The iPhone 16 Pro has been in my pocket for 6 months now and its a much bigger upgrade from the 14 Pro than most have claimed.

From the surprisingly better battery life, to if Apple Intelligence is actually useful, I’ll cover my experience thus far and if it is worth the upgrade.

Many reviewers called this an incremental upgrade, after 6 months I’ve pretty much formed my thoughts.

Starting with the titanium frame and rounded edges. This changed how I use my iPhone.

It is the first iPhone in years that I’ve felt comfortable not using a case or screen protector. It is easy to hold caseless and is the perfect sized phone for me.

The titanium appears to be holding up much better than the stainless steel sides of the 14 Pro and picks up a lot less fingerprints as well.

It features standard apple high quality fit and finish, no rattles and the buttons have a nice clicks.

Using this phone daily battery life was one area I was surprised by.

Compared to my aging 14 Pro which had declining battery performance after 2 and a half years…

The iPhone 16 Pro has the best battery life I’ve experienced on a phone.

I don’t care that the pro max and giant phones get better battery life, I like the regular pro size, and this is the best battery life to date in the iPhone pro.

I rarely charge at home and use Apple Car Play to and from work, which generally keeps it topped up nicely to the point where I am not charging over night. This occasionally leaves me with 28% battery at night and I think, huh what happened, did I use my phone a lot today or did I just not charge it for 24 hours?

The battery health is of course still normal as expected and I keep it at 100% charge limit and use optimized battery charging.

If battery life is a positive though, one of Apples newest features is a let down.

Camera control is far less annoying than originally thought, but still not super useful in day to day life.

In winter, it was impossible to use with gloves to change settings, but useful in the sense that you can open the camera and take a picture EZ PZ.

The button is finicky, it is not super intuitive, still suffers from accidental presses, but I want to have it active on the single press to launch the camera. I suppose I could have just turned it off entirely.

It is in an awkward spot for lefties and at first I was triggering it accidentally while picking the phone up, but in typical Apple fashion, I was probably just holding it wrong.

It is not all negative with the camera situation though.

Apple log is great and matches my more expensive Sony mirrorless cameras easily.

My nit still lies with the disappointing stock camera app, that only lets you do ProRes Log = GIANT File size.

The “pro” camera really means nothing without third party apps. Things like Halide for photo and Kino/Black Magic camera apps for video actually give you pro level control.

Those video apps also let you record Apple Log in HEVC, which is just nerd speak for much smaller file sizes, so you can actually take advantage of Apple Log even with smaller base storage on your iPhone.

On the photo side Apple introducted photographic styles which lets you adjust contrast and saturation as you see fit and set one as default if you so choose.

I do really like styles, but I thought it was kind of stupid initially. Finding a few you like and sticking with them is probably best for most people.

Generally I just use the same one and works for a lot of things.

The specific formula I like best is from Tyler Stalman on YouTube, I prefer the amber setup he created. LINK

The microphoness are also good, the studio mode does work to give better audio but still not going to be as good as an actual studio microphone.

Overall the iPhone is still the best do it all camera system and still clearly leading in video.

While the camera hardware leaves a good impression, Apple’s newest focus leaves a sour taste.

Apple intelligence is still a flop, would be completely useless without ChatGPT integration but I never find a reason to ask Siri to ask ChatGPT first, rather than just go straight to ChatGPT.

I’ve used genmoji twice, nothing to write home about.

Image playground is a joke. What a waste of engineering resources.

Visual intelligence seems like it would be helpful but I haven’t had a reason to use it either.

I have however gone into ChatGPT to send a picture and ask about the object…p.s. works great for peppers if you can’t tell if it is spicy or not.

So before I give you my final verdict on if this upgrade was worth it, lets talk about price.

This is the 256gb model in the natural titanium colorway. That comes in for a base price of $1099

Luckily with the friends and family Apple Employee Pricing I scored $110 off, which comes out to $989.

My iPhone 14 Pro trade resulted in a $425 credit, bringing my total for this deal to $564

At that price this feels like a steal.

With the iPhone 17 rumor mill running in full force, should you wait or buy the 16 Pro now?

If you need a new phone right now and coming from the 14 or earlier then this is absolutely worth the upgrade.

The titanium build, improved battery life and new camera features are a meaningful difference in daily use.

If you are on the 15 or 15 Pro then you probably made a wise choice to hold off a bit longer.

There will always be a new iPhone and it will always be the latest and greatest thing. I intended to keep this phone for 2 years when I picked it up, but Apple has been known to convince me to upgrade every year on more than one occasion.

We will see what Cupertino has in store for us this fall, but in the meantime this phone has done exactly what I wanted it to do and more!