iPhone 16 Pro - Battery Wins, Design Misses 😬 Full Review!

After spending a week with the iPhone 16 Pro, I’ve had a mixed experience. The design, while familiar and comfortable, left me wanting for something new, especially with the oddly placed Camera Control Button. (Yes, it's a darn button, Apple!)

On the upside, the battery performance has been stellar, offering at least 7 hours of screen-on time even under heavy use. I also discussed Apple’s privacy practices and how they’re not as weak as some critics suggest, provided you opt into encryption.

The camera system is a highlight, with impressive features like ultrawide lens performance and macro capabilities that are perfect for both casual and professional use. But gaming, especially with titles like Resident Evil, has been disappointing due to lag and crashes, which Apple still hasn’t fully ironed out.

Though I’m returning the iPhone 16 Pro for now, I plan to test the Pro Max model soon. My final thoughts? The 16 Pro has potential, but it’s not quite compelling enough for me to keep it as my primary device just yet.

✅ SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE WEEKLY, DOWN-TO-EARTH TECH VIDEOS

✅ 📺 WATCH MORE REVIEW VIDEOS HERE:

✅ SIGN UP TO MY NEWSLETTER 'BEHIND THE LENS'

✅ STUFF I WEAR
👕 The lovely shirts I wear in all my videos
🛒 Use Code ALEX20 for 20% OFF!

✅ GEAR & TECH I LOVE RIGHT NOW!
✨Grab yourself a Sandmarc discount storewide with ALEXGTECH10

✅ DESK SETUP GEAR I LOVE

✅ AUDIO

✅ CURRENT FAVOURITE APPS

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 iPhone 16 Pro - What's good, bad and ugly after a week!
0:25 Design
0:50 Boring or just 'Familiar'?
1:18 Battery - Not bad (so far)
2:00 Can you trust battery tests?
2:40 Myth 1 - The Dynamic Island is useful
3:55 All Marketing?
4:15 Myth 2 - Apple Privacy is bad
5:07 Myth 3 - Face ID is easy to hack
5:28 How I stopped data brokers selling my data - Incogni
6:00 Data breaches are regular and affect millions of people
6:35 How Incogni deals with removing your data from brokers
7:15 Not just a flash in a pan - Incogni
7:40 Myth 4 - The iPhone is built for AI
8:10 Apple Intelligence on iOS18.1 Beta 5
8:25 Cameras
9:00 The Ultrawide lens and Macro are fun!
9:35 Audio Mix in action
9:55 This is annoying...
10:25 Performance A18 Pro chip
11:00 This blew my mind 🤯
11:30 A problem with gaming 😢 This is bad
12:30 Will I switch away from my S24 Ultra and Fold 6?

💪🏼 DISCLAIMER

#iphone16promax #iPhone16Pro #iPhone16 #Apple #AppleiPhone #GalaxyS24Ultra

[AlexGTech]

Hope you enjoyed this one, have a lovely day 🙏🏼

[AlexGTech]

Like this comment for more cameos from Napoleon Dynamite 😅

[leetronix]

Love your videos Alex you ways make them fun and so polished.... That said 😂 Apple are not innovative they are dictatortorial, boring and over expensive, selling people on fake ideologies while profiting on such greed through less is twice as expensive methodology.

It's a company that has successfully made a great OS or IOS no doubt about that but that is where it ends. They are a dire awful scheming company regardless of their mobile business etc.

[williedublin]

I got 16 pro max and I’m going to return it. The battery is the best but the phone is so boring. I’m coming from s23 ultra so I’m just wait for s25 ultra. In my opinion it have to many buttons cause s23 can do something and it have 3 buttons.

[JMJAZZR]

I switched to Samsung last year after 10 years on iPhone. No regrets, and I'm not even remotely interested in switching back. My wife just upgraded to the 16 ProMax from her 13 ProMax, and her first comment was, "It's the same phone!"

[VKTR_Tech]

I disagree with the dynamic island. I like it a lot. They need the hole for the camera and face ID anyway, might as well add useful information or shortcuts to it, plus delightful animations.

[Gadgetsu]

PRODUCTION QUALITY, MUSIC, ALL 🔥🔥🔥 But yes agreed, battery life is so far really good and those tests without SIM cards are SCAMS!!! And bruh I can't believe we gotta wait so long for the full suite of Apple Intelligence features to come out 😑Haha I miss my loaner Z Fold6 from Samsung I want it back!!! Amazing video as always Alex!!! 😄

[fernando_her]

I love the review, man. It's clean, to the point, and well-edited, as usual. However, I like the dynamic island; it shows live scores of the matches I like, among other minor things.

However I would change that for an Apple foldable or a new design.

[stevanb.]

For everyone with 14 and 15 Pro/Max, maybe even 13, this isn't a big upgrade. We're far from times where you could really feel new stuff and significantly better performance buying new device year after year.

[dragonite]

First time I've heard anyone in a year call out Apple for their BS on gaming

[srsgonu]

With the cash Apple has at hand, how long does it take to innovate and make monkey bar small? And do you know why they don't implement app multitasking (side by side)? It highlights the monkey bar more. Now enjoy your camera (button) controller and pausing while taking video. Innovation at best. At least other companies don't call these stuff innovations unlike Apple.

[MrOrtmeier]

IMO the regular 16 is very appealing because of colours, chipset, camera control button. These are colours that match the original iMac. Go see a video and you’ll know what I mean. That’s epic if you’re an Apple fan. Especially since iPhone 15 was so bland in colour.

I want to switch back to iPhone but it costs €949 here in Cyprus. For the base 16. So I’m looking at the 13 which is €600. However it’s been discontinued which means this is final stock. I will need several months of saving to afford the 13 but by then it will be out of stock. The 14 is the next one up but costs €749 and it won’t likely drop to €600 because then they’d have to drop the 15 and 16, which they won’t do.

The 14 is basically a 13 but with worse colours. The 15 is a minor improvement but with the most disgusting "colours" I’ve ever seen anywhere! I don’t want that crap. Life is too short to settle for ugly crap.

So, what to do? I’m going to have to save even longer than expected and maybe by mid next year get the 16? At which point it will instantly lose value because the 17 will be around the corner. …

I wish they weren’t so damn expensive, especially here in Europe. $700 in the US because the rest of the world is subsiding

[NSGProductionsYT]

I was looking for a iPhone 15 PM because I knew the prices would drop but ended up getting a 16 PM. I usually switch every couple months but nobody really innovating these days and all companies pretty much good across the board so then it falls to who has the better ecosystem… 🤷🏾

[graham]

Was just about to go into town to buy one of these

[icedave]

My Pro Max should arrive tomorrow upgrading from a Samsung Note 20 Ultra. Its going to be my first iPhone looking forward to trying the camera out hoping it will play nice with my iPad Pro and MacBook Pro I just want something that will work seamlessly with all my devices and hopefully going all in with Apple will work.

[vishalachari]

Great information Alex. Spot on with Battery test that some are doing without Sim Card inside. Glad you sticking with S24 Ultra

[ea]

Is the battery comment a swing at MrYouKnowWho?

[horridohobbies]

You skipped any discussion about the Camera Control button. This is the most obvious change in the iPhone 16 line-up.

The Camera Control button is, in my opinion, the worst feature this year. It is terribly fiddly and awkward to use. It seems totally superfluous and unnecessary. And the biggest downside? It actually *slows* down your picture-taking task! It's much faster just to use the on-screen controls.

This button was ill-conceived. Instead of *removing* buttons from the iPhone, Apple decided to *add* new buttons such as the Action button and the Camera Control button. Steve Jobs must be spinning in his grave like a lathe.

I sincerely hope they remove this feature in the next iteration of the iPhone (17 or 18) after users express their displeasure.

[Eivind.A]

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about this Island thingy way back in 1883! So if you look very, very close, I bet that you'll find Ben Gunn hiding there looking for some apple flavoured cheese.

Btw Nobody here at home knows that I actually got the iPhone 15+1 Pro Max 512gig 😮
Why? Well, I find it a bit embarrassing 😳.

Great video as always 👍

[tanpen]

Apple sheep cope so hard on this island pill. Touch ID worked just as good if not better in some scenarios while giving you a full screen. Keep sheeping