iPhone 16 Pro After 1 Year - Perfectly Flawed!

0:00 Remember when Apple announced the iPhone 16 as being built from the ground up for Apple Intelligence? Well, that was about a year ago, and I've been using the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max every single day since. And I think that we can all agree that Apple Intelligence has been far less exciting than we expected. And unfortunately, that's not the only thing that's been making longtime iPhone users kind of lose faith in Apple. So, in this video, I want to discuss my experience using the iPhone 16 Pro and if you should buy one now or just get the 17 Pro. Okay, so let's start with Apple intelligence because we have to. So, the iPhone 15 when that was first announced, the big marketing push was for Titanium. And that turned out to be only a small part of the frame that was actually titanium. And then the iPhone 16's big

0:45 marketing push was of course Apple intelligence. So, Apple showed off the new, you know, more personalized Siri that can also perform in-app actions, and that had us really hyped, but here we are a full year later, and we still do not have those new Siri features. Now, granted, we did get every other Apple intelligence feature that was promised, but still, this is like one of the main features that had a lot of people hyped, and a lot of people bought the iPhone 16 for this new Siri experience. Now, those features are expected to come in the spring of next year in iOS 26.4. 4. And speaking of iOS 26, by the way, it does add some nice new Apple intelligence features like right now on 26.0. Uh things like auto translation and the kind of circle to search equivalent when you take a screenshot. That's nice. But of course,

1:32 I and pretty much all of us still want those new Siri features. Anyways, let's talk more about the phone itself. And we'll sprinkle in some more about the software throughout this video. But the iPhone 16 Pro durability wise has held up surprisingly well. So, I typically only use this phone caseless unless I'm traveling, but I do always have a screen protector on the glass because I do drop it quite a bit. I've dropped it probably six or seven times and there's really not too much to show for it. Like, I do, you can see I do have this little gash here on the screen protector. I do need to replace that. But, as far as along the body, I mean, we have some small scratches around the sides, but really nothing too major despite dropping it multiple times. Now, Apple did introduce the second generation ceramic shield with the 16 Pro, so they do claim it's 50% tougher than the previous first

2:17 generation ceramic shield, but I still don't want to risk it. And after watching the durability test videos, I would advise that you also just get a screen protector at the minimum for your 16 Pro because you will see a lot of hairline scratches if you don't. And of course, it is also IP68 dust and water resistant. And I've had this thing submerged in water on several occasions for the past year, and it's been perfectly fine. like at water parks. It was underwater while I was swimming around for like an hour and it was fine. So, I wouldn't be too worried about that. Now, speaking of water parks, what makes a water park fun? Yes, it's heat. It has to be hot outside, otherwise it'd be pretty miserable. And that heat is actually part of the reason why I think my iPhone 16 Pro's battery health is cooked. But it wasn't always bad because it really only got bad after about month

3:04 seven, I would say, because I had 100% capacity until about month seven. And then it started to gradually decline and then it got really bad when I started using the iOS 26 betas in early June. That's when I saw a rapid decline in my battery health. And obviously, it's because there's a lot of heat. I'm using my device a lot. Now, speaking of the heat, the 16 Pro is going to be better in terms of, you know, thermals and heat because Apple did upgrade and they improved the thermal design inside of the 16 Pro and the Pro Max. So, I guess it would have been worse even if I was using my 15 series. So, that's at least good to know. Anyways, after almost a year of usage, you can see that my battery capacity is at 93% after 454 cycles. That is a lot of cycles. It's

3:51 actually kind of embarrassing how many cycles that is. But if you have more than me somehow, please let me know in a comment down below. Speaking of embarrassing, you know what else would be embarrassing is if somebody found your personal information with a simple Google search and they showed up at your door. Yeah, today's sponsor, Incogn. Have you ever just searched for your name online? because if you haven't, you should just to see how much of your personal info shows up out there because there's a good chance that your address, your phone number, even old login credentials are just floating around online for anybody to find. And that's where Incogn comes in because they help clean up your name online by automatically reaching out to data brokers and people search sites that are constantly popping up and selling your info without you even knowing. I used to get hit with dozens of spam texts and

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5:22 Pro, but as far as dayto-day usage for battery, it's actually very good. So, the 16 Pro, I've noticed, gets about the same battery life that I got on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Now, on paper, it looks like the 15 Pro Max gets better battery life than the 16 Pro, but I'm telling you, I went from the 15 Pro Max to the 16 Pro, and I didn't really feel like I missed out on anything in terms of battery life. I didn't feel like I needed to charge my phone up another time, you know, like I was expecting to. So, that is really good. And Apple does claim the 16 Pro gets about 17% longer video playback versus the 15 Pro. That's four additional hours, which is really noteworthy if you're coming from a 15 Pro. And you know, my phone lasts almost the entire day. Like I have my charge limit set at 90%, but it still lasts me

6:08 pretty much the entire day still after almost a year of usage. So, my first charge of the day usually comes around 5 to 6:00 p.m. And then after that, I don't need to charge again until I'm going to bed, which of course I do leave my phone on a MagSafe charger at night to charge while I'm sleeping. And with the iPhone 16 series, you can now charge at 25 watts wirelessly, whereas you can only charge at 15 watts on the 15 Pro. So, that could actually be a pretty big deal if you're somebody who wirelessly charges every single day. Now, me personally, I don't use it every single day. I don't even use the fast 25 watts, but that is a nice feature to have on the 16 series. Okay, so let's move on to the overall design of the iPhone 16 Pro because, you know, at first glance, it looks similar. I mean, we've had the same looking iPhone for a long time, and

6:55 we'll touch on that in a moment. And that's pushing a lot of people away from Apple at this point, but, you know, we could be seeing a change with the iPhone 17s. As far as the overall design here, you know, anytime I go back to the iPhone 15 Pro, I notice the larger bezels and I really just come to appreciate the more full screen look on the 16 Pro. It it's just even more stunning on the Pro Max phone. It just looks like completely bezelless almost after you look at it for a long time. But yeah, that difference in display size also makes a big difference on the 16 Pro. So, we went from 6.1 in on the 15 Pro up to 6.3 in on the 16 Pro. And that only seems like two inches. It might not be a big deal, but trust me, it makes a big difference when you're using the phone every single day. I couldn't use the 15 Pro because it was too small for me. But the 16 Pro is like

7:41 the perfect size. And I do use the Pro Max several times a week as my test device, my beta device, but I can confidently say that I do not miss the Pro Max at all when I'm out and about because the Pro, it just feels perfect in my hands, which I I think I probably have about average hands, but I also wear gym shorts a lot, like flimsy shorts a lot. And the Pro is just so much better. It's so much more manageable in those shorts than the Pro Max. It's just not a huge brick like it used to be. It's not as heavy. The Pro Max isn't as heavy as it used to be, but still just the size of it is really annoying sometimes in those shorts where whereas the Pro is just much better. Now, before we get away from that display too much, I do just want to mention that I really hope Apple this year adds an anti-reflective display because that's one thing when I go back to the S25 Ultra, the Samsung phone. I

8:27 love that feature and it makes me just want to keep using that over the iPhone, especially when I'm outside, you know, in a reflective environment. So, that's one thing I miss. It's not the same if you put a screen protector on it. It's just so good. I hope Apple adds that to the next series. But regardless, I've had no complaints really with the iPhone 16 Pro when it comes to watching videos. The screen is plenty big for me. Like, yes, the Pro Max would be better, but I don't think that the trade-offs are worth it for the overall size of it. So, I love the display on the 16 Pro. Of course, it does have 120 Hz as well. We have the prootion display, which is great for making everything feel fluid. It feels especially amazing when using iOS 26. I think it brings promotion, you know, to life even more, which is awesome. And by the way, when I'm watching videos, yeah, sometimes I do wish that I had the S25 Ultra because

9:13 the display is honestly just better than the iPhone in certain scenarios, especially with that anti-reflective coating. You know, sometimes even just the contrast and the brightness is just better than the iPhone. But one area where I just always love the iPhone so much more than any other phone I've tested is with the speakers. I just feel like the speakers on the 16 Pro are amazing, especially when it comes to spoken word content. It just sounds great. It's it's high, you know, the the volume gets high and it's also just very clear, which is underrated, I feel like. And I should just throw this in here because I've seen a lot of lifelong iPhone users kind of losing faith in Apple recently and kind of ditching the iPhone recently because they felt like the iPhone has been the same for a very long time. And meanwhile, we have Samsung who released the ZFold 7, which is amazing. It's actually had a lot of

10:00 people switching over. And I can't say that I blame them because I personally also have the ZFold 7 and I love that phone. But I will say that if you're thinking about doing that, I would maybe hold off for a little bit because Apple is planning to launch their foldable within the next year or so. So you might regret it if you switch over and then you maybe don't like it. So just be patient a little bit. I do think we're going to see an iPhone fold and Apple foldable in due time. Okay, so now let's talk about this camera and of course the camera control button because the camera control, let's just start there actually because that was one of the biggest kind of controversies. Not really controversy, but a lot of people just hated the camera control at the beginning. And I have to say, I was also one of those people at the very beginning. But after about a month, I started really loving the camera control. And I made multiple videos on

10:45 how to make it better and how it's actually really useful, especially after Apple made improvements to the software. But here we are almost a year later, and honestly, I rarely use it. And I think it's mostly because, you know, it's not that it's not useful. I do think it's useful and I do like how you can turn it off if you don't actually use it at all. You can turn it off in the settings completely so you don't accidentally press it. But I think the reason I don't find myself using it super often is because I don't really take videos in landscape mode. I take most my videos in portrait mode, which would mean I would have to have my thumb right here and like pressing it like this, which would be kind of weird. It works the best when you're taking landscape videos and your finger is already right there. So, those are the times when I do use camera controls when I'm taking vertical video. But even sometimes with that, I just don't need it. Like, if I'm not going to

11:31 zoom in, if I'm not going to change anything, I just press the on screen, you know, record button and I just move my phone around. Like, you don't really need camera control unless you're going to be doing zooming, unless you're going to be, you know, changing the focus or something like that. You know what I mean? So, I don't know. It's cool to have, but it's not something I use nearly as much as I maybe thought I would after the first month. Now, as for the actual camera itself, the iPhone 16 Pro crushes it here. The cameras are amazing on this phone, and after almost a year, it's still my favorite smartphone camera, even over like the S25 Ultra and the ZFold 7, especially for video. So, we do have that powerful triple lens setup with the 12 megapixel periscope telephoto lens, which 12 megapixels isn't the greatest, but it still shoots pretty good quality, like

12:16 even close to 48 megapixels like we see on the others. quality difference isn't really that major despite only being 12 megapixels for that telephoto. But anyways, we do also have the 48 megapixel ultrawide and that also gives you macro mode by the way. And of course, we have that main 48 megapixel sensor and that combination just makes for excellent still shots and again excellent videos. You can also shoot video in 4K 120, which is cool, but that's not something I really do very often. Instead, I just usually shoot in 4K 30. Sometimes I shoot in ProRes, but it just takes up so much space that typically I just shoot in 4K 30. And I rarely ever need to color correct or really make any type of adjustments to the videos because they just come out of the camera looking so good. And this is also key for social media because like I said, I have been testing a lot of phones, Android phones in the past year

13:03 as well. And the iPhone just does so much better for social media video. Like if you're posting a story to Instagram, the video, you're basically never going to have any type of choppiness or any type of weird glitches on the iPhone. I don't know what it is, but on Android, you can just tell it was uploaded on an Android, if that makes sense. That's something that still has not been fixed, and I'm not really too sure why. So, even when I was using the ZFold 7 and the S25 Ultra, I would send those clips to my iPhone to post on social media just so I didn't have any issues. And there are a couple of other features that make the camera really good on the 16 Pro as well. And one of those is actually wind noise reduction. So, I feel like this is overlooked by a lot of people, but if you're shooting video outside and it's really windy, the iPhone 16 Pro is going to do so much better really than any phone I've tested at eliminating that wind without having

13:49 to do anything in post. And then we also have audio mix, which is a cool AI feature. The Samsung phones have this as well, but basically you can, you know, remove background noise and things like that. There's also a cool feature called studio. There's like a studio setting for audio mix and it can make a video it can just make your voice sound better like you're actually in a studio when you're talking and it eliminates background noise and everything like that as well. Now, as for the performance, the iPhone 16 Pro does have the A18 Pro chip inside which is a super powerful chip as always and I've had zero complaints after all this time. I can't really think of one time where I've been disappointed in the performance of the 16 Pro and I've been beta testing pretty much since day one that I received the phone and I've really had no major hiccups in terms of just overall raw performance on the 16

14:34 Pro. So that A18 Pro chip is super powerful, especially if you're into gaming. The gaming performance is going to be better than the 15 Pro. I'm not a huge gamer, so I can't really, you know, say it's that much different. Uh but that is, you know, what Apple is saying. And of course, the likelihood of thermal throttling is lower on the 16 series as well because of those improved thermals inside. So that also helps with performance. Now, when it comes to the overall connectivity, I have to say that I did use the iPhone 16 for a little while after that did come out. And I actually got better cell connectivity in terms of 5G and LTE. I got better connectivity on that phone than I do on the 16 Pro. So, of course, the 16e does have Apple's C1 modem inside. That's their new in-house modem. It's the only phone with it at this time and for some reason I got better performance on that

15:21 phone when it comes to like going through dead spots and things like that. It just performed better. Now, of course, the speeds are not going to be quite as high and it also doesn't have millimeter wave like the 16 Pro does, but still that is something I noticed. And then we also have Wi-Fi 7 support on the 16 Pro, but I don't have a Wi-Fi 7 router, so I didn't really notice a benefit there. So, connectivity is kind of just a null point for me. So, with all that being said, I'm finding it really hard to find really anything negative to say about the iPhone 16 Pro after almost a year of usage. And you guys know me in these reviews. I always have multiple things I talk about that I really don't like as cons, but it's hard to come by with the 16 Pro. I honestly think this is the best Pro phone that Apple has ever released. So, this is just perfect. I hope Apple doesn't ruin it with the 17 Pro, but I just find it

16:07 hard to believe it's going to be as good as the 16 Pro because think about it, the 16 Pro got the uh display size increase. It got the same exact cameras as the Pro Max. So, there's nothing that the Pro Max has that the Pro doesn't have. And we also just have much better battery life. Like I said, I find myself getting about the same battery life I got on my 15 Pro Max on the 16 Pro. So, the 16 Pro, and I've said this for months. I've said this really ever since my very first review on the 16 Pro, but I still feel like this is the best Pro phone Apple's ever made. And I'm glad that I've been using this as my daily driver over the Pro Max. Now, if you're trying to figure out if you should get the iPhone 16 Pro now or wait for the iPhone 17 Pro or if you're watching this video when the 17 Pro is already out, which one should you get? I would say, you know, if you're watching this before it comes out, just at least wait for the iPhone 17 series to come out so you can

16:54 see what the new features are because it may be intriguing to you. And of course, it will have that new design on the back, which could be, you know, appealing to some people if you want to make it look like you have the newest phone if you care that other people know you have the latest phone. Yes, some people do care about that. Uh, you know, that's one thing. But I will say that when the 17 series comes out, Apple will not be selling the 16 Pro anymore. So, you will have to get it used or maybe from a carrier or something like that. However, the upside of that is that you can get the 16 Pro at a discount since it will not be the latest phone anymore, which I think that's the way to go in my opinion. Buy it used on eBay or somewhere else, especially when people start dumping these phones because the new one comes out, people will be selling them for cheaper than usual. So, those are my thoughts on the iPhone 16 Pro after a year of daily usage. My favorite pro phone to date. If you guys

17:40 have this phone, let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Do you agree? Do you disagree with me? I'm curious to know what you guys think. But anyways guys, thanks for watching and I'll see you