Apple iPhone 16 Plus reviewed: the one with the better battery

Nearly a year on from the launch of the iPhone 16 Plus, we’d realised it hadn’t been reviewed. And yet like a rerun of an old show, we found it immediately familiar.

There’s always a lot to review, but come September, there’s even more. A good three or four phones from Apple, not to mention a few from Google, and probably some from the other brands, as well. And that’s before you get to the other categories.

The lead up to the holiday season is jam-packed with gear needing a review, and while we’re all to happy to assist, some things tend to get a little lost. It’s almost like binge watching a program only to miss out on another show you wanted to get through, as well.

In 2024, that’s what happened to the iPhone 16 Plus. We glanced at it recently and realised that our review was stuck in second gear, and it hadn’t been our day, our week, our month, and it was approaching a year.

At which point we realised that perhaps our iPhone 16 Plus review was stuck in a one of the many episodes of Friends, and it was time to just finish it, get it done, and end with some canned laughter as quickly as possible.

Design

It’s that one iPhone we forgot to review, the iPhone 16 Plus, and the design is pretty much the same as the rest of the range. Which is to say it’s a lovely flat-edged aluminium frame with glass on each side, delivering that typically impeccable industrial design Apple is known for in a slightly bigger size.

If you’ve seen pretty much any iPhone for the past few years, the 16 Plus is another of those, offering a 6.7 inch screen with the only buttons on the side: a volume rocker on the left just below an action button for controlling shortcuts (but mainly the mute switch), and a power button and camera controller on the other side, the right.

This is all very much like the iPhone 16, and interestingly, the Pro and Pro Max line, as well, all while Apple brings the same buttons and control schemes to every iPhone this year, not just the high-end ones.

The design is also much the same, but with an aluminium frame instead of a titanium one. It means the polished iPhone look is here, but with a more subdued metal frame rather than the slightly more professional titanium we started with. It features a 7.8mm edge and weighs 199 grams, just 29 grams heavier than the regular iPhone 16.

In shot, it’s still a good looking phone, and easy to fall for.

Features

Inside, the iPhone 16 Plus is pretty much the same phone as the standard 16, but with a bigger screen and battery. Really, the 16 Plus is the iPhone for everyone who needs a slightly bigger battery.

As such, you’ll find the Apple A18 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU (plus 16-core Neural Engine) paired with 8GB RAM (showing up as 7.48GB) and running iOS 18 out of the box.

Storage for the iPhone 16 Plus starts at 128GB and comes in 256GB and 512GB, with no way to expand the storage.

There’s a two camera system on the back covering a 48 megapixel wide F1.6 camera with macro support and a 12 megapixel F2.2 ultra-wide, both of which can capture 4K video with Dolby Vision support, while the front offers a 12 megapixel F1.9 autofocusing TrueDepth camera.

That camera works for Face ID for biometric security, and can be found inside the Dynamic Island pill-shaped part of the display that isn’t quite a punch-hole, but still makes a cutout shape in the 6.7 inch 2796×1290 OLED screen. The screen also supports HDR and Apple’s white balancing True Tone technology.

Connection options are limited on the physical space — you only have a wired Type C USB port at the bottom supporting USB 2 — but the wireless options are relatively featured, covering 5G, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC for Apple Pay, Ultra-Wideband for using the Apple AirTag, GPS, and 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be WiFi 7.

The phone also supports Qi and Qi2 wireless charging, with MagSafe also supported, as well.

Like so many other iPhones over the years, the iPhone 16 Plus is resistant to water and the elements, sporting an IP68 water resistance rating.

In-use

Because the Plus is just like every other iPhone available right now, using it is also just like using any other iPhone you can find right now.

You’ll find a customisable home screen with support for widgets and icons the way you want them, something you can thank recent versions of iOS for, and there’s even a bit of AI thrown in for good measure should you choose to use it.

Two features new to the Plus design are also found across the entire iPhone 16 range: the Action button on the left edge, and the Camera Control button and slider on the right.

Like on the other models, these work slightly differently.

Your Action button replaces the mute switch and by default turns on (and off) the mute function, but can be customised for other settings if you don’t want a mute switch on your iPhone.

Meanwhile, the Camera Control button is actually a touchpad slider and button, allowing you to control the zoom, filters, and even fire the iPhone camera while holding the phone in landscape view. You’ve always kind of been able to do this with the volume keys, but the extra button just gives you a little more control.

Performance

Armed with the same hardware of its iPhone 16 sibling, the chip performance is pretty much the same, which won’t come as a surprise.

Across the entire iPhone 16 range, the Pro models clearly have the edge, but the 16 and 16 Plus are much the same, really beating only the iPhone 16e, another 16 variation with slightly less graphical capability.

However, if you compare the iPhone 16 Plus to previous Plus models (of which there have now been just three), this model is clearly ahead.

It even manages to offer nearly twice the power compared to the iPhone 14 Plus from a few years ago, telling you just how much the hardware has evolved in that short span of time.

In mobile performance, your mileage will vary, of course, but we found speeds closer to the 200Mbps mark when testing with the Telstra 5G network in Australia, running it through Mate’s mobile plans.

Like so many other plans in Australia, these can pull back the network speed, but sufficed to say, you should be able to get decent speeds on the 16 Plus provided you’re in reach of a decent connection and you have a great plan.

Camera

Like the iPhone 16, there are two cameras to talk about with this phone, offering a 48 megapixel main camera and a 12 megapixel ultra-wide, both of which default to 12. That will make all the sense, simply because 48 divides by four to get 12, and you can even use the power of a 2X crop for zooming using the sensor to get a little closer.

That little trick is how the 16 Plus gets a zoom lens: cropping the sensor down, a neat little trick phones may have learned best from 2013’s Nokia 1020, a 41 megapixel phone that used cropping to zoom in.

A dozen or so years later, companies have delivered better sensors with a similar principle, such as the zoom using the 200 megapixels of the Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, here on the iPhone 16 Plus, you’ll find a 48 megapixel sensor able to handle 1X and 2X, while the ultra-wide pulls back for 0.5X.

All of this is pretty standard for the iPhone 16 range, and the camera is fairly capable, too.

Images shot in daylight are crisp and easy on the eyes, offering lovely detail, great portraits with a creamy background, and even the ability to capture up close macro shots, as well. Most people will be happy with the camera in this phone.

Night time shots aren’t quite as great, especially not in comparison to the Pro and Pro Max siblings — the best sensors are reserved for Apple’s best phones, and the 16 Plus is only plus-sized, not plus-featured.

Battery

By comparison, the battery is one of the major features of being a plus-sized phone, with the iPhone 16 Plus offering close to two days of battery depending on how often you use the screen, and what for.

Most people will likely want to charge the phone nightly, but the simple fact of the matter is you don’t need to to charge the iPhone 16 Plus every day. We didn’t for much of our review.

In our tests, the phone could handle a day and a half easy, achieving five to six hours of screen use while we were making and taking calls, using the browser, emails, taking photos, and so on. If you opt to watch videos instead, the battery life basically extends, achieving as much as roughly 27 hours.

Apple’s extended battery life from video is almost a bit of a cheat, granting an extended amount of battery life for people who want to binge a show. Or maybe even for parents cuddling their little one to sleep who need something to tune into (Severance is great, as is Andor… or you could just tune into another episode of Friends).

Value

The price, however, can feel like it needs a bit of work, largely because there’s a $200 premium on the iPhone 16 that only grants a bigger screen and a slightly bigger battery.

Priced in Australia from $1599 for a 128GB phone, you’re essentially paying $1.6K for a bigger iPhone 16, and we already thought the value on that model could have been a little better.

Technically, you’re $200 more from the much, much better iPhone 16 Pro, arriving with a better three camera system, better display, better build, and a slightly better feature set overall. We can see the logical path for upgrading to that model.

There’s really only one argument for the 16 Plus where its value makes sense: compared to the similarly sized iPhone 16 Pro Max.

The 6.7 inch 16 Plus is only slightly smaller than the 6.9 inch 16 Pro Max, but manages to be a good $400 less, just like the difference between the standard iPhone 16 and the similarly sized iPhone 16 Pro. That comparison is $1799 for the 256GB 16 Plus and $2149 for the 256GB 16 Pro Max, a sizeable difference that almost makes the case for the less expensive Plus.

Almost, that is. With a $350 difference, you’re better off spending it on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It’s just about better in every way.

What needs work?

The only major thing we still have issues with in the 16 Plus is the screen. Sure, you get one of the Dynamic Island displays seemingly just like the more expensive models, but you miss out on the 1 to 120Hz refresh rate display, so you don’t get the neato standby screen or its slick animations.

The obvious response to this is “well, that’s clearly a premium feature”, which makes sense until it doesn’t: variable refresh rate displays aren’t much of a premium these days, appearing on mid-range Android models as well as their high-end siblings and cousins.

Apple definitely doesn’t play the same same as Android phones, and it’s a real apples vs oranges sort of argument even bringing it up. Still, it’s difficult not to feel a little miffed for the omission of a fast refresh rate, or even just something more than the standard ho-hum 60Hz every other phone gets.

What we love

However, much like how we loved the overall balance of features on the iPhone 16, particularly with the better than expected camera system, we’re very into giving that balance a better battery, which is what this phone offers.

Most people will likely charge the phone nightly, just like they would with any iPhone. That’s just par for the course for any phone these days. But the fact that you don’t need to is something we love.

You don’t need to try too much to get over a day of battery life from the iPhone 16 Plus. That’s a winning feature, especially when pretty much every other iPhone struggles to hit 24 hours of life comfortably. The iPhone 16 Plus does it without breaking a sweat.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

After having reviewed every iPhone model since the iPhone 12 — and quite a few before that — writing iPhone reviews can feel a little like writing the titles to episodes of Friends. Depending on how familiar you are with that show, every episode began “The One” and went into the angle, like “The One With The List” or “The One At The Beach”, and so on.

The iPhone 16 Pro is “the one with the great camera in a more pocket-friendly size”, while the bigger iPhone 16 Pro Max is “the one with the great camera and better battery life”. Meanwhile, the standard iPhone 16 is “the one that everyone will like, except people who like a long-lasting battery”.

So what does that make the iPhone 16 Plus, a phone that is basically just a bigger iPhone 16?

“The one with the better battery.” For many, that’ll do. Recommended.