iPhone 16 Pro Max review: One button makes a big difference

We've gotten to the point where yearly phone refreshes can feel like a bit of a non-event. Aside from the odd year where a manufacturer switches up the form factor, most phone launches these days feel like minor iterations on the previous year's models rather than major innovations.

At first blush, the iPhone 16 Pro Max seems to fit this bill. It's not markedly different from the iPhone 15 Pro Max in appearance or specs. But the addition of just a few new features, including the new Camera Button, make it feel like a bigger step forward than it first appears.

Apple seriously bucked the trend of price creep for new phone models when it announced this year's iPhone lineup. The iPhone 16 Pro Max starts at $2,149 for the 256GB model, down $50 from where the iPhone 15 Pro Max launched. The 512GB model retails for $2,499, while you can pick up the 1TB model for $2,849.

If you prefer to buy your iPhone 16 Pro Max on a plan, here's a look at the cost over 24 or 36 months with Vodafone, Optus and Telstra.

Yes, the iPhone 16 Pro Max looks a lot like the 15 Pro Max. There's no getting around that. But, there are some subtle differences.

The first is the display. The 16 Pro Max sports the same 120Hz Super Retina HDR display, as its predecessor. But, the 16 Pro Max is ever-so-slightly larger, at 6.9 inches versus the 15 Pro Max's 6.7 inches. 

It's a minor upgrade, for sure, but it does give you a little extra screen real estate for gaming or streaming entertainment, which — of course — the iPhone 16 Pro Max does beautifully. Games like Assassin's Creed Mirage and Resident Evil 4 really show off the brilliance and vibrancy of the screen.

The biggest design difference of the iPhone 16 Pro Max is the addition of the Camera Button. This is a haptic button that lets you control various camera functions. I'll discuss at length how it actually functions, but from a design perspective, its placement is mostly unobtrusive, though I did find myself accidentally opening the camera app a few times when I gripped my phone a bit too hard.

The colour options have also changed, with Apple dumping the Blue Titanium from the iPhone 15 Pro lineup in favour of Desert Titanium, which has a sort of rose gold look.

There are a few differences in specs between the iPhone 15 and 16 Pro cameras, but they're mostly at the margins. The ultra wide lens has been bumped up to 48MP, which enables some truly stunning macro photography. You can also shoot spatial video, on the 0% chance you own a Vision Pro and can actually see the results.

On the video side, the changes are more noticeable. You can shoot in Dolby 4K at up to 120 frames per second. This allowed me to capture some pretty impressive slow motion videos (just a warning about the flashing lights in the embed below), and my other videos looked beautiful and crisp.

Of course, the biggest change is the new Camera Control button. A quick press of the button brings up the camera app. Another press triggers the shutter. You can light press to bring up the zoom function and slide your finger back and forth to zoom in and out, or long press to toggle between different camera settings.

It's a neat little feature, but this button turned out to be far handier than I'd anticipated. At this point, I've been so conditioned to using touch screens to control smartphone cameras that I thought the Camera Control button would feel a bit extraneous. After just a few days, though, it became second nature to use it with every shot, and it's now my default camera control.

It's a bit curious that iPhone 16's marketing leaned so far into its Apple Intelligence features, considering they weren't available for anyone at launch, and won't be available in Australia until December. Apple showed off a lot of neat features, including the ability to type in a description and use it to generate an emoji, its own spin on Google's Magic Eraser feature and handy email and notification summaries. Unfortunately, we have yet to see how well any of those features work. When Apple Intelligence does drop here in Australia, I'll put it through its paces (and test it against Google's AI features), but for now its absence makes any review feel a bit incomplete.

Performance-wise, though, it's hard to find fault with the 16 Pro Max. Its A18 chip was built to handle all the fairly resource-intensive Apple Intelligence features, so it can handle just about any app or game you throw at it. 

It has the same 6-core GPU as the 15 Pro Max, which means games like the aforementioned Assassin's Creed Mirage look stunning and run smoothly.

The 16 Pro Max also gets a bit of a bump in battery life from the 15 Pro lineup. Apple says it will get up to 33 hours of video playback, which sounds about right. I routinely got more than a day-and-a-half of regular use out of it between charges.

When you do need a charge, the iPhone 16 Pro Max charges quickly. Apple claims a 30-minute charge at 20W will get you up to 50% battery, and I was able to verify this with my own testing. I found I could charge the phone from below 15% to 100% in around an hour or less.

If you're upgrading from an older iPhone model — say, a 13 or 14 — you're going to notice a significant difference in performance, battery life and camera quality with the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Compared to older models, or, indeed, most other smartphones on the market, it's near top of class. I have no hesitation recommending it, even before the Apple Intelligence features drop.

However, if you've been using a 15 Pro Max, the changes might not seem quite so profound at first. The Camera Action button truly is practical and easy to use, but does it make the upgrade worthwhile? Couple it with a slightly bigger screen and Dolby 4K 120fps video, and it starts to make a more compelling case. As I said, the differences are more striking than they seem at first glance.

Ultimately, though, the jury is out until we see how Apple Intelligence performs. Apple made much ado about the fact that this iPhone lineup was built from the ground up to support Apple Intelligence features, which means they're always going to run better on the 16 lineup than on older models. But without being able to test these features, it's impossible to know how much better. In short, if you're currently using an iPhone 15 Pro Max and want to know if it's worth upgrading, you'll have to wait until December to see if Apple Intelligence is as — well — intelligent as Apple claims.