When new iPhones are released, it’s always interesting to look back at the previous version, after a year of use, to see what one can learn from it. On the release of the 16 Pro, my conclusion was similar to most of my iPhone reviews — it is a minor upgrade on the previous version and not worth buying compared to a refurbished 15 Pro. This is true today — if you want a Pro iPhone, I would likely recommend the 16 Pro over the 17 Pro — but what’s interesting to me is that what made the iPhone 16 Pro great was deeply underappreciated.

For example, Apple’s decision to eliminate the physical ring-to-silent switch with the iPhone 15 — that signature feature distinguishing iPhones since 2007 — was widely disapproved of, with the replacement shortcut, “Action Button,” used by most to toggle between those same modes. Yet, over the last year, it’s become more common to use chatbots in daily life — and in my case, being able to set the Action Button as a shortcut to open Claude became a real selling point for the phone. Whereas you don’t change your sound settings that often, I am always asking questions of Claude, and having a shortcut button is less distinct and fun than a slider, but it’s a lot more functional. If Siri were helpful, then this wouldn’t be necessary, but it remains unfathomably bad.

Speaking of shortcut buttons, the camera button is a lot of fun. Even if you don’t use the button to take photos, it’s handy having a shortcut button for the camera, but with long presses and swipes, you can use that button to change lenses, adjust digital focal length, and so forth, and it brings some of the fun of DSLR photography to the mobile experience. Other phone manufacturers have attempted to clone the feature, but they have placed a touch surface on the side, rather than an actual clickable button.

Photo styles are also gravely underutilized by most people, but once you configure them to your preferences, they’re such a fun, creative tool. Most of the time, I would prefer to edit my photos after the fact in Lightroom or use a more creative camera app, but Styles is an excellent addition to the mobile photography suite.