Thinking of buying an iPhone 16? Its camera takes some getting used to.

If you’re on the fence about upgrading — or aren’t all that worked up about AI — here’s what you should know before you buy.

Cameras and control

Controversial opinion: Gadgets should have more physical buttons.

Despite once railing against buttons, Apple seems to agree. In addition to its shortcut-launching “action” button, all of this year’s new iPhones also have a “camera control” button. The catch? It can be too clever for its own good.

At its most basic, it’s a convenient way to launch the camera — just press it, and you’re ready to snap photos. After a software update coming later this year, it will also invoke a “visual intelligence” feature that lets iPhones show off information about objects and places their cameras see, and I suspect that’s why this new button is really here.

It also acts like a shutter button on your old digital camera. That takes some getting used to — a few colleagues initially struggled to snap pics — but you’ll get the hang of it.

The thing is, Apple also wants you to use it to switch between cameras and change your settings, and that’s where it starts to fall short.

To access these features, you have to double-press — lightly! — on the button and swipe left and right to switch between options. Press too lightly, and nothing happens. Press too forcefully, and oops! You just took a picture. Don’t forget to delete it.

Granted, it’s useful for some things, like dialing in just the right zoom level. But even after mastering its little gestures, sifting through options with this new button never felt faster or easier than just using the touch screen.

None of this would matter if the Apple’s new cameras weren’t up to snuff, so I walked around taking the same shots with six different iPhone models to see how far the 16 and 16 Pro have come. If there’s one thing this exercise made clear to me, it’s that these new iPhones think about photos differently than the models you might be upgrading from.

The 48-megapixel main cameras in the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro captured loads of detail, though you’d have to zoom in real close to see most of it. (Unsurprisingly, the Pro did a slightly better job than the 16 here, and it’s new ultrawide camera handily beats the bunch in the “best landscapes” category.)

But the older iPhones I tested were no slouches. There were slight variances in tone, but unless I hunted for differences, which phone produced the “better-looking” photos mostly boiled down to taste.

What really stuck with me, though, is that the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro generally produced images that looked more like the scenes I saw — and that’s especially true at night.

Older models, such as the 12 Pro and 14 Pro, mainly sucked up as much light as they could to make lowlight images easier to see. This year’s iPhones, meanwhile, didn’t just pack in more detail; they delivered a vibe that was more in keeping with reality.

That’s kind of a big deal. For years, smartphone cameras have developed distinct styles, producing results that appealed for their vibrancy or moodiness — even if the real world never matched up.

This year, Apple seems happy to offer more of a blank slate you can customize yourself. Built into the new iPhones’ Camera app is a new control for changing the tones and overall mood of the images you capture.

I’m all for this more realistic approach, even though it comes with an ironic catch: Photos I took with older iPhones sometimes looked more immediately interesting than images I captured with the new models, even if they weren’t as technically accurate.

Better batteries, mostly

If you’re coming from an older iPhone — say, an iPhone 13 — the extended battery life found in some of these new models will feel huge. But some got more of a boost than others.

I’ve found that all of Apple’s new iPhones last at least a bit longer than last year’s — if all you’re doing is watching videos, anyway. But even now, the smaller models — the 16 and 16 Pro — could struggle to get through a full day of use without a recharge.

For those prone to bouts of battery anxiety, Apple’s bigger iPhones are the way to go. The larger iPhone 16 Plus easily lasted me a day and a half of work and play on a single charge — a slight improvement over last year.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max, meanwhile, was the clear winner in the battery department — I’ve been able to use it for closer to two days straight without needing to run and find a charger. But there’s one big caveat: We don’t yet know what kind of battery impact Apple Intelligence will make when it launches next month in beta.

If I were you, though, I’d still probably stick to the non-Pro models for one reason: It should be easier to replace their batteries.

In the iPhone 16 — not the Pro — Apple used a different adhesive that loses its grip when you run a bit of electricity through it. This new approach replaces the “brittle, error-prone adhesive that Apple is using with something that quickly releases,” said Kyle Wiens, CEO of repair website and community iFixit. “We’re excited about anything that makes phones easier to repair and batteries easy to replace.”

Go Pro, or no?

Sooner or later, every dedicated iPhone owner will face the same question: Should I splurge for a Pro model? Normally, I’d say yes. And this year’s 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max have a lot going for them.

Both have cameras with a 5x optical zoom, which is a real help in closing the gap between you and far-off subjects. Their A18 Pro processors offer a little more oomph, which Apple says will help its AI tools run faster. (Again, we’ll see.) And they have faster, smoother screens, which are hard to give up if you’ve used one before.

But hear me out: From computing power to controls, the gap between Apple’s standard iPhones and its Pro models feels narrower than ever. If you’re sold on an upgrade this year, give the regular 16 — or better yet, the 16 Plus and its bigger battery — a good, long look before committing to a Pro.

And if you’re not fully convinced yet, well, take it from someone who has obsessed over phones for his entire adult life: It never hurts to wait.