Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/ First Impressions of the iPhone 16 Pro Adam Engst My iPhone 16 Pro arrived on Friday, as Apple promised, though I was perturbed to see it hanging from my mailbox in a plastic bag. In previous years, UPS delivered it to my door and required a signature, allowing me to ask the drivers how the iPhone release had impacted their work for the day. They knew it was iPhone delivery day, so this year's driver must also have realized what they were hanging from my mailbox. Luckily, we don't live in a high-crime area. Unpacking the iPhone was once again a pleasure. Apple's origami-like packaging is a wonder, and the iPhone box and insert are of such high-quality cardboard that it's hard to believe it's not plastic. I was also almost fooled by the adhesive screen protector. The company said that the iPhone 16 packaging is entirely fiber-based, which aligns with its goal of eliminating plastic from all its packaging by the end of this year. Apple Should Put the iPhone on a Diet Although the specs say that the iPhone 16 Pro is only 3 mm taller, 0.9 mm wider, and 12 grams heavier than the iPhone 15 Pro, the increase is noticeable when you put the two side by side. In part, that extra size makes room for the slightly larger screen. Whereas the iPhone 15 Pro has a 2556'by'1179-pixel resolution, the iPhone 16 Pro boasts a resolution of 2622 by 1206 pixels. Left: iPhone 15 Pro, Right: iPhone 16 Pro I'm disappointed that the iPhone 16 Pro is larger'I only reluctantly put up with Pro models' size over the much-missed mini models because of the significantly better camera capabilities'and I haven't seen any improvement in everyday usage from the larger screen. Overall, it feels bigger and beefier, particularly in the [1]Smartish Gripmunk case I like (see '[2]Going All in on MagSafe for the iPhone in the Office, Bedroom, and Car,' 6 May 2024), which detracts from its usability for those who prefer more svelte devices. Tonya may never upgrade from her third-generation iPhone SE if Apple doesn't provide a smaller device for smaller people. Quick Start Failed but Remains Preferable over Restoring from iCloud Setup was problematic. I opted for the Quick Start process that promised to copy data from my iPhone 15 Pro. Unfortunately, it failed repeatedly. I don't know what went wrong on the first try because the iPhones were in a different room, but I suspect that the T-Mobile activation might have had trouble due to weak cell service. I recommend activating a new iPhone where you have the best connectivity. During the second try, I was asked to provide the password to Tonya's iCloud account to authenticate some app of hers I apparently have. Alas, going downstairs with the iPhone 16 Pro to get the two-factor authentication code from her iPad took it out of Bluetooth range of the iPhone 15 Pro, breaking the connection. I skipped that on the third try, but it failed for no apparent reason when starting the data transfer from the iPhone 15 Pro. After each failure, iOS insisted on erasing the iPhone 16 Pro and starting from scratch again, which makes sense but forced me to set up Face ID and enter credit card CVV codes for Apple Pay repeatedly. For my fourth and final setup attempt, I switched to restoring data from iCloud instead of the iPhone 15 Pro. Interestingly, when I did that, the iPhone 15 Pro automatically updated the iCloud backup from the night before. The iCloud restore worked fine, though it took a few hours before all my apps downloaded. I also had to log in to each app afresh, set up Bluetooth pairings, and redownload saved offline content (mostly Overcast in my situation). I still recommend starting with the Quick Start process and copying data from your old iPhone if possible. As [3]Doug Miller reminded me on TidBITS Talk, I might have had better luck with the Quick Start process if I had connected the two iPhones with a Thunderbolt cable. Regardless, a cabled connection should be faster, particularly with two Pro models that communicate at USB 3's 10 Gbps (the plain iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models are limited to USB 2's 480 Mbps). However, if copying directly from your old iPhone doesn't work, restoring from iCloud is an acceptable fallback. Getting Used to the Camera I was at a cross-country meet on Sunday but completely forgot about the Camera Control while taking photos at the award ceremony'in the heat of the moment, I defaulted to my existing iPhone camera habits. Given the trouble I've had working the Action button into my everyday iPhone use (see '[4]Do You Use It? iPhone 15 Pro Action Button Struggles to Find Its Purpose,' 16 September 2024), I'm planning a photo shoot where I use nothing but the Camera Control to break those habits. It requires one press to open the camera and another to take a photo, and the half-press to bring up controls feels as though it will be easy to internalize. I was amused to see that pressing the side button, Action button, and volume buttons causes the black of the bezel to draw a few pixels over the screen image next to the button, providing subtle visual feedback of the button press. I also struggled with the 5x zoom during the award ceremony because I wanted to zoom more than 2x for one photo, but 5x was way too close. I'm so accustomed to having single-tap access to .5x, 1x, 2x, and 3x that I forgot that I could zoom to arbitrary other levels and just walked closer to fill my 2x shot. In subsequent testing, the 5x zoom worked as expected. The other attraction of the iPhone 16 Pro was the 48-megapixel Ultra Wide camera that promised higher-resolution macro photography. I hoped to publish side-by-side macro shots showing how much better the new 48-megapixel macro shots were. However, in my initial testing, I preferred the 12-megapixel photos from both iPhones to the 48-megapixel shot from the iPhone 16 Pro, which felt slightly blown out in the yellow despite containing more detail. (In Photos, the 48-megapixel image is labeled as having 46 megapixels'technically, it's 5930-by-7908 or 46,894,440 pixels, compared to 3024-by-4032 for 12,192,768 pixels in the 12-megapixel shots.) I spent quite a while figuring out how to get the 48-megapixel photo above. The trick is that you must select .5x zoom manually and turn on HEIF Max'there's a button at the top of the Camera screen. Faster Chip? In theory, the iPhone 16 Pro's A18 Pro chip should be faster than the A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro, but the only scenario where I could discern any difference was by activating Arc Search's voice recognition on both iPhones simultaneously. On a few tests, I could see the iPhone 16 Pro generating a response to my search more quickly than the iPhone 15 Pro, but only by a half-second or so. (The responses were otherwise identical.) Perhaps you'll notice the difference if you work with video on the iPhone or play processor-intensive games. The A18 Pro should also provide better performance for Apple Intelligence features, but since I don't have an iPhone 16 with the A18 chip to compare against, I don't know the extent to which that's true. I did test the Clean Up feature in Photos using the same image on the iPhone 15 Pro'which has the older A17 Pro chip'but couldn't see much difference in performance. Clean Up itself is fabulous'it was a matter of three taps to remove the speakers and the guy in the background from this photo of my speedy septuagenarian friends from yesterday's cross-country race. In the end, while the iPhone 16 Pro has its merits, it doesn't offer enough enhancements over the iPhone 16 to justify the extra cost for most people. I'm tempted to return it within Apple's 14-day window and save $200 on an iPhone 16 instead. I was more bullish about the iPhone 16 in '[5]iPhone 16 Models Add Camera Control, Prep for Apple Intelligence' (9 September 2024), and having laid my hands on the iPhone 16 Pro, I'm even more comfortable with that assessment. References Visible links 1. https://smartish.com/products/gripmunk-with-magsafe-slim-case-for-iphone-16-pro 2. https://tidbits.com/2024/05/06/going-all-in-on-magsafe-for-the-iphone-in-the-office-bedroom-and-car/ 3. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/initial-iphone-16-impressions/28941/2 4. https://tidbits.com/2024/09/16/do-you-use-it-iphone-15-pro-action-button-struggles-to-find-its-purpose/ 5. https://tidbits.com/2024/09/09/iphone-16-models-add-camera-control-prep-for-apple-intelligence/ Hidden links: 6. https://tidbits.com/uploads/2024/09/iPhone-on-mailbox-scaled.jpg 7. https://tidbits.com/uploads/2024/09/iPhone-15-16-Pro-side-by-side-scaled.jpg 8. https://tidbits.com/uploads/2024/09/Macro-comparisons-scaled.jpg 9. https://tidbits.com/uploads/2024/09/Clean-Up-example-scaled.jpg .