The iPhone 16 Pro Max has better battery life and great cameras, but Apple Intelligence hasn't arrived
CNBC's iPhone 16 Pro Max review. There are a lot of good upgrades but Apple Intelligence isn't ready yet.
Apple's iPhone 16 family of phones will hit shelves on Friday. Ahead of their launch, I've spent the past five days been testing the high-end iPhone 16 Pro Max.
It's a great phone with cool updates like a dedicated camera button, and it charges faster over MagSafe than earlier Pro models. The screens are also slightly larger than prior versions.
But this review is tricky, because one of the banner features Apple has been hyping — on stage and in its new ads — is Apple Intelligence. It's Apple's suite of AI features for the iPhone, and it's not coming until later this year.
There are reasons to be excited. A few of the new AI features, like changes to Siri, photo editing, and the option to have AI rewrite text for you, will launch in beta in October. More additions, such as as Apple's image and emoji generator, more personal Siri responses and integration with ChatGPT, will come later.
I was able to test some of the beta features for this review. Others weren't available. Those limitations make it difficult to provide a comprehensive assessment of the new device or to suggest whether the upgrade is worthwhile.
Apple shares slid earlier in the week after analysts suggested lighter demand for the iPhone 16 Pro models this year. TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the problem is that Apple Intelligence isn't out at launch. Barclays also feared it may be because the Chinese language version of Apple Intelligence won't launch until 2025.
The changes to know about
The biggest change you'll notice is the new camera button. I'm still getting used to it after a few days, but I'm already defaulting to just pulling the phone out of my pocket, tapping the button and taking a picture.
My wife rightly asked me why I don't just hit the camera button on the lock screen like on earlier iPhones. I don't have a good answer for that. It just feels more natural to push a camera button.
I enjoyed doing a half-press to get camera controls like the zoom during my son's first soccer game, though I found it was easier to sometimes just pinch to zoom. The new 48-megapixel wide-angle lens offers sharper images in zoomed-out shots that can capture more scenery.
Videographers will likely enjoy the 4K 120fps recording offered on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Still, I try to keep my clips in lower quality because I'm sharing them over text messages with family and friends.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max has the best battery life of any iPhone yet. Apple's new A18 Pro processor paired with a larger battery offers up to 33 hours of video playback, up from 29 hours on last year's iPhone 15 Pro Max. I was usually able to make it to about dinnertime before needing to charge the 15, and I can make it to bedtime — or beyond — with the new phone depending on how much I'm using it.
I love that Apple increased the speed of its MagSafe charging. I used MagSafe when it came out but ultimately switched back to regular cable charging because it was quicker. Now, MagSafe gives up to a 50% charge in 30 minutes if you're using a 30-watt charger (not included.)
Apple Intelligence
In the absence of Apple Intelligence at launch, I'm limited to testing a few beta features. They're hit or miss, as to be expected in beta.
Apple Intelligence could help drive a new cycle of iPhone upgrades. Apple reported $39.3 billion in iPhone sales during the fiscal third quarter, about 46% of the company's total revenue and down 1% from a year earlier. CEO Tim Cook said the segment grew on a constant currency basis.
I like email summaries provided by Apple Intelligence. They're accurate and give you just a couple of lines that summarize what's said or relayed in an email. This only works in Apple's Mail app, though, so it won't work if your company makes you use Outlook or if you prefer Gmail. Similarly, I found that Apple Intelligence accurately summarized long bits of text (including the introduction to this review) and returned an accurate snippet.
In notifications, it's just OK. Summaries of news alerts were correct. Summaries of text messages sometimes were unnecessary. In one text from my wife, for example, Apple Intelligence suggested I threw a dinosaur at my daughter and made her cry before I apologized. In reality, my son was the culprit. The original text would have been sufficient.