iPhone 16 Pro: My Final Verdict
I have been using the iPhone 16 Pro for over eight months now for street photography, casual shots, and even fine art images. My doubts about smartphones have always kept me from fully embracing the idea of using anything other than the best gear for creating images. This year changed that. What I have experienced has been nothing short of a revelation.
There is a place for smartphones in my photography. More than that, there is a place for them in serious photography and in creating professional imagery that can live in my fine art work.
That realization has shifted how I see photography as a whole. It did not happen overnight. It came through mistakes, experiments, and a grudging acceptance that smartphones, even the top tier models like the iPhone 16 Pro, come with real limitations. To make it work, I had to change my workflow, which was not easy. I am still adjusting my approach to photography and I know there is a final frontier I will have to face. More on that later.
Here is the confession. I could live on iPhonography alone. If I walked away from professional photography and all the gear, I would still choose to shoot with the one camera that is always with me: my phone.
This is not about the iPhone alone in principle, but it is through the iPhone 16 Pro that I arrived at this conclusion. Letting go of long-held convictions about what photography, street photography, and fine art should be has not been easy. But I have crossed a line I cannot uncross. I have built a new home base for my work and it lives in my phone. Everything else, even the best full frame camera systems, is just icing on the cake. And because I’m a photographer, if I need a little more sugar to get the job done, I know where to turn. But for now, I’m set.
The points I am about to make are not a list of universal limitations or problems that every photographer or iPhonographer faces. They are personal to me. I know there are other photographers who struggle with some of the same things, and maybe sharing my experience will help. These are the main challenges I have had with the iPhone 16 Pro and smartphone photography in general. Most of them I have either adapted to or worked around, except for one I hinted at earlier. This is what the past eight months have been about.
Ergonomics Suck, Will Keep Sucking, and Won’t Stop Sucking Until the Next Big Leap in Mobile Photography
This has been one of the biggest barriers for me to break through. Handling the iPhone 16 Pro is not fun. The Max version might be a hair better, but only by the smallest margin. To be fair, compact cameras are not exactly ergonomic masterpieces either. Look at the expensive Leicas and other high-end compacts that need screw-on thumb grips, custom cases, wrist straps, and every other accessory under the sun just to make them tolerable. Smartphones take that problem and crank it to eleven. They are the worst cameras to handle, are they not?
For me, the whole point of using a smartphone is to avoid turning it into a camera kit. I do own a MagSafe grip that makes the iPhone 16 Pro easier to shoot with, and I stopped using it within the first month. I realized very quickly that I was forcing the phone into being something it is not. Why make an iPhone more like a DSLR? It is a mobile phone. Let it stay a mobile phone.
I will take the hit and live with the occasional missed shot. I will snap on a simple clear MagSafe case and call it good. The truth is, I cannot grip this phone with even eighty percent confidence on a good day. The iPhone 16 Pro without a case feels like trying to hold an ice cube. I will protect my investment and make the handling just tolerable with the smallest, most minimal change I can. And I will live with it. That is the price I pay when I try to use the iPhone 16 Pro as my stand-in for a full frame mirrorless system. It is also the price I pay for always having a capable camera with me wherever I go.
Poor Battery Life: The First Reality Check Coming from Pro Gear
I already covered this in The iPhone 16 Pro for Street Photography: My Initial Impressions and Short-Term Review, so I’ll jump straight to the takeaway.
I’ve had to change how I shoot. With my Sony mirrorless system, I kept the camera on constantly and almost never missed a shot. I can’t do that with the iPhone. The battery drains too fast, and since it’s also my main tool for communication, I have to be careful. Now I just leave the phone in sleep mode and rely on the dedicated camera button to wake it up when it’s time to shoot.
For longer sessions, I carry a MagSafe power bank or two. They work, but they charge slower than USB-C power banks. I also try not to let the battery drop below 20 percent, because once it dips lower during a session, you risk running out of juice when you actually need your phone—for Uber, maps, messages, anything.
MagSafe charging during use mostly just keeps your battery from dropping, but rarely adds meaningful charge unless the phone is idle. If you are near a plug, use it. Otherwise, bring a backup only if absolutely needed. I avoid bringing a second phone or extra cables because I want to keep my kit as stripped-down as possible. Battery management is always on my mind when I go out to shoot, and it’s probably the single most important thing I track. Plan ahead and pack accordingly.
Image Quality Isn’t the Holy Grail of iPhonography, But It’s Still the Sword You Need to Wield
I have always obsessed over image quality. It is hard to shake when you spend years looking at pristine RAW files from full frame systems. Pixel peeping is a disease I admit to having, and one I will probably never cure. I used to dismiss smartphone image quality entirely, especially on the Android side. But since switching to the iPhone 16 Pro, I have been surprised, and at times genuinely impressed. There may be other phones that edge it out in certain specs right now, but when you factor in video and the full feature set, the iPhone 16 Pro is one of the most powerful photography tools you can keep in your pocket.
What has made this shift even more interesting is Adobe’s new camera app, Project Indigo. It uses computational photography in a way that pushes iPhone 16 Pro files into near-DSLR territory. In my eyes, it already matches or beats many high-end point-and-shoots. I will dig into the app more in a separate article, but the short version is this: for those of us who demand every last bit of detail, the gap between DSLRs and smartphones has just been cut down dramatically.
Download Project Indigo for IOS.
The app is still in beta and missing some features that need to be there, but it is proof that the technology is already in our hands. For anyone who has held back from taking smartphone photography seriously because of image quality, the excuse is disappearing fast. In my case, it might already be gone.
The Final Frontier: Photo Editing on the iPhone 16 Pro
My final hangup with smartphones to overcome?
Everything is good with the iPhone 16 Pro. I use it every day for everything from photographing my cats to shooting street scenes and fine art. But there is one thing I have not been able to do, and I will admit this fully. I cannot bring myself to edit my serious work on the iPhone using any of the mobile RAW editors available, including Lightroom. It is the one step I want to take but have not crossed yet.
Why?
As I said before, I am a pixel peeper, and the only way to really satisfy that is to put the files on a big screen, whether it is my laptop or my desktop. I sometimes feel like someone clinging to a horse and buggy while everyone else drives cars, convinced that the quality of the journey only exists in a slow and methodical experience. I have preached this for years and even written about it: my workflow has always included editing on a computer, not just for pixel peeping but because the desktop versions of apps like Photoshop and Luminar Neo offer far more power and features than their mobile counterparts ever could.
This mindset has held me back in a few ways. Most of the time, I feel like editing my iPhone shots is only good enough for sharing with friends or, at best, posting on Instagram Stories. The reality is that very few people can tell the difference between a DSLR image and a smartphone image on a small screen. The truth only shows up when you put the files side by side on a large monitor. But does that even matter anymore? I am starting to think it shouldn’t. Lately, I have been toying with the idea of tearing down my entire workflow just to see if I can break free from this elitist approach to photo editing.
I know retired photojournalists who have completely ditched their cameras and computers and now do everything on their iPhones. They travel the world and leave their laptops at home. Shortly after I bought the iPhone 16 Pro, I had an informal conversation with one of them. He told me his entire editing process lives inside Snapseed and a couple of other mobile apps. That’s it.
That hit me because Snapseed used to be my go-to editor back in my Android days. I had not touched it since moving to iOS, even after hearing it had been upgraded. I finally downloaded it again and played around with it, curious to see what had changed. Thankfully, the good stuff is still there, and it is still a fun app to use. But I haven’t found solace in these real-life examples of photographers ditching their old ways. Not yet.
I am not giving up on the idea of editing on the iPhone 16 Pro. I am certain Lightroom and possibly the new version of Photoshop will play a role. There are also plenty of third-party apps like Luminar Neo and Dehancer that bring strong AI tools and film simulations to the table. The path forward may be forcing myself to create new workflows on the iPhone, pushing through my hesitation and seeing where it leads.
The next step is to experiment with printing. Can I be satisfied with images edited entirely on such a small screen once they are on paper? That will be my challenge for the rest of 2025, one that may only reach a conclusion when the iPhone 17 Pro arrives. The real question is whether I can fully embrace a completely mobile photography workflow for my personal work. I am genuinely excited to find out.
Crossing the Line: Fully Embracing the iPhone 16 Pro
I know I have been hard on the iPhone 16 Pro and on smartphone photography in general. But it comes from a place of honesty and from my love of photography itself. As a professional, I should be able to embrace and make use of any tool that helps me create. Mobile photography checks that box.
I am not telling anyone to sell their pro gear and switch to an iPhone. I am not selling mine either. I still have work that demands full frame systems. But for most of my personal work, I want a camera that disappears into the background. Street photography thrives on subtlety, and nothing slips under the radar quite like an iPhone.
So my final thoughts? I am glad I joined the iPhone club. I will keep writing about it as long as it stays useful in my work. If you have been holding back for the same reasons I used to, I encourage you to take the leap. You might find yourself on a path of discovery, stripping away your hangups about mobile photography one by one until you are using it freely, not as a professional statement, but simply for the joy of creating.
