Apple released the iPhone 16 lineup yesterday, with lovely new colors, a new button for capturing photos, bigger batteries, and support for Apple Intelligence. You’ve probably heard all of the headlining features by now, but there are some smaller features introduced this year that might’ve flown under the radar.
Faster charging
iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus have faster charging than ever before, both with MagSafe and USB-C. With iPhone 16, you can take advantage of 25W MagSafe charging, and up to 45W of wired charging with USB-C.
This is much faster than prior iPhone models, which could only charge up to 15W with MagSafe and up to 30W with USB-C. If recharging your iPhone in a pinch is an important feature to you, the 16 might be your time to upgrade.
Lower minimum brightness
Apple’s latest iPhones support a much lower minimum brightness now, as low as 1 nit. If you’ve ever tried to lower your iPhone’s brightness late at night, and still felt that it was too bright, the iPhone 16 should address that concern.
Macro photography
Although the feature was initially introduced with the iPhone 13 Pro back in 2021, the ability to take photos in macro mode was never possible on the cheaper iPhone up until now. This is because the iPhone 16 finally has a newer ultra wide camera, finally allowing users to take those close up macro shots.
Faster Wi-Fi
The new iPhone 16 models all support Wi-Fi 7, providing faster Wi-Fi speeds for users of the base model iPhone. Assuming that you have internet speeds and a router capable of taking advantage of it, anyways.
Wi-Fi 7 supports speeds of up to 46 Gbps, which is over five times faster than Wi-Fi 6E’s 9 Gbps. Wi-Fi 7 also operates on 320 MHz channels and supports the 6 GHz band, widely reducing interference and signal congestion.
Spatial Photos & Videos
Last but not least, iPhone 16 now supports Spatial Photos and Spatial Videos for Apple Vision Pro. Apple introduced Spatial Video support on iPhone 15 Pro last year, but it’s new to the entry-level iPhone 16.
Additionally, Spatial Photo support is new, allowing users to capture shots with depth data, making them look more immersive when viewed on Apple’s new $3,500 mixed reality headset.
Wrap up
Although the flashier features like Apple Intelligence, the colors, and the new camera capture button are more likely to get people to upgrade, I think these smaller features are a lot more interesting.
Are you planning on upgrading to the iPhone 16? Let us know in the comments.
Follow Michael: X/Twitter, Threads
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments