The new iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max are here, and as expected, the devices showcase the best creative features in any Apple phone. Apart from predictable improvements in display size, battery life and cameras, the devices have been infused with some professional-level features that can probably make them the best phones for creative professionals.
The new Pros, powered by the latest 3nm A18 Pro chip are bigger than their predecessors with the iPhone 16 Pro sporting a 6.3in display and the 16 Pro Max displaying on a 6.9in screen. The display offers a brightness range of 2000 nits to 1 nit. Protecting this is the latest generation ceramic shield.
There’s a new camera control button in addition to the customisable action button that debuted last year. This versatile button hides a tactile switch, a high-precision force sensor and a capacitive sensor, which allow it to recognise light presses, firm clicks and sliding gestures for a series of interactions with the camera app. You can control options such as zoom, exposure, or depth of field without lifting your trigger finger from the camera control button. Apple will later update this button with a two-stage shutter to automatically lock focus and exposure on a subject with a light press like in a professional camera. Later this year, the camera control button will gain what Apple calls visual intelligence, the ability to trigger Apple Intelligence to analyse scenes and bring up contextual details.
The Pro models feature a new 48MP fusion camera with a faster quad-pixel sensor along with a 48MP ultra-wide camera and a 5x telephoto camera. The cameras can churn out crisp 4K videos in Dolby Vision at up to 120 fps, letting you capture ultra-slow-motion videos. That’s not all, you can adjust the playback speed post-capture in the Photos app with quarter-speed, half-speed, and a fifth-speed option that corresponds to 24fps. The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max can now take spatial photos and videos that are compatible with Apple Vision Pro.
Leveraging the A18 Pro’s new image signal processor, the iPhone 16 Pro offers frame-by-frame cinema-quality colour grading for 4K120 fps in Dolby Vision. Pro users can also record 4K120 fps ProRes and Log directly to an external storage device. With four new studio-quality mics, you can capture true-to-life sounds in Spatial Audio. The Pro lineup also allows you to edit video sound with Audio Mix and adjust the sound after capture to position individual tracks the way you want them.
The Pro lineup introduces new Photographic Styles with wider customisations and the ability to locally adjust colour, highlights, and shadows in real time. Styles can be further personalised with a new control pad and intensity slider for simultaneous adjustments across tone and colour during live preview or after a photo is taken. These can also be reversed later.
iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be available in black titanium, natural titanium, white titanium, and desert titanium finishes in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage capacities. The price of the iPhone 16 Pro starts at Rs.1,19,900 and the iPhone 16 Pro Max starts at Rs.1,44,900.