Apple iPhone 16 Pro Preview: One Big Upgrade for the small iPhone Pro

The iPhone 16 Pro mostly sticks with the familiar iPhone design language of the past few years with flat sides and a camera island in the upper left corner.

However, this is the first Pro model with a larger screen since... the iPhone 12 Pro. The 16 Pro features a 6.3-inch display, up from a 6.1-inch screen on the past few generations (12 Pro to 15 Pro), and that was an increase from the 5.8-inch display used on the iPhone X to iPhone 11 Pro.

This bigger screen makes sense as people are more dependent on their phones and more screen space translates to an improved user experience.

Because of it, the 16 Pro is no longer quite as small as the 15 Pro, but the difference is actually not gigantic. In fact, the 16 Pro is expected to be just as wide as the iPhone 14 Pro from two years ago, and only slightly taller. All of this is possible thanks to slimmer borders around the screen.

In terms of materials, we have the same grade 5 titanium frame as last year with an improved Ceramic Shield on the front. You still have IP68 water and dust protection rating, as well as a USB-C port for charging (with USB 3 speeds).

New is the Camera Control, placed below the power key. It's a capacitive button, so it won't get triggered accidentally in your pocket, and it supports a half-pres and a full press, much like the shutter button on a real camera. Its super power, however, is that it acts like a mini trackpad of sorts, so you can swipe it to zoom in and our, or control background blur for portraits, or other features. Its functions will be limited to camera apps only, but we love this addition, and keep in mind that it is coming not just to the 16 Pro, but to all iPhone 16 models.

The camera system is getting some major improvements in the 16 Pro.

What is not changing much is the main camera. The hardware remains mostly the same with a 48MP sensor that supports a 2X lossless zoom via sensor crop.

The ultra-wide camera, however, is getting the biggest upgrade in years with a new 48MP sensor, up from 12MP previously. This allows for quad pixel binning for better low light shots, but also you would be able to capture more detail and shoot at the full 48 megapixels, if you prefer.

The telephoto camera is also getting upgraded from 3X zoom before to the 5X zoom tetraprism lens from the Pro Max. And that's great for shooting far away objects.

Photographic Styles are also getting a big redesign, and for those unfamiliar these are Apple's advanced filters.

Previously, you had to select a style and you could not change the style of the image after you capture it. Now, you can do that, which opens lots more possibilities.

The styles themselves are more advanced, giving you control over tone, color and palette, while previously you only had control over tone and warmth.

On the video side, we also have a major new feature coming: 4K120 slow motion! This is much crisper than the current 1080p120. Come to think about this, many professional cameras don't support slow motion beyond 1080p and creators will be really happy with this addition.

We will go into a lot more detail with camera samples and comparisons soon, so check back here in a couple of weeks for that.

The 16 Pro is also getting a new Apple A18 Pro chipset, built on second-gen 3nm technology by leading manufacturer TSMC.

And this is good news because the 15 Pro was built on the first generation of that tech, and did not quite reap the full benefits, so we hope for some meaningful gains in performance this year.

Overall, this chip delivers around 20% faster speeds and a better efficiency.

However, the big story is about AI and how this phone is built around it. With an upgraded Neural Engine, AI tasks will be faster on the 16 Pro, but in terms of RAM we expect it to have the same 8GB RAM as the 15 Pro.

The bigger size of the 16 Pro has one big benefit – you can stick a bigger battery inside.

And that's exactly what Apple seems to have done.

Apple rates the 16 Pro for 27 hours of video playback, up from 23 hours on the 15 Pro model, and audio playback is rated for 85 hours, up from 75 hours previously.

While we don't yet have the iPhone 16 Pro battery size, rumors peg it at 3,577mAh capacity, which would be a nearly 10% increase over the 3,274mAh battery on the 15 Pro.

Charging is also faster, but only in one certain way.

We were all hoping for faster wired charging, but that actually remains the same at 20W speeds. 

However, MagSafe is now much faster than before at 25W, up from 15W before. And while previously on the iPhone 15 Pro you got a 37% top-up in 30 minutes, you now get 50% battery charge in 30 minutes.

With its bigger screen size, slightly bigger battery, upgraded cameras, faster MagSafe and, most importantly, new AI features, the iPhone 16 Pro shapes up like a big upgrade. Maybe even the biggest in the iPhone 16 family.