Apple launched an all-new iPhone 16 lineup this week, with bigger batteries, a new Camera Capture button, and more. The company is calling it the first iPhone built with Apple intelligence. People are holding on to their current iPhones longer than ever before, and that’s because smartphones have gotten so good. Today, I’m going to highlight five big benefits you’ll gain if you finally decide to upgrade.
Much better display: Super Retina XDR
Apple introduced OLED displays on the non-Pro iPhone in 2020, but if you’re using an iPhone 11 or earlier, you’ll still be using an older LCD screen. With OLED, you’ll get a much higher-resolution screen, better colors, deeper blacks, and support for high dynamic range content.
In short, everything you watch will look much better with Apple’s Super Retina XDR display. It’s also brighter, with the iPhone 16 supporting up to 2,000 nits outdoors, compared to the iPhone 11 which has a maximum brightness of 625 nits.
Personalized AI on iPhone
Unveiled at WWDC last June, Apple Intelligence brings an all-new Siri experience with personalized context, writing tools to improve your writing, Genmoji to let you create your own emoji, a new “Clean Up” feature to remove unwanted content from your photos, and more.
Not all of these features were released at launch, but regardless, you’ll need an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16 to use any of them. The all-new Siri experience is expected to arrive in the spring, while everything else will be released before the end of this year, split between iOS 18.1 in October and iOS 18.2 in December.
Better Battery Experience
The iPhone 16 has many battery and charging advantages over the iPhone 11. Apple switched from Lightning to USB-C with the iPhone 15 lineup, providing a unified charging experience. You can now use the same cable on your phone, laptop, and many other devices.
Batteries also saw a huge jump this year, with the iPhone 16 tested to get 5 more hours of video playback than the iPhone 11, an increase of nearly 30%. With better battery life, you won’t have to worry about charging your iPhone as often.
Charging is faster than ever, with the iPhone 16 supporting up to 45W wired charging and 25W wireless charging (with MagSafe), while the iPhone 11 only supports 20W wired charging and 7.5W wireless charging.
Dynamic Island
Apple introduced Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro, replacing the traditional “notch” on the iPhone. It’s a network of hardware and software that lets users interact with alerts, apps, and other forms of apps, right from the top of their iPhone. You can use it to control music, answer phone calls, and all sorts of other interactions.
Dynamic Island also reacts to live activity, so apps like Flighty can display your flight details right in the tablet slot at the top of your iPhone.
Additional Buttons
The iPhone has gained two new buttons since the iPhone 11, both an Action button (replacing the mute button) and a camera control button. Apple refuses to call the button “Camera Control,” but that’s what it is.
The Action button is still a mute switch by default, but if you don’t want to change much, you can set it to do a number of other things, including focus mode, opening the camera app, turning on the flashlight, recording a voice memo, and more. Additionally, in iOS 18, apps will be able to create their own controls for the Action button and Control Center, so this should be a big step forward. You can read all about the Action button here.
As for the “Camera Control,” this is a new toggle on the iPhone 16, giving users new, convenient and versatile ways to use their iPhone’s camera. Pressing the button will open the Camera app from anywhere, pressing the button from within the Camera app will take a photo, and pressing it will start recording a video.
By default, swiping the button will zoom in. However, you can press the button two and a half times, which will bring up a menu to configure what you want the swipe action to do. You can configure it between exposure, depth, zoom, cameras, style, and tone. You can learn all about what the camera control button does in our roundup.
Other smaller features
- 48MP camera with 2x optical zoom option
- Newer ultra-wide camera with macro support
- Better water resistance
- Optical image stabilization by shifting the sensor
- Cinema mode video
- Motion mode video
- Space images and videos
- 5G support
- Wi-Fi 7
- MagSafe wireless charging
There are a number of good reasons to upgrade your iPhone 11 this year, especially if you’re short on storage, lack battery life, or just aren’t happy with it. If you don’t mind waiting another year, there are a number of fun upgrades coming next year with Apple’s next big iPhone update: the iPhone 17 Air.
