iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max – bigger, more powerful and smarter

Apple has officially unveiled its latest iPhone Pro lineup.

Built from the ground up for Apple Intelligence, the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max come with larger OLED displays than ever before – 6.3-inches for the Pro, 6.9-inches for the Pro Max. That's thanks to bezels being shrunk rather than the phones increasing in physical size. 

They are made using titanium again, and here are four finishes, including the new (much-rumoured) Desert Titanium colour. This has been added to the Black Titanium, White Titanium and Natural Titanium models, as before.

Inside, the Pro and Pro Max each get a new chipset this year, the A18 Pro.

A 16-core Neural Engine is built into the chip that's better suited to generative AI use. Apple also claims that it runs up to 15% faster than the A17 Pro found in the current iPhone Pro models. Ray tracing support runs twice as fast, too.

Apple claims that battery life on the Pro Max has been increased, with up to 33 hours available when playing video. The 16 Pro is said to last up to 27 hours.

A 48-megapixel main fusion camera can be found on the rear, which sports a faster sensor, and there's an all-new 48-megapixel ultra-wide, plus a 5-megapixel telephoto cam. Plus, as with the new iPhone 16 models, there's a new Camera Control haptic button on the side of each handset that can be used to take photos and also swiped to access settings.

Additional Camera Control features are coming later this year, although they won't be available on first release. It's also worth noting that the Camera Control button is separate to the Action button, which remains.

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For video, the Pro iPhones are now capable of 4K recording in 120 frames per second, and with Dolby Vision enabled as well. There are different playback speeds that are new too, so a clip shot in 120fps can be played back as low as 24fps for an interesting, cinematic slow-mo effect.

Many of the new software features will be delivered after release, as they'll be part of the first major Apple Intelligence update (iOS 18.1). That includes the ability to remove objects in photos and creating intelligent photo movies from simple descriptions. It's coming to the US in October and several other regions, including the UK, in December.

The iPhone 16 Pro starts at £999 / $999 / AUD$1,799, with the iPhone 16 Pro Max priced from £1,119 / $1,199 / AUD$2,149.

They will both be available for pre-order from Friday 13 September with shipping to start the following week, on 20 September 2024.