Try to imagine the following not far-fetched situation.
You, a user who identifies as disabled, heard Apple unveil and launch new iPhones last month, as is the company’s annual custom. This excites you because iPhones, as egalitarian as they are, are very expensive trinkets and their price has forced you to hold on to, say, a 6-year-old iPhone XR for as long as possible. The concept of a new phone is for it to be your number one computer, which you depend on in part to stay in touch with members of your healthcare team. Most disabled people are not rich, so the XR serves its purpose well; However, an update would possibly be necessary. After all, everyone wants a quality and reliable smartphone.
Like my friend and occasional editor-in-chief Federico Viticci, you realize that the new iPhone 16 is for you. Your iPhone reliable but tired, better. Despite what you’d possibly be told by device critics and well-meaning but unfortunately out-of-touch tech YouTubers, the situation before you illustrates that the iPhone 16, whether popular and Pro, is the furthest thing from one’s boring iterative. year to the next. annual updates. For many other people with disabilities, the iPhone 16 can also be revolutionary. Getting one doesn’t just mean having a better phone, but it will also make access to the world more accessible. In this context, describing the iPhone 16 as not so special is downright insulting.
That’s the problem with mainstream iPhone reviews. The people who write them are doing their jobs, and are by no means bad journalists, but the annual review cycle is a double-edged sword. Apple seeds pre-release iPhones to outlets whose reporters do the embargoed “new iPhone review” ritual so religiously that their perception of reality is warped. It’s fun—it’s a privilege to unleash a Day 1 review unto the world—but it bugs me deeply that new iPhones are seen so lackadaisically. Maybe to tech reporters, a jaded lot of grizzled veterans of the game who see nothing but incremental change. But 99.9% of said reviews, bylined by people I know and admire, say not one word about accessibility. Sure, they always include the boilerplate statement that if coming from an iPhone of some vintage, the new iPhone will be tremendously appealing. But that isn’t equal to recognizing that, for certain groups of underrepresented people, settling for “it’s an iPhone, yawn” telegraphs the absolute wrong type of message. In other words, to blather on about how unremarkable iPhone 16 is compared to the one immediately preceding it completely misses the forest for the trees. It’s frustrating.
As a seasoned iPhone reviewer, I spent some time with the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro; Apple gave me review sets of both – a popular 16 Plus in Ultramarine and a 16 Pro in Desert Titanium – in an attempt to challenge mine. preconceived notions of what I want and desire from an iPhone as a lifelong disabled user facing multiple conditions. Not to bury the thread, my time with the small iPhone 16 Pro reaffirmed my affection for the big screen Plus/Pro Max. Likewise, using the new AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation makes me seriously wonder if I want the AirPods Pro in my toolbox anymore.
I was excited when, after attending a virtual briefing, a package from Cupertino showed up on my doorstep some days later containing the iPhone 16 Pro, not the Pro Max. I took it as an opportunity to revisit the regular-sized form factor after years of dogmatically choosing the Plus/Pro Max because of its larger display. The experience has been revelatory because (a) the 16 Pro is eminently easier to hold and pocket; and (b) despite the narrower bezels upping the screen size from the 15 Pro’s 6.1” to the new 6.3”, I’ve come to the realization I vastly prefer the bigger display of the Pro Max. For the last several years, I’ve said in every review this is accepting a Faustian bargain of sorts—to get the big screen, you must incur the cost of the unwieldy, aircraft carrier-sized phone—but it’s a tradeoff I’m more than happy to make because my low vision demands the transaction. The difference is immediately noticeable when comparing my 16 Pro and 16 Plus, especially considering both iPhone 16 models are, at a technical level, equal peers.
However pleased I am with the Plus/Pro Max screen, it does give me a little pause. To wit, in the roughly two weeks of testing time, I’ve often mulled the thought that Apple shouldn’t go bigger than what the Plus/Pro Max screen real estate already offers. To phrase it more crudely, it feels more than fair to observe the Big A** iPhone has hit its head on the imaginary ceiling. Go any further and it encroaches perilously close to iPad mini territory. From a user perspective, I’m unsure I want (or can handle) a bigger iPhone than the Plus/Pro Max.
In other words, while I enjoyed the snappier nature of the popular 16 Pro, the larger screen itself (compared to the 15 Pro) is small enough that it’s not there. ‘easy. Again, tolerances vary, but for me a small screen iPhone is not a suitable iPhone for my needs. Complete stop.
I’ve developed something of a love-hate relationship with Apple’s new camera. On the one hand, the Yetton is a more available (and faster) way to access the camera, especially when you’re looking to capture a fleeting moment before it’s gone forever. I’ve long internalized the ubiquitous shortcut gesture from the lock screen where you swipe left to open the viewfinder. I can do it, but it requires me to look at the phone and make sure I’m making the right move; This point of engagement requires more cognitive and motor movements than simply pushing a single. Camera Control eliminates this friction, while introducing new frictional bureaucracy that particularly increases complexity for users.
This is where the hateful side of the dichotomy comes into play. I am left-handed and my left dominates almost a mile in the field. For this reason, I keep my iPhone in my left front pocket, but increasingly I find myself inadvertently opening the Camera app with my thumb before the phone reaches my face for Face ID. It’s incredibly annoying, but strangely less so than messing with Yetton himself when taking pictures. Here I discovered that I didn’t know which gestures invoked which actions; Additionally, the problems I encountered on a practical level remain after last month’s presentation at Apple Park. The muscle tone in my right hand is low, so much so that it’s very difficult, as it should be, to perform light presses, deeper presses, and scrolling through the Apple UI (hold that thought). As of this writing, I’m still playing with personal accessibility tastes for camera control (Accessibility → Camera Control), to fine-tune it exactly how I need it. As for the interface, aside from enabling Zoom system-wide, I would love it if it were possible to “localize” the zoom so I could zoom in on the camera software’s ribbon control scrolling. As it is, it’s incredibly difficult for my eyes to discern the icons, let alone the stops. I have no qualms about the menu or its location. I’m just pointing out that someone in Apple’s iOS design organization assumes everyone has eagle vision.
All in all, Camera Control gets my approval. It’s appropriate to note here that, alluding to iPhones today being seemingly boring, Apple doesn’t load big new paradigms or buttons onto the iPhone very often. The whole conceit of the original style was that it (in)famously eschewed buttons! On that basis alone, it’s amazing that in the last 3 years, Apple has added two physical buttons and a Dynamic Island. There are serious accessibility ramifications for all of them if you are disabled. All told, the iPhone’s recent history flies in the face of the narrative that iPhone innovation has stagnated and every new one is made up of nothing but saliva. In reality, tech commentators won’t be happy until Apple makes a trapezoidal iPhone soon.
Believe it or not, the arrival of the iPhone 16 marks the first time I’ve genuinely enjoyed the latest edition of the operating system. For better or worse, I’m a terrible beta tester whose bandwidth and mental capacity can’t handle testing during the summer after WWDC.
I love iOS 18. Me love the new Music Haptics accessibility feature as an Apple Music subscriber. Overall, we have the impression that a significant cognitive/motor/visual load is applied to the other customization options. A lot of deception can be done, which is wonderful for relaxed speech, but not necessarily for someone who possibly has one (or more!) of those disabilities. Personally, I’ve worked on setting up the lock screen, home screen, and day view, but Control Center is amplifying my anxiety. Similarly, I left the flashlight and camera launchers on the lock screen because my brain starts to melt every time I look to think about what will be placed next to them. the flashlight. How Apple can also implement less difficult customization is beyond my knowledge for the purposes of this review; The recurring feeling for me is that customization is not without costs. It is completely believable that many members of the disability network pay for it in spades.
Is the iPhone 16 good? Yes. Should you buy it? If you can, yes.
Although there are more than a few cynical bones in my body, my pointed remarks at the outset are instructive insofar as they (hopefully) illustrate why accessibility coverage in mainstream tech news is so sorely needed. It’s understandable that most iPhone reviewers will shy away from covering it, much in the same way I couldn’t care less about mentioning Geekbench scores or camera compares or how much RAM these phones have (8GB). The thing is, the iPhone is a mass market product, and last I checked, disabled people made up the largest marginalized and underrepresented group on the planet. Accessibility should be part and parcel of the assessments of not only an iPhone’s capability, but of its attainability and relevance as a primary computer.
The deaf and hard of hearing network loves Apple devices, including the iPhone, for FaceTime and iMessage. This deserves a lot more virtual ink than the same old navel-gazing about how boring iPhones are. Testers deserve that the new iPhone is possibly the only affordable computer a homebound disabled user has to stay in touch with their circle of family and friends on social media, as well as order food and other essentials. This is not insignificant. The vital point is precisely that journalists deserve to ask themselves: “Iterative for whom?
Coverage of disability in mainstream media, regardless of field, lags far behind other social justice reporting such as race and sexuality. The generation sector is none other and although it is improving, there is still a long way to go. Let’s look no further than the exciting AI policy, without saying a word about how it affects the disabled community. There’s a real opportunity to do similar justice through the iPhone: Critics just want to get out of Bubbleville one day. Iterative is a decidedly relative term.
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