Just a little over a week into using the new iPhone 16 Pro, it’s safe to say it’s a very good smartphone.
The new camera control button is a great addition, and I am already adjusting my handgrip to use it. One push to launch the camera app, then another to take the picture. A slight press gives you the zoom functionality, so you can slide your finger to zoom in or out. It’s akin to what Apple previously offered in the Pro models, just above the camera button, letting you slide your finger to do the same. Now it has a dedicated, and useful, key. It works. Good job Apple.
The expected additional functionality that allows for a half-press of this button to focus, then take with a full press, like you’ve been doing with DSLR cameras for years, is coming soon, Apple says.
Also coming soon are the much-hyped Apple Intelligence features, which Stuff will cover when they eventually emerge.
I was pleasantly pleased to discover that even if you don’t take pictures in the Portrait mode, which obligingly blurs the background for you, you can now do that with just a toggle. Good pictures suddenly become great pictures, and you don’t have to be in that particular setting to get that perfect image. The settings use software, so now you can apply them retrospectively to the image. Good job Apple.
Having a six-month-old puppy and an active seven-year-old provides ideal – and endless – opportunities to test the camera, the slo-mo, and the zoom-in-out with the camera control button.
Goodbye, Lightning – you won’t be missed
I skipped the iPhone 15 so I’m unnecessarily delighted to have archived the many, many Lightning cables I’ve collected. Lightning is getting a bum rap now, but it’s worth remembering that when it launched, the idea of a universal cable was still in its infancy.
Apple brought in Lighting with the iPhone 5 in 2012, to replace its much larger 30-pin connector from 2003 that was used originally on iPods. Lightning was reversible, while the then Micro USB wasn’t and was not as rugged. Now I literally have one cable for all my devices. My travel bag of cables has halved. Good job Apple.
Read More: The iPhone 16 Pro Max could cost you as much as R42,500 in South Africa
The new arrangement in the Photos app tries to bring more recent images to the top – I think that is the rationale. But like the update to the Contacts a year or two ago, with a larger banner image of the contact, all it really does is waste space. Instead of being able to glance at all my albums as I previously did, I always have to scroll down every time I am looking for an album, find out where Apple has thought it should now be, and then find what I am looking for. Every. Single. Time.
That’s three extra steps for something that “ain’t broke”.
If you eventually scroll right down to the bottom of the app – can you remember the last time you did that in any app? – you find the option to customise the order. Very helpful for to-the-end scrollers.
Another new thing I can’t say makes sense yet is why sending pictures from Photos to WhatsApp now takes three times as long. It’s a noticeable, seconds-long lag. This is the first time a new iPhone has been slower at a task over the previous (in this case two-year-old) model. I guess it’s a software glitch and it will be fixed in an update.
The good thing is that iOS18 seems to have removed the pesky notification that came up every single time I took my AirPods out – which mansplained how to mute them. Every. Single. Time.
You win some, you lose some.