Mario Bautista
There’s never been an iPhone quite like the 16 Pro. The latest iteration of the best smartphone available hits stores this Friday and most of the promo you’ll see for it goes big on Apple Intelligence. This new and potentially transformative AI assistant that’s powered in part by ChatGPT promises big things for the entire iPhone 16 lineup. It’ll draft emails for you, answer questions conversationally and fix up your photo editing skills. Trouble is, you can’t use it just yet – Apple Intelligence is not launching in the UK until December.
All of this means the iPhone 16 Pro I’ve been rolling with for the past week will be a dramatically different proposition in three months. It’s probably going to be a whole lot better, whether you’re the kind of person whose Action Button already links to Google Gemini or you fancy dipping your toes into AI without dealing with a lot of the faff associated with it. For now, I can only judge the iPhone 16 Pro on how it works straight out of the box. So it’s just as well that it’s a killer camera phone in its own right.
Apple Intelligence: Likely worth the wait
In order to get to the iPhone 16 Pro that you can actually use, it’s worth taking Apple Intelligence off the table. Why isn’t it available now? Although the demos I’ve seen of it in beta form are pretty impressive, the last major software feature that got launched alongside a new iPhone was called Apple Maps, so the caution on show here isn’t all that surprising. Especially since Google got absolutely clobbered for advising its users to eat rocks and add glue to their pizzas when it launched a much more limited set of AI features for its search engine earlier this summer.
So yes, it’s strange that the iPhone 16 Pro has arrived without what Apple regards as its biggest selling point, but it is also understandable. Apple Intelligence will work across numerous apps such as Mail, Music and Maps to give comprehensive and contextual answers to your questions. It’ll let you create a one-of-kind surfing dinosaur to use as an emoji and, most intriguingly of all, it promises to make Siri worth talking to. It should be a fundamental change to how you use your iPhone, and that’s especially true of the 16 Pro with its ultra-powerful A18 Pro Chip and ample display to interact with. Until December comes along, I can’t tell you whether Apple Intelligence has nailed its landing. That means it’s fair enough if you want to hold off on making an upgrade for the moment.
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Best new button
Without Apple Intelligence, the story of the iPhone 16 Pro is one of iterative fine-tuning and a big new button. As buttons go, the Camera Control is pretty damn great. Unlike last year’s customisable Action Button, which I hammer all too regularly to mute my colleagues on Slack, the Camera Control is dedicated exclusively to photography. It sits on the bottom right-hand side of the iPhone’s brushed titanium frame and will pop open the Camera app at a moment’s notice. Aside from simply using it to take a point-and-shoot snap or quick-fire video, a softer press on the button will allow you to adjust settings such as zoom, depth, exposure and beyond. It’s a bit like a touch-sensitive version of the camera dial you’ll find sitting at the top of a Canon DSLR, and works just as well – you’re going to end up using it all the time.
