iPhone 16 Pro Worst thing about 16 series iPhones, 1 year later

[Deine Mudda]

For me it's got to be the 5x telephoto lens, it SUCKS so much.
The focal length is too long, this indirectly means it has a tiny sensor due to volume constraints, but also it has terrible stabilization. Then these two factors combined give you the issue of hand shake when taking photos, especially with the camera button, it's almost impossible to take a clear photo with the button because of the shaking, unless you're in a perfectly sunny day.

I just got a Chinese phone which has a very common telephoto choice, 3x telephoto with macro. This is a much more useful focal length, and because it's not too long, there is still space for a reasonably sized sensor, as well as room for the lens to focus much closer. You can even fit a high resolution sensor in it to enable more digital zoom and reach out to something like 6x

From my own testing, even under ideal lighting conditions the iPhone only has slight detail advantage for 5x and longer zoom. For everything else, that means 2x to 4.9999x, from close to far, indoor to night, the Android 3X camera choice is significantly better.

You would think Apple would not join the highest zoom X number race but instead use a more generally useful telephoto camera but it really seems like they chose bigger spec numbers instead. To some extend I also don't like the ultra wide choice of 12mm, that's so EXTREMELY wide. If you know anything about photography you know the most commonly used zooms only go as wide as 16mm, 12mm lenses are specialty lenses that are much less commonly used. So why not stop at 16mm for the ultra wide so you can improve the image quality? Instead we get this ridiculously wide lens with again, poor image quality. You also have to consider all the features where the ultra wide must work along with the main camera like spacial photo/video and portrait mode, a less wide but higher quality ultra wide lens would make those better as well.

The camera control button.
Utter useless.

 

[Rock_Artist]

Maybe I'm unique. but TBH, I've ended up getting iPhone 16. it was in stock and the 120Hz wasn't that major and also I'm a bad photographer.

What really concerns me and I'm not sure 17th series would resolve is:
- Battery life aren't that good. I've locked it to 80% and I have now 96% of the battery after a year. Why did I even look at it? because I've never got a full day of the device, even with low brightness set and I don't play games. Most of my usage is Web (Safari), IM (Messages, WhatsApp, etc), Emails (Mail) and Instagram doom-scrolling. To my surprise coming from SE2020, the battery life were almost the same from day one.
- Bugs bugs bugs! It has 8GB for ram and one of the top notch chips out there. Yet, I did see Metal crashes (those pinkish screens) once in a while, many times opening the open or moving to home shows a stuttering animation. (reminder: this is iPhone 16, I don't mind 60Hz, but stuttering of those is really surprising).

I do love the Apple eco-system, while Macs really got a boost with M-Series Apple silicon.
iPhones for the past 5 years are not only boring but buggish and has poor battery life.

I wonder if that's the case for Pro Max / Plus users.

 

[Ctrlos]

There really isn’t much significant difference between the non pro and pro.

The opportunity came up for an upgrade but I wish I hadn't have taken it. ProMotion and a extra 3x magnification are not worth the extra money. Because of the bigger upgrade to the 16 I fully expect the 17 to be largely the same, with a spec bump and 90hz VRR added so they can make the Pro gap bigger again.

 

[okkibs]

For me it's got to be the 5x telephoto lens, it SUCKS so much.

Yes I agree. That is one reason going from the 15 Pro to a 16/17 Pro would be a significant downgrade for me. 3x is fairly practical and I use it the most out of all the lenses. And I wouldn't mind if 5x was an additional 4th lens especially with the new huge camera bump of the 17 Pro there is enough space for it.

 

[4sallypat]

Yes but if u already complain about the 16pros battery I guess you won’t get satisfied by air. It will have 15-20% less capacity. I doubt that they managed to compensate for that even with new chemistry.
We will see soon

Not complaining about the 16 Pro battery life - it gives me a full day of use and never had to top off.

17 Air endurance will be the same - full day because I don't need / want the Pro features which is a waste currently with my 16 Pro.

17 Air will run more efficiently and use less power than the Pro for sure.

 

[AbSoluTc]

Worst? Camera button. Most useless item next to AI/Siri. I have disabled the button after two months. Caused more problems than it helped with.

 

[thecautioners]

I was personally so excited for the camera control button but I ended up trying it once and never again. My hope for it was that I’d be able to slide easily to zoom in and out while filming skateboarding. It doesn’t work like that. I have to slide repeatedly to get multiple zooms. It’s much easier to use the on screen controls, and it works much better and produces better results that way too.

Otherwise I am thrilled with the camera on my 16PM. Only upgrading to 17PM because I look forward to my shiny new toy each year (upgrade via T-Mobile yearly upgrade). I am very much looking forward to better battery life and vapor chamber cooling, as my 16PM gets very hot very quickly and the screen dims to where it’s nearly unusable when I’m filming out in the sun.

 

[Barbareren]

I loved the iPhone X and its camera. Obviously it has gotten better, but my 15 Plus does a good enough job. Don’t need anything more from a phone camera. But since they cancelled the Plus-series I’ll be getting a Pro Max next time, sometime when it’s really necessary, although I don’t give a **** about the camera, just the screen size. The Air is out of the question due to the single speaker, bad battery and lack of a physical SIM card slot.

 

[MisterSavage]

For my preferences the absolute worst "feature" on my iPhone 16 Pro Max is the camera control button.

Since it's there, I have remained open minded and tried to embrace it but it's futile. Nearly impossible to ignore since accidental touches can't be avoided when simply using the phone, it's incredibly annoying.

Same with me. I kept accidentally triggering it and I just stuck with the action button for camera.

 

[magicschoolbus]

worst iPhone ever - what was the killer feature? Oh - the ones that never came. Now they will roll out exclusive features to the 17 while we never got ours. Will be holding onto this phone for as long as I can because I am spiteful AF.

 

[kp98077]

Battery sucks

 

[williamofockham]

The worst thing was being duped about AI and upgrading for a marginal return.

I think apple may have duped themselves. my experience in that field suggests that the people making the claims think their data is better than it is ( in the lexicon of signal processing the SNR is not large enough ) thus simple tasks require manifold more data than expected, more processing , and more efficient algorithms. oops overruns, vaporware,
broken promises, and irate user base

 

[johnsawyercjs]

The camera control button is poorly placed...[it] requires me to reach over the screen I am looking at, and this obscures the view. It should have been placed closer to the bottom of the device to enable users to use it while gripping the edge of the device, like you would with a compact camera.

Yes, I have the same reach issue with the camera button. For some reason I hadn't considered that the simple solution for this issue would be for Apple to just move it down further, but maybe that's because I almost never use it, after initially being interested in it, due to this and other issues with it--I just said "Nope", and left it at that, without really thinking about it further.

 

[FeliApple]

I upgraded from my iPhone Xʀ running iOS 12 to my 16 Plus running iOS 18 and I love it! The camera is insanely good, battery life is amazing. Performance is similar because the Xʀ on iOS 12 is perfect.

There’s nothing negative. I don’t really use the camera control because I think I’m faster with the touch controls, but perhaps it is a matter of giving it a chance. Maybe I will.