as one of Apple’s most unusual iPhone launches. The much-anticipated iPhone 16 series arrived with a glaring absence: Apple Intelligence. The flagship feature, which is set to integrate generative AI across the iPhone experience, didn’t ship at launch. It’s expected to roll out later this year, with a phased introduction across languages and regions.
Without Apple Intelligence, the iPhone 16 series is an iterative update across the board; having spent the past week with the iPhone 16 Plus, I’ve found that while it may not currently ship the groundbreaking features we expected, it offers a dependable experience with meaningful, if modest, improvements.
Apple iPhone 16 Plus
The iPhone 16 Plus is a refined iteration in Apple’s lineup, featuring a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display with vibrant colors and a peak brightness of 2000 nits. Powered by the A18 chip, it ensures smooth performance, but still sticks to a 60Hz refresh rate, which feels dated in 2024.
Its design remains familiar, with a sleek camera layout, new color options, and a tougher second-generation Ceramic Shield for added durability. The 48MP camera system delivers impressive daytime shots but struggles with overprocessing at times. While it lacks Apple Intelligence at launch, the iPhone 16 Plus still stands out for its excellent battery life and reliability, making it a solid choice for those upgrading from older models.
- Great overall camera performance
- Excellent all-day battery life
- Lightweight design for a large phone
- Display is still 60Hz
- Camera Control awkward to use in portrait
Price and Availability
The iPhone 16 Plus is available starting at $899 with 128GB and can be configured up to 512GB. The device comes in five finishes: White, Black, Teal, Ultramarine, and Pink. You can pick one up at most major retailers and carriers, including Amazon and Best Buy, and directly through the Apple Store.
A Colorful New Design
Like its smaller sibling, the iPhone 16 Plus adheres to a now-familiar formula in Apple’s design language. The most visible update is the camera layout and new color options. The vertically aligned lenses on the back are a welcome departure from the diagonal placement of the past few years, and honestly, I think this is one of the best-looking iPhones since the iPhone X.
The new arrangement gives the device a sleeker profile, which really complements the color-infused glass, especially in the new hues of Ultramarine and Teal. My unit was White, so it’s less obvious, but when I went hands-on with the bolder color variants, the deeper saturation of the side frame and camera modules offered an excellent contrast to the matte glass back.
This year’s iPhones also feature an improved second-generation Ceramic Shield, which Apple touts as 50% tougher than any smartphone glass. While I didn’t intentionally drop-test my device, I think this new glass formulation should be on par, if not better, than what’s currently available on the market.
There was no mention of any improved scratch resistance, and even after a week of using the phone case-less, you’ll pick up on micro scratches just as you would with any other glass phone.
The overall design feels familiar, almost too familiar. The iPhone 16 Plus largely retains the chassis and dimensions of the iPhone 15 Plus—the bezels aren’t thinner, nor is the chassis slimmer. Apple plays it safe here, sticking to what has worked.
Aside from the camera, the key visual differentiator for the 16 series is the addition of the Action Button and new Camera Control. The Action Button is the same as you would find with the 15 Pro series, but it’s now available across the new iPhone lineup.
On this larger phone, it’s a bigger reach to the top of the volume buttons; I have fairly large hands, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, but coming from the smaller 15 Pro, it’s not as comfortable.
The same goes for the new Camera Control, which is ergonomically perfectly placed if you’re holding the phone in landscape, but it feels awkward to press it when the device is oriented in portrait. I simultaneously used the 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro, and the placement on the smaller phone felt much more comfortable to operate in portrait with one hand compared to the 16 Plus, where you’re more inclined to use both hands to use the Camera Control in portrait.
While this feels like nitpicking, it’s important to note that Apple plans to roll out Visual Intelligence, which is its version of Google Lens or Google’s Circle to Search feature. This is a huge part of what the Camera Control will eventually be used for, and the most natural way to trigger it will be in portrait, so I hope if Apple keeps this around, they make the Camera Control bigger or shift to a more comfortable spot on the larger phones.
That said, after using the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the iPhone 16 Plus is surprisingly comfortable for a large phone. The phone’s light body and rounded aluminum edges make it easier to hold than some of its heavier competitors.
An Excellent But Stuck-Up Display
The iPhone 16 Plus is equipped with a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display, boasting 2000 nits of peak brightness for outdoor viewing. Aside from the new Ceramic Shield, this is identical to the 15 Plus from last year. This means a couple of things.
First, color accuracy remains a strong point, as expected from Apple’s calibrated panels. Whether scrolling through photos or streaming HDR content, the colors are vibrant without feeling oversaturated, and you’re able to play Dolby Vision and HDR10.
The bezels are uniform but noticeably thicker than on the Pro phones, which is no surprise. While I do like that they’re uniform all around, these bezels make the 16 Plus outdated compared to the Pro phones, and it would’ve been nice to see a reduction here because Apple can easily make this phone body smaller without taking away the screen real estate.
However, the biggest issue is the refresh rate. While the iPhone 16 Plus’ display excels in brightness, contrast, and color, it still lags behind the competition with its 60Hz refresh rate. In 2024, this feels like a glaring omission for a phone at this price point. Competitors like the Google Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S24+ have moved firmly into 120Hz refresh rates across their lineups, and the difference is very noticeable.
Scrolling through content or navigating iOS 18 on the iPhone 16 Plus feels slightly less fluid, especially compared to the ProMotion displays on Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max models. While it’s likely that a person getting the iPhone 16 Plus is someone upgrading from an older iPhone that also ran on 60Hz, for a device that positions itself as a media-centric phone, this lack of a high refresh rate feels like a missed opportunity that shouldn’t be left for the Pro phones, four generations in.
Unsurprisingly Excellent Cameras
The camera system on the iPhone 16 Plus is where I found myself 90% of the time, and I absolutely love it. This year’s phones feature a new 48MP Fusion camera with a quad-pixel sensor that delivers detailed shots in well-lit conditions. Daytime photography was an absolute joy, with the camera capturing true-to-life colors and sharp details; the iPhone 16 Plus consistently delivered rich and vibrant images without feeling overdone—most of the time.
Thanks to its quad-pixel sensor, the camera also boasts an optical-quality 2x telephoto mode. While it isn’t quite the same as having a dedicated telephoto lens like on the Pro models, which both can now go to 5x, the regular 16 does a decent job of maintaining clarity and detail at moderate zoom levels.
The new Photonic Engine processes images to enhance brightness and reduce noise in low-light conditions, and for the most part, it works pretty well. I wouldn’t put it on par with Google’s Night Sight, but I took several shots indoors and during evening walks, and the level of detail retained was impressive.
That said, the camera system isn’t without its flaws; overprocessing continues to be an issue, especially when zooming into photos. Apple’s image pipeline seems intent on sharpening details to the point where images can look unnatural upon closer inspection. This is particularly noticeable in textures—rocks, skin, or fabric often appear overly crisp. I think what the phone tries to do is keep everything—foreground and background—sharp, and in doing so, gives images a weird, over-processed look.
The problem feels as though the phone is overcompensating when it doesn’t need to. The 48MP sensor is plenty sharp even when it bins down to 24 or 12MP images. This is part of the reason I typically shoot all my photos with ProRAW enabled because it retains the details true to the sensor without adding on Apple’s aggressive post-processing, but that’s not available on the non-Pro models.
One area that does benefit from the processing is the new macro mode for the ultrawide camera, which is coming to non-Pro iPhones for the first time. Because this is a 12MP sensor, the processing, especially for macro shots, looks good, and I think a lot of people are going to have fun trying it out for the first time. Is it useful? For 95% of users, probably not, but it’s better having it here than not.
One of the standout features this year is the improved Photographic Styles. These presets offer more control over the look and feel of photos and allow you to adjust tone and warmth without compromising on detail. You’re also able to adjust and alter them after taking the photos. Dramatic and Etherial were the ones that I used most often, and I think, in concept, they’re much better than typical filters. You can tell that the processing is happening on a deeper level compared to putting a filter on top—it’s not exactly the same as editing a RAW photo, but it’s along the same lines.
If anything, Photographic Styles reminds me of using film simulations on Fuji cameras, but I think Apple continues to play it really safe with how it handles color, which means that the edited photos don’t have the same character as something like on Fuji’s film simulations.
Now we have to talk about the Camera Control because it’s the shiny new hardware feature that’s coming to every new iPhone this year. I’m here to tell you that while it’s cool, I doubt you’ll be using it very often, especially on this larger phone. As I mentioned before, it’s just in an awkward position to use in portrait on this larger iPhone, but more broadly, the things it can control aren’t that substantial.
For anyone who has used Apple’s camera app for a long time, you just have a feeling for where everything is, and more often than not, it’s always faster to use the screen to alter what you need than to use the Camera Control to do it. Credit where credit is due: I think the haptics and overall implementation of the hardware and software are top-notch, but they don’t add to the iPhone camera experience the way you really want them to.
Having used the Camera Control, it is very clear now that this new hardware is primarily going to be for Visual Intelligence, and until that ships, it’s hard to wrap your head around the Camera Control as anything more than another camera shortcut right now.
Unmatched Performance and Battery Life
The A18 chip powering the iPhone 16 Plus is, unsurprisingly, a powerhouse. Built on a 3-nanometer process, it delivers a notable performance leap over the A16 of the iPhone 15, with increased efficiency and faster Neural Engine performance.
In everyday use, the iPhone 16 Plus easily handles everything from switching between apps to gaming. iOS 18 runs smoothly for the most part, but it’s still a bit rough along the edges, with small bugs throughout the OS. That said, I haven’t had any notable slowdowns or stutters, even when pushing the phone with resource-intensive apps like Lightroom and batch exporting multiple 48MP photos at full resolution. Again, my biggest gripe is knowing that this phone can perform at a flagship level, but the refresh rate doesn’t match up the same way it does on the Pro phones.
Where the iPhone 16 Plus truly shines, however, is in its battery life. With a larger battery and improved power efficiency from the A18 chip, I consistently achieved a day and a half of moderate use on a single charge, pushing it to two days if I needed to with battery saver. My usage included social media, camera, and content consumption of Netflix and YouTube, with plenty of juice left to spare by the end of the day. Even during heavy usage—such as gaming—the phone comfortably lasted well into the night.
Compared to competitors like the Pixel 9 Pro or Galaxy S24 Ultra, the iPhone 16 Plus holds its own, delivering one of the most enduring batteries I’ve tested this year, which makes sense given that it runs an OLED at 60Hz.
The best addition to the battery experience this year is 45W wired charging and 25W wireless charging across the board, which means this phone can charge quite a lot quicker than before. Of course, you need to supply your own brick, and it’s nowhere near other OEMs like OnePlus’s 65W standards, but given how infrequently you’ll need to charge the phone, this addition is great for faster top-ups.
Should You Buy the Apple iPhone 16 Plus?
Frankly speaking, if you’re coming from an iPhone newer than the iPhone 13 series, there’s no definitive feature or reason to upgrade unless you want to hold out for what Apple brings with Apple Intelligence over the next year or your phone is on its last legs.
But, I preface this by saying one thing—the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus offer one of the best updates to the non-Pro iPhones since the 12 series, and I think that anyone buying it right now won’t find much to complain about. The improved battery life, refined camera system, and dependable performance make the 16 Plus a reliable daily driver, even without the cutting-edge AI features.
Sure, it’s not revolutionary, but for those who prioritize a balance between price and functionality—within the Apple ecosystem—it’s a solid upgrade that should satisfy most people.
Apple iPhone 16 Plus
The iPhone 16 Plus is a refined iteration in Apple’s lineup, featuring a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display with vibrant colors and a peak brightness of 2000 nits. Powered by the A18 chip, it ensures smooth performance, but still sticks to a 60Hz refresh rate, which feels dated in 2024.
Its design remains familiar, with a sleek camera layout, new color options, and a tougher second-generation Ceramic Shield for added durability. The 48MP camera system delivers impressive daytime shots but struggles with overprocessing at times. While it lacks Apple Intelligence at launch, the iPhone 16 Plus still stands out for its excellent battery life and reliability, making it a solid choice for those upgrading from older models.
