SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Yes this is very belated mostly because I forgot but also due to the Makro ****ery with a delay so I didn't get it at launch but only a month later.
TLDR; I'm not in love with, by and large because there is very little my iPhone 11 didn't do quite amicably and the difference is hardly night and day. Apple Intelligence may change this somewhat in the future, but I certainly don't feel like it was R20k well spent and I would have gotten a better deal overall taking over my mate's one year old iPhone 15 Pro Max instead.
Most of these comments would be a comparison from an iPhone 11 > iPhone 16 perspective.
Body : For all intents and purposes they look and feel identical other than the matt finish on the back being much nicer to hold than the obviously smooth glass on the 11. I've always preferred bumper covers and had a Rhinoshield on before and did the same again now. I love the blue/purple colour of Ultra Marine I chose. The phone feels ridiculously lopsided when not using a cover and it's likely why the indent on the back part of the cover being so much deeper felt on at first but now is actually a very nice grip.
Action Button : This really just annoys me for so many reasons. Firstly it moved the volume buttons down which has completely ****ed with my muscle memory as I use Airplay a lot and would often adjust volume blindly which I now cock up every single time. Why it couldn't just be in the exact same place the Silent slider was is beyond me. Then speaking of the silent slider...because they've now removed that you get an onscreen notification top left all the damn time to tell you it's on Silent...I know it's silent I put it on Silent and I don't need you to tell me about it the whole bloody time. I've just made it a glorified flashlight button, but will probably add a Shortcuts menu or something there in due course when I have time to fiddle. All in all an unnecessary change and something I didn't need and didn't add any real value.
Camera Button : This is even more stupid and I used it a handful of times to check that it works...and then never again. Really I guess it's made for the Gen's who shoot everything vertically because that's the only position in which it makes sense to use. Holding the phone horizontally like a camera it's in completely the wrong place and impossible to press without moving the device and then cocking up your photo. The haptic half-press crap takes so much patience to get right that just using the screen to do it the old fashioned way is pretty much always faster and less traumatic with guaranteed results. Now I will mention that my cover doesn't have a capacitive button and therefore makes it deeper than it needs to be, but I've gone out of my way to try it with the cover off and remains truly and utterly useless. My prediction is this will go the way of the Touch Bar within a generation or two when Apple look at the analytics and find that (hopefully) nobody is using the stupid thing. Now had it just been a normal shooter button placed better I could have found that useful...maybe.
OLED Screen : Now being all about that OLED life I thought this would be the big game changer for me, but the reality is being a phone I'm not going to spend my days watching movies in HDR on the thing and in normal day to day use it's pretty much inconsequential. The bump in resolution isn't apparent at all as with most things post-Retina. The Ceramic Shield glass may be the only thing to actually have any real world impact, but I have a screen protector on now which I didn't actually have on my iPhone 11 and that still seems brand new after 4+ years so probably not. Oddly I find the screen less responsive to tap-to-wake and also along the edges, but this may very well be a screen protector thing I'm just not used to and I've learned to just be a bit more deliberate so it's not a bother any more.
Dynamic Island : So this is an obvious difference in day to day use and initially it really felt like a step backwards with some apps/games not being aware of it and hiding text underneath it, but I must say after extended use it does have it's moments when used well by developers and I do like things like FaceID being tucked away there instead of the middle of the screen. It did make pulling Notification Centre down from the top a bit more tricky, but again it's a muscle memory thing that gets better with time. Interestingly and maybe this is because the FaceID array sits away from the edge now but also closer together and no longer in the "shade", but I find the field of view is much wider now and doing stuff like unlocking with the phone at an angle say flat on your desk is much more responsive and doesn't need to be as direct as it was before.
Cameras : While I haven't specifically gone and taken the same photos with both phones I do feel there is an improvement and especially the hardware backed 2x zoom goes a long way with quality. That being said it's one of those A/B test things and I still don't feel any normal decently shot photos on the iPhone 11 are bad as such. Night time shots are a whole different story though and most definitely a huge improvement, in fact so much so when I was out on a wine farm one night with a mate and his iPhone 15 Pro I actually felt the iPhone 16 photos were a lot more natural whereas the 15 Pro ones had a very obvious augmented/enhanced vibe to them that wasn't as close to the reality right in front of us. Obviously the iPhone 15 Pro murders it when it comes to optical zoom since it has the additional lens.
Performance : Quite honestly I couldn't tell you which phone is which in day to day use. There's nothing here that is especially faster or noticeable when just doing real world things. Sure I bet if you took out a stopwatch or you ran some particular high performance game or something you would notice under those particular benchmarking conditions but outside of that you aren't winning anything here. Maybe one perceivably useful benefit is that if you edited a video that saving process after the fact seems a bit snappier.
Apple Intelligence : Obviously the iPhone 11 didn't have this, but at the same time the iPhone 16 doesn't really have it yet either. The features already are sort of nice to have once in a blue moon things that are a bit of fun and you either never use again or just aren't all that life changing. Having the option to double tap the home bar and ask something and get a quick result is probably the most useful thing but so far the suggestions in Messaging have been a "hell no, I would never respond like that". Granted I expect this to change and will likely be the thing that makes it worth having in a couple of months but in the right here and now it's not particularly special. The features I have found myself using with more regularity are the photo tools like Magic Eraser which does a ridiculous job at times...and a truly laughable one at others.
Magsafe : Again a big one I didn't have on the 11 and before buying the 16 I got a Troo 3-in-1 Wireless dock/charger for my bedside table to replace the non-Magsafe one I had before and this just works so well and so reliably I'm genuinely surprised. I had a Magsafe card wallet thing I got as a corporate gift ages ago which I now also use very happily to just put my driver's license and ID in that is just so useful that I no longer need my wallet at all.
Standby : Now this was primarily the reason I bought the Magsafe dock because I wanted the motion-activated features to show me the time when I get up to pee at night. Turns out this is a Pro only feature and one of those bullshit ones you'd never know about until you realised it can't do it...and there is absolutely no reason for this other than being model differential that sadly nobody tells you about up front.
All in all I don't feel like I actually gained much that justifies the cost, especially considering this phone cost exactly double what my 11 did when I bought that and really doesn't do all that much more. I'm a little annoyed with myself because I had the option to take over my mate's iPhone 15 Pro Max for slightly less money, which ultimately would have given me more real world feature benefits over the 11 than I ended up getting.
TLDR; I'm not in love with, by and large because there is very little my iPhone 11 didn't do quite amicably and the difference is hardly night and day. Apple Intelligence may change this somewhat in the future, but I certainly don't feel like it was R20k well spent and I would have gotten a better deal overall taking over my mate's one year old iPhone 15 Pro Max instead.
Most of these comments would be a comparison from an iPhone 11 > iPhone 16 perspective.
Body : For all intents and purposes they look and feel identical other than the matt finish on the back being much nicer to hold than the obviously smooth glass on the 11. I've always preferred bumper covers and had a Rhinoshield on before and did the same again now. I love the blue/purple colour of Ultra Marine I chose. The phone feels ridiculously lopsided when not using a cover and it's likely why the indent on the back part of the cover being so much deeper felt on at first but now is actually a very nice grip.
Action Button : This really just annoys me for so many reasons. Firstly it moved the volume buttons down which has completely ****ed with my muscle memory as I use Airplay a lot and would often adjust volume blindly which I now cock up every single time. Why it couldn't just be in the exact same place the Silent slider was is beyond me. Then speaking of the silent slider...because they've now removed that you get an onscreen notification top left all the damn time to tell you it's on Silent...I know it's silent I put it on Silent and I don't need you to tell me about it the whole bloody time. I've just made it a glorified flashlight button, but will probably add a Shortcuts menu or something there in due course when I have time to fiddle. All in all an unnecessary change and something I didn't need and didn't add any real value.
Camera Button : This is even more stupid and I used it a handful of times to check that it works...and then never again. Really I guess it's made for the Gen's who shoot everything vertically because that's the only position in which it makes sense to use. Holding the phone horizontally like a camera it's in completely the wrong place and impossible to press without moving the device and then cocking up your photo. The haptic half-press crap takes so much patience to get right that just using the screen to do it the old fashioned way is pretty much always faster and less traumatic with guaranteed results. Now I will mention that my cover doesn't have a capacitive button and therefore makes it deeper than it needs to be, but I've gone out of my way to try it with the cover off and remains truly and utterly useless. My prediction is this will go the way of the Touch Bar within a generation or two when Apple look at the analytics and find that (hopefully) nobody is using the stupid thing. Now had it just been a normal shooter button placed better I could have found that useful...maybe.
OLED Screen : Now being all about that OLED life I thought this would be the big game changer for me, but the reality is being a phone I'm not going to spend my days watching movies in HDR on the thing and in normal day to day use it's pretty much inconsequential. The bump in resolution isn't apparent at all as with most things post-Retina. The Ceramic Shield glass may be the only thing to actually have any real world impact, but I have a screen protector on now which I didn't actually have on my iPhone 11 and that still seems brand new after 4+ years so probably not. Oddly I find the screen less responsive to tap-to-wake and also along the edges, but this may very well be a screen protector thing I'm just not used to and I've learned to just be a bit more deliberate so it's not a bother any more.
Dynamic Island : So this is an obvious difference in day to day use and initially it really felt like a step backwards with some apps/games not being aware of it and hiding text underneath it, but I must say after extended use it does have it's moments when used well by developers and I do like things like FaceID being tucked away there instead of the middle of the screen. It did make pulling Notification Centre down from the top a bit more tricky, but again it's a muscle memory thing that gets better with time. Interestingly and maybe this is because the FaceID array sits away from the edge now but also closer together and no longer in the "shade", but I find the field of view is much wider now and doing stuff like unlocking with the phone at an angle say flat on your desk is much more responsive and doesn't need to be as direct as it was before.
Cameras : While I haven't specifically gone and taken the same photos with both phones I do feel there is an improvement and especially the hardware backed 2x zoom goes a long way with quality. That being said it's one of those A/B test things and I still don't feel any normal decently shot photos on the iPhone 11 are bad as such. Night time shots are a whole different story though and most definitely a huge improvement, in fact so much so when I was out on a wine farm one night with a mate and his iPhone 15 Pro I actually felt the iPhone 16 photos were a lot more natural whereas the 15 Pro ones had a very obvious augmented/enhanced vibe to them that wasn't as close to the reality right in front of us. Obviously the iPhone 15 Pro murders it when it comes to optical zoom since it has the additional lens.
Performance : Quite honestly I couldn't tell you which phone is which in day to day use. There's nothing here that is especially faster or noticeable when just doing real world things. Sure I bet if you took out a stopwatch or you ran some particular high performance game or something you would notice under those particular benchmarking conditions but outside of that you aren't winning anything here. Maybe one perceivably useful benefit is that if you edited a video that saving process after the fact seems a bit snappier.
Apple Intelligence : Obviously the iPhone 11 didn't have this, but at the same time the iPhone 16 doesn't really have it yet either. The features already are sort of nice to have once in a blue moon things that are a bit of fun and you either never use again or just aren't all that life changing. Having the option to double tap the home bar and ask something and get a quick result is probably the most useful thing but so far the suggestions in Messaging have been a "hell no, I would never respond like that". Granted I expect this to change and will likely be the thing that makes it worth having in a couple of months but in the right here and now it's not particularly special. The features I have found myself using with more regularity are the photo tools like Magic Eraser which does a ridiculous job at times...and a truly laughable one at others.
Magsafe : Again a big one I didn't have on the 11 and before buying the 16 I got a Troo 3-in-1 Wireless dock/charger for my bedside table to replace the non-Magsafe one I had before and this just works so well and so reliably I'm genuinely surprised. I had a Magsafe card wallet thing I got as a corporate gift ages ago which I now also use very happily to just put my driver's license and ID in that is just so useful that I no longer need my wallet at all.
Standby : Now this was primarily the reason I bought the Magsafe dock because I wanted the motion-activated features to show me the time when I get up to pee at night. Turns out this is a Pro only feature and one of those bullshit ones you'd never know about until you realised it can't do it...and there is absolutely no reason for this other than being model differential that sadly nobody tells you about up front.
All in all I don't feel like I actually gained much that justifies the cost, especially considering this phone cost exactly double what my 11 did when I bought that and really doesn't do all that much more. I'm a little annoyed with myself because I had the option to take over my mate's iPhone 15 Pro Max for slightly less money, which ultimately would have given me more real world feature benefits over the 11 than I ended up getting.
. Though with time you'll eventually see the benefits of the upgrade.
I remember my Huawei P30 pro in 2019 was 15k and in 2023 when I finally went to an S23 Ultra (roughly the equivalent) it was almost 30k, the differences didn't feel that much at first either and I was also questioning the change.
