iPhone 16 and 16 Plus: first hands-on look

The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus are official, with Action Buttons inherited from the 15 Pro and a new look for the camera bump. We’ve just gotten some hands-on time with them in Cupertino, California, following the announcement, and the great news is that color is back, baby: they look great.

The rear cameras are now stacked vertically on a smaller pill-shaped camera bump. This arrangement is better suited for capturing spatial video, lest we all forget about the Vision Pro. It’s also just a fresh look for the regular iPhone, and Apple likes to throw one in every few years to shake things up.

They come with the same size screens as their predecessors: a 6.1-inch display on the iPhone 16 and a 6.7-inch display on the 16 Plus. Other than the once-again vertical lenses, the design hasn’t changed much — but the 16s do come in a few new and more vivid colors. They’re much more saturated than the washed-out colors of the 15 series, with vibrant new ultramarine, teal, and pink options joining white and black.

But these non-Pro iPhone 16 models also get an all-new feature: the “camera control” that acts as a dedicated shutter button and a way to change various settings both in the Camera app and elsewhere. The new button comes alongside some other camera upgrades to the 16, which now has the “equivalent” of four lenses despite only having two lenses.

There are other updates that are less obviously visual, too. The iPhone 16 also comes with the new A18 chip, which is supposedly 30 percent faster than last year’s model, and is supposedly more rugged and less prone to scratching or shattering. That’s all good news, though the new chip will matter most when Apple Intelligence arrives, which may not be until 2025. A new “glowed-up” Siri is a centerpiece of Apple’s suite of AI features, but it’s one that most people will have to wait a little bit longer for.

The 16 and 16 Plus will be available next week starting at $799. Will the new buttons make them worth the upgrade? That’s what I’m going to find out as soon as I can get my hands on them for longer than an afternoon.