Apple iPhone 16 Plus review

A familiar dual-camera setup

The new iPhone 16 Plus has almost the exact same camera hardware as its predecessor. The main 48MP main camera is still on board, featuring the same lens, while the ultrawide gets a more meaningful upgrade - larger aperture and autofocus for better close-up shots. Apple upgraded it from f/2.4 last year to f/2.2, allowing extra light to come in and improving low-light photography. We suspect last year's ultrawide on the 15 Pro series trickled down to the 16 and 16 Plus this year.

• Wide (main): 48MP (1/1.56", 1.0µm), f/1.6, 26mm, dual pixel PDAF, sensor-shift OIS; 4K@30fps
• Ultrawide: 12MP, f/2.2, 13mm, 120-degree, dual pixel PDAF; 4K@30fps
• Front camera: 12MP (1/3.6"), f/1.9, 23mm, PDAF; 4K@30fps

The 16 Plus also borrows the selfie camera from its predecessor, so no changes there either.

If we see any notable difference with this year's 16 Plus, it will likely be due to the newer, more powerful ISP or change in post-processing.

A few words on the new Camera Control button. It's a physical button with actual travel, but it also integrates a high-precision force sensor that enables the light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that allows for touch and slide interactions.

When the iPhone is unlocked, a single click opens the camera, and another press takes a photo. You can press and hold it to record a video for as long as you keep it pressed. You can set it so that a double click opens the camera instead to avoid accidental activations.

When you have the camera app opened, a double light press opens a camera control menu with options, which you can swipe through using the touch sensitive surface on the button. These include Exposure, Depth, Zoom, Cameras, Styles, and Tone.

A single light press would open one of the camera settings of your choice, which, again, you control by swiping left and right on the Camera control.

When you lightly press the Camera Control, it switches to the so-called Clean Preview (seen above) where the other controls on the screen disappear so you can focus on the options offered in the Camera Control menu. This can be disabled from the Camera settings.

The button can also be set to open third-party camera apps, which support it.

Camera Control options

You can also set the general Camera control press sensitivity from Lighter to Firmer in the iPhone's accessibility menu. Or while you are there, you can disable the Light press functionality and the entire Camera Control interface.

One new addition to the iPhone 16 camera experience is the setting for Tone - a new angle on the previously present Photographic Styles. This one in particular aims to give you more control over the HDR processing intensity - something that's apparently been causing a stir on the internet.

There are two sets of Photographic styles, labeled Mood and Undertones, and for each style you can tweak the Tone (think of it as contrast or tone curve), Color (saturation), and Palette (sort of like a color filter). The Mood styles have pre-set values for all three parameters (Palette is always at 100), while the Undertone styles only alter Palette.

We appreciate the added layer of customizability in the way an iPhone will render the world around it so that you can personalize the photos you get out of your phone to your own taste. We'd almost be inclined to praise Apple for giving you all those options, though we're also of the opinion that the phone that 'just works' maybe shouldn't have to resort to glorified filters to try and please everyone. Or maybe that's too harsh, and Apple's approach is precisely the correct one.

Daylight photos

Main camera

Objectively speaking, the iPhone 16 Plus outputs excellent stills. They are clean, extremely sharp and with plenty of detail around the frame. Foliage is rendered perfectly and fine detail can be spotted even in dark areas of the image. Dynamic range is also one of the main camera's strengths.

Main camera samples

Subjectively speaking, some users may find the colors lacking and the overall rendering a bit grim. As usual, Apple prefers to keep things as "natural" as possible. Colors are somewhat accurate, but the extra contrast adds a bit of a grim vibe. We do like the natural-looking, dark shadows, though. Good thing Apple provides Tone for adjusting color saturation and contrast, among other settings, so you can make the photos look more vibrant. It’s easily fixable this year.

There's a hidden 24MP mode in the camera settings menu that adds some extra detail to the shots. Just like last year, we like the 24MP samples and believe there's some value in them.

24MP samples

We are surprised by how good the 48MP photos look too. They are sharp, detailed and clear from noise. Something you don't see every day with Android phones.

48MP samples

Here are some portrait samples too. We noticed a slight decrease in sharpness when shooting in the dedicated Portrait mode.

Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

2x crop zoom

The 2x crop zoom from the main camera is one of the decent implementations around, but it's not the best we've seen. Expectedly, there's a drop in quality compared to the standard 1x photos, but it's more than we would like. Of course, 2x stills are perfectly usable and will be ideal for social media posting, but don't expect dedicated 2x zoom camera quality, for example.

2x crop zoom samples

Overall rendition matches the 1x Photo mode and there's no noise even in more challenging conditions.

The same goes for portraits, which tend to be even softer in dedicated Portrait mode.

2x Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera is decent enough, but not good enough given the price range of the device. To be fair, ultrawide cameras are usually the weak link even in high-end devices, but we've also seen better implementations. Sharpness isn't the best and dynamic range is more limited compared to the main camera. The more limited dynamic and extra contrast result in rather dark shadows at times.

Ultrawide camera samples

On the other hand, we are impressed with the level of detail, especially on close objects, and the overall rendition matches the one from the main camera, meaning color reproduction, contrast, exposure, color temperature.

Since the ultrawide gained autofocus on the new iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, shooting close-up macro stills is possible. The photos are nice and detailed and the camera software is pretty good at switching between the main and the ultrawide when you get close enough to a subject.

Macro samples

Selfies

The selfie camera is fairly reliable and produces nice selfies when the ambient light is sufficient. There's a noticeable drop in sharpness when you go indoors, which is expected. Moreover, colors sometimes lose their pop when you go inside.

Selfies

Aside from that, the selfies we took have excellent dynamic range, the subject's face is always well-exposed, even in more challenging conditions, and the level of detail is great.

Low-light photos

Main camera

There's no dedicated Night mode, just a standard Photo mode and the system sometimes takes a bit longer to take photos. That's when the Night mode kicks in. However, we found that the handset prefers the standard shooting method in the vast majority of cases, but likes to resort to the Night mode when shooting with the ultrawide camera or in the 2x zoom mode.

Either way, the shots from the main camera are clean, sharp and detailed. Saturation is a bit on the low end, even for an iPhone, but contrast is nice and pictures don't look overprocessed. The shadows are natural and dark without sacrificing detail. Some light sources look blown-out, but other highlights are well-contained for the most part.

Main camera samples

These are definitely one of the balanced and natural-looking low-light stills we've seen in a while. Phones nowadays tend to overexpose and oversharpen everything in low-light conditions.

2x crop zoom

As we already said, the software prefers to shoot 2x stills with active Night mode and to our surprise, the overall quality is comparable to the daylight 2x zoom shots. Performance seems to be consistent regardless of the lighting conditions. We find the nighttime 2x crop zooms to be solid and decently sharp too.

2x crop zoom samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide shots are okay, albeit looking a bit bleak and grainy at times. Dynamic range is wide enough, detail is aplenty and contrast is just the right amount. Nevertheless, we've seen better ultrawide implementations for the asking price.

Ultrawide camera samples

Video recording

The iPhone 16 Plus offers 2160p video recording with all of its cameras, including the selfie shooter. Stabilization is also available in all modes. There's one caveat, though. If you want to record 4K@60fps videos, they will be recorded in "high-efficiency" format that can play only on macOS Sierra or later.

Starting with the 4K footage from the main camera, we see an excellent-looking video with nothing to complain about. Color reproduction is accurate, sharpness is great, fine detail can be spotted with foliage rendered well, dynamic range is wide and good contrast. The new iPhone 16 Plus proves to once again be one of the best handsets in its class when it comes to video recording.

Even the 2x crop zoom footage isn't bad. Sure, noise starts to creep in and sharpness drops, but it's still a solid 4K footage.

The ultrawide clip is surprisingly sharp and detailed. One would expect a significant drop in quality compared to the main camera, but this isn't the case here. The 4K footage is not only sharp but with wide dynamic range and even more likeable than video from the main camera. That's because colors look more lively, which is yet another surprise given that Apple fine-tunes its cameras to have the exact same processing.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

The low-light footage from both cameras is good, impressive even. The main camera outputs clean and sharp videos with wide dynamic range and plenty of details even in the shadows. The ultrawide camera tones down the contrast and introduces some noise, but it's still pretty good. It's an ultrawide camera after all, so we can't expect much from a low-light video.

Stabilization seems to be on point on both cameras. No issues there.