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The iPhone 16 Pro succeeds 2023's iPhone 15 Pro, introducing over 45 new features and improvements to Apple's high-end smartphones. With many users adopting two-year upgrade cycles, plenty of iPhone 14 Pro owners will be looking to upgrade to the iPhone 16 Pro, so this guide outlines some of the major differences you should be aware of between the two generations.

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In 2022, Apple unveiled the iPhone 14 Pro as the successor to the popular iPhone 13 Pro, introducing an always-on display, the Dynamic Island, a 48-megapixel camera, the A16 Bionic chip, longer battery life, and more. Two years later, the iPhone 16 Pro offers a noticeable upgrade, with the accumulative improvements of two generations stacking up. To get a sense of the entirety of the upgrades, see our other two buyer's guides that set out every difference offered when making the jump from the iPhone 14 Pro to the iPhone 15 Pro, and the iPhone 15 Pro to the iPhone 16 Pro:


Overall, the ‌iPhone 16 Pro is a fairly significant upgrade over the ‌iPhone 14‌ Pro, introducing meaningful quality-of-life features like the USB-C port, Action button, and Camera Control that change the methods of interaction with the device. The new lightweight titanium design with contoured edges and larger screens with slimmer borders result in a noticeably different aesthetic and feel in the hand.

The ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro also brings advancements to photography and videography, adding support for 24-megapixel high-resolution photos, Smart HDR 5, revamped Photographic Styles, and next-generation portraits – practical features that most users can take advantage of. There are substantial hardware improvements with the addition of a 48-megapixel ultra wide camera and a tetraprism telephoto camera, offering up to 5x optical zoom. Features like 48-megapixel HEIF capture, external and log recording, Academy Color Encoding System, and fast data transfer via USB 3 are also major upgrades for professionals.

The iPhone 14 Pro does not support Apple Intelligence, Apple's upcoming suite of AI tools. With the A18 Pro chip, the iPhone 16 Pro has full support for Apple Intelligence, including Apple's new Visual Lookup feature, which is exclusive to the iPhone 16 lineup. It is also worth noting that the iPhone 16 Pro offers considerably longer battery life, Roadside Assistance via satellite, faster charging, new color options, Wi-Fi 7 support, the second-generation ultra wideband chip, and more.

Due to the scale and breadth of these improvements, many ‌iPhone 14‌ Pro users can justify upgrading to the ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro, especially if they value the new design, USB-C port, Action button, and camera improvements. However, some users may still be able to stick with their device for another year to hold off for an even more substantial upgrade in the future.

Article Link: iPhone 14 Pro vs. iPhone 16 Pro Buyer's Guide
 
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Photographer here. Damn it apple stop with the 120mm lens and give us usable focal lengths
13mm, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, and 120mm is an insane hole in the most needed focal lengths. 13, 24,35, 50 ,75 would be so much better. 120 is too long for hand holding video. and not a normal need,
 
I’m the curmudgeon on this. They will likely introduce nothing that will be of any real interest to the vast majority of users. More likely a bunch of pointless features hardly anyone will use. Add in that many people can barely use the basic functions they already have.

Making calls, email, messaging, camera, storing photos, access internet, maybe some games, shopping and maybe banking apps, some music playing and maybe airdrop. For many if not most the rest is unnecessary complication—a million things they will never use.
 
I am still rocking the iPhone 12 Pro which is the first iPhone I have kept for more than 2 years dating back to the iPhone 3G. Hopefully the iPhone 16 pro is compelling enough to upgrade or I will just ride it out until iPhone 17. The overall differences to date compared to the iPhone 12 Pro are not significant enough for how I use my iPhone on a day to day basis.
 
For about a decade, cellphones just kept getting smaller and smaller, until the keys got impossible to type on. Then came the touchscreen phones, and the shrinking trend reversed. Now it seems evey generation of every phone, iOS, Android or whatever, has to be larger than the last.

What I'm waiting for is the SE that is rumored to debut in 2025, to replace the 2020 SE I have now. As an avid bicyclist, I need a phone small enough to fit sideways in one of my jersey's back pockets. That way, it doesn't fall out when hitting a bump or other surface imperfection. Best case, it lands on a soft surface and isn't damaged. Bad case, hits pavement and breaks. Worst case, you don't notice it fell out, and the wrong person finds it.
 
For about a decade, cellphones just kept getting smaller and smaller, until the keys got impossible to type on. Then came the touchscreen phones, and the shrinking trend reversed. Now it seems evey generation of every phone, iOS, Android or whatever, has to be larger than the last.

What I'm waiting for is the SE that is rumored to debut in 2025, to replace the 2020 SE I have now. As an avid bicyclist, I need a phone small enough to fit sideways in one of my jersey's back pockets. That way, it doesn't fall out when hitting a bump or other surface imperfection. Best case, it lands on a soft surface and isn't damaged. Bad case, hits pavement and breaks. Worst case, you don't notice it fell out, and the wrong person finds it.
Seems like an Apple Watch with cellular might be your best option, or any smaller iPhone with Apple care and theft protection, that would cover all of your needs.
 
“With many users adopting two-year upgrade cycles, plenty of iPhone 14 Pro owners will be looking to upgrade to the iPhone 16 Pro later this year…”

I stopped doing this nonsense many years ago, after doing yearly upgrade cycles. Wife, and I, upgraded from the iPhone 8 Plus, to the 14 Pro Max. We expect to use these phones for a few years. Even the two year “upgrades” aren't impactful enough anymore.
 
Trying to decide if I should pull the trigger on 15 Pro now or wait for 16. Currently using an iPhone XR o_Oo_Oo_Oo_O
You’ve waited this long. You might as well wait another 6 months and get the 16, if only for the longer zoom range and potentially better AI performance. That XR was a workhorse computer. I suspect it will last at least until this fall.
 
So here is a question a camera expert or two can perhaps answer. Why can’t there be 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 optical zoom? Why go from 2 to 5? For some videos I make, 3 is a really good zoom. Going from 2 to 5 would be too close.
On the 15, you have 3 cameras, each with a specific telephoto distance (Called zoom).

Wide angle - 0.5
Normal - 1.0 with a 2.0 crop of the 48mp sensor.
Telephoto - 3.0 on the Pro, 5.0 on the Max.

The camera UI has presets at those zoom-levels but you can still manually zoom to in between levels. 0.5, 1, 3/5 are the native, optical zoom-levels. The rest are crops from those, including the 2 that is often mentioned.

The same will likely be true for the 16 pro. You’ll be able to select 3x but it will not be an optical zoom.
 
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