Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro has a bigger screen, a new chip, and better battery life

Apple announced the iPhone 16 Pro lineup Monday with bigger screens, a new A18 Pro chip, a bunch of new recording features, and improved battery life.

The company’s new flagship smartphones have slightly bigger screens across both models: 6.3 inches on the iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches on the iPhone 16 Pro Max (up from 6.1 inches and 6.7 inches, respectively, on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max). Apple also says the phones have “the thinnest borders on any Apple product.” The bodies of the phones are once again made from titanium. They come in four colors: black, white, natural, and a new “desert titanium.”

The iPhone 16 Pro lineup comes with the A18 Pro chip, with a 16-core neural engine that it says will offer “amazing performance” for Apple Intelligence features, including 15 percent faster performance than the iPhone 15 Pro. It also has improved graphics performance thanks to a six-core GPU that’s 20 percent faster than the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro.

The iPhone 16 Pro has a 48MP “Fusion camera,” a new 48MP ultrawide camera, and a 12MP 5x telephoto camera — which, on the regular iPhone 16 Pro, has the tetraprism design that was exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The iPhone 16 lineup also has the new Camera Control button to the iPhone 16 lineup, and Apple says that as part of a software update later this year, the button will get a two-stage shutter. Apple is introducing new photo styles, and you can change the styles in your photos after you take the picture. The iPhone 16 Pro will also be able to capture 4K video at 120fps, and you can adjust playback speed after capture in the Photos app.

Apple is also touting improved audio hardware on the iPhone 16 Pro, including four “studio quality” mics. You’ll also be able to capture spatial audio when recording spatial video. And in an update coming to Voice Memos later this year, you’ll be able to layer a track over a recording, which could be useful if you’re recording music.

Apple says this year’s Pro phones will offer “a huge leap in battery life” — Apple claims the iPhone 16 Pro Max will have “the best battery life on iPhone ever” — thanks to an “optimized internal design” and the A18 Pro chip. With the iPhone 16 Pro Max, you’ll get up to 33 hours of video playback, while on the iPhone 16 Pro, you’ll get up to 27 hours of video playback. The iPhone 16 Pro phones support MagSafe charging speeds of up to 25W and are also Qi2-certified.

The iPhone 16 Pro starts at $999 with 128GB of storage, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max starts at $1,199 with 256GB of storage. You can preorder the new Pro phones on Friday, September 13th, and they’ll be available on September 20th.

Apple is launching these new phones as it makes a push into AI with its Apple Intelligence features, some of which are set to be available in beta in October. (The company claims that all of its new iPhones this year have been designed “for the ground up” for Apple Intelligence.) Like other tech companies, AI is a big focus for Apple this year, and the company already showed off several AI-powered tools at its most recent Worldwide Developers Conference, including an upgraded Siri and integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.