iPhone 16 Plus vs iPhone 16 Pro Max: Battle of the Big iPhones
During Apple’s Glowtime event, the company unveiled its latest iPhone 16 lineup. While the new phones share a lot of new features, there’s an even bigger difference between the two big phones this year, the regular and the premium. Here’s the iPhone 16 Plus vs iPhone 16 Pro Max.
The most notable difference between the two larger phones is size, as they no longer tie for the largest iPhone ever. The iPhone 16 Plus still has a 6.7-inch display, but the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch display, giving it the crown as the largest iPhone ever.
More from the Apple event
There are knock-on effects from that decision: Everything the iPhone 16 Plus is, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is a little bit more. That comes at a literal price, with the iPhone 16 Plus with 128GB of storage starting at $899 (£899, AU$1,599) and the iPhone 16 Pro Max with 256GB of storage starting at $1,199 (£1,199, AU$2,149).
A highlight of the 5x optical telephoto lens in the iPhone 16 Pro Max during the Apple Glowtime event.
That’s a significant price difference between the two, but there are a handful of things the even-larger phone has that its now-smaller sibling doesn’t. The iPhone 16 Plus has a 48-megapixel Fusion camera (with a neat new 12-megapixel 2x digital zoom) and a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera; the iPhone 16 Pro Max has that and a 12-megapixel telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom. Both phones have a 12-megapixel TrueDepth camera on the front for selfies and Face ID.
The Pro Max also has a higher video ceiling, recording 4K video at 120 frames per second, which is good for converting to slow-motion; the Plus hits 4K video at 60 frames per second. Both phones can record Spatial Video, the depth-conscious format of video viewable only in Apple Vision Pro, at 1080p at 30 frames per second.
A demonstration of the three Audio Mix options available for recording video.
What the Pro Max does have over its less expensive sibling is more responsive audio capture, thanks to four microphones versus the Plus’s three. Both phones get Audio Mix, a trio of pro-grade switches for instructing the phone to record certain audio sources over others when recording video: In-Frame captures whoever’s speaking on camera (even if people nearby are talking off-camera), Studio is built for podcasters and vloggers to make them sound like they’re nestled within the sound-dampening confines of a studio, and Cinematic blends sounds towards the front of the screen (much like a standard film mix).
Unsurprisingly, the iPhone 16 Pro Max features a more advanced A18 Pro chipset than the A18 silicon inside the iPhone 16 Plus, though both support Apple Intelligence. The larger phone has more maximum storage, with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB options, while the Plus comes in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations. Apple hasn’t disclosed the RAM on each model.
iPhone 16 Pro Max colors.
Where the Plus is 6.33 x 3.06 x 0.31 inches (160.9 x 77.8 x 7.8mm), the Pro Max is 6.42 x 3.06 x 0.32 inches (163 x 77.6 x 8.25mm). That also means the smaller phone is lighter at 199 grams (7.03 ounces), while the larger handset weighs 227 grams (7.99 ounces). The Pro Max comes in a titanium frame and comes in four color options: black, white, a silvery natural, and a desert brown. The Plus has a more vibrant color palette: black, white, pink, teal, and ultramarine. Both phones are IP68-rated for dust and water resistance, and both have USB-C ports.
iPhone 16 Plus colors.
Both phones’ displays are OLED Super Retina XDR and have a resolution of 460 pixels per inch, so they’re similarly sharp, though the larger Pro Max logically has more pixels packed into its screen (2,868 x 1,320 resolution) than the comparatively smaller Plus (2,796 x 1,290 resolution). The phones max out at 2,000 nits of brightness in direct sunlight, but can drop to a single nit in the dark, which helps save battery life.
That extra space means more battery life (though as is usual with Apple, we don’t have raw hourly usage numbers so much as exact capacity figures). The iPhone 16 Pro Max can last up to 33 hours of video playback (or up to 29 hours if you’re streaming video), while the iPhone 16 Plus can last up to 27 hours of video playback (or up to 24 hours if you’re streaming video). Both phones share the same wired charging capability (up to 20 watts) as the previous generation, though MagSafe wireless charging has been boosted to 25 watts when using a 30-watt or faster charger.
Both phones run iOS 18 out of the box, and both will get Apple Intelligence when it launches later in September. Apple hasn’t revealed much more about its AI capabilities than what was shown off at WWDC in June. The generative AI will give Siri a boost, making suggestions to brighten the tone of a message, automatically organizing your photos, and offering more accurate contextual searches within your photos.
Apple has also added AI-generated emoji, which you can create yourself by giving commands, such as a cowboy frog on a diving board.
The iPhone 16’s camera control button lets you activate the camera without touching the screen.
The big reveal is Visual Intelligence, which takes Apple’s AI and applies it to the camera. Visual Intelligence can search for whatever’s in your viewfinder. This is invoked by a new hardware feature: the Camera Control button, which on both phones lives on the right side below the lock button. It’s capacitive and physically clickable, so you can press or tap Visual Intelligence to activate its second function: acting as an extra camera settings toggle.
For example, when your camera app is open, you can slide your finger over it to zoom in and out or change the aperture — and it will also work as an additional menu within third-party apps. Apple’s presentation showed how it works in Snap.
Likewise, the Action Button is now found on both the premium and standard phones, replacing the ringer silent switch to act as a customizable app shortcut. It’s no longer exclusive to the premium handsets.
That reduces the number of exclusives the Pro Max has over the Plus, making the $300 price difference harder to justify. Sure, it’s bigger, with a third rear-facing (telephoto) camera, a titanium frame, and a larger battery. But with Apple Intelligence coming to both phones (it only floats down to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models), the premium phones become harder to justify against their cheaper siblings.
Check this out: Hands-On with iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max
