4 common iPhone 16 problems (and how I fix them)

Summary

Battery drain may be fixable by updating iOS, or adjusting brightness and cellular settings.
You may need to change the Photographic Styles setting to make iPhone 16 photos look right.
Touchscreen sensitivity problems are usually caused by your grip, or not updating to iOS 18.0.1 or later.

While some of the iPhone 16 lineup’s earliest issues seem to have shaken out, there’s still the chance of the occasional glitch. It’s almost unavoidable with smartphones — they’re complicated beasts, and that’s before adding any third-party apps into the mix.

All of that said, it’s still reasonable to assume your phone should run smoothly. The good news is that some of the most common problems can be solved on your own.

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1 Rapid battery drain

A complex situation

It’s a common pattern with Apple products — a major software update is released, and suddenly your device’s battery drains faster. Alternately, you may have just bought a new iPhone, and it’s not lasting as long as you would expect.

Either way, battery drain is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. There are a few possible solutions:

If your iPhone is new, you may just need to wait. There’s a battery calibration period that can last up to a week or more, and on top of that, there’s a background indexing and caching process that can burn extra power by increasing CPU activity.
Check for iOS updates. It’s possible that a bug fix is available by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
Disable 5G or use 5G Auto. 5G data is fast, but the tradeoff is often battery life. Go to Settings > Cellular — Cellular Data Options > Voice & Data and choose LTE (4G) or 5G Auto. The latter turns on 5G “only when needed for performance,” and will otherwise switch to 4G to reduce power consumption.
Adjust brightness and other settings. As nice as a super-bright display can be, it also uses a lot of energy. Drag the brightness slider in the Control Center until your display is just bright enough to see clearly.
Try rebooting your iPhone. It could be that some unusual process problem is to blame, in which case a reboot will give your iPhone a fresh start. Hold down the side button and the volume button to access the power-off slider. Once your phone is shut down, hold down the side button again to power it back on.

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2 Photos have a strange color tint

It’s a feature, not a bug

One of the smaller selling points of the iPhone 16 lineup is greater control over your photos, particularly through a feature called Photographic Styles. This applies a particular tone and color tint. If you’ve adjusted your Photographic Style by accident, or don’t like Apple’s default setting, all your subsequent photos can turn out wrong.

There are two ways to change your Photographic Style:

Go to Settings > Camera > Photographic Styles. You’ll be prompted to select four images from your library, then use a grid slider to set a new default style.
You can always adjust your style temporarily by tapping on the style grid icon in the Camera app. Swipe the grid slider to change tone and color, and the bottom slider to scale intensity.

It’s wise to take a few sample photos whenever you change your style — something that looks amazing with one subject can look horrible with another. Finding a viable default style takes experimentation, and you should always be prepared to make tweaks based on what you’re shooting.

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3 The touchscreen is unresponsive, or too responsive

A delicate balance

Normally, it’s best for an iPhone’s touchscreen to be as sensitive as possible, since it’s irritating to have to tap onscreen controls repeatedly. While some people have had low sensitivity issues with the iPhone 16 lineup, others — including myself — have experienced the opposite, finding their iPhone reacting to touches they never even noticed.

If your screen isn’t responding, your grip hand may be triggering a touch rejection feature meant to prevent accidental inputs. Keep it away from the edge of the screen. Also, if you’re still using iOS 18.0, update to iOS 18.0.1 or later.
If you’re experiencing a lot of accidental inputs, your hand is probably brushing against the edge of the screen when you’re otherwise not trying to do anything. The only real answer — apart from a different grip — is a new case with a raised rim, making those touches less likely.

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4 The Camera app is slow or freezing

An update should do the trick

Using the Camera Control button on an iPhone 16 Pro.

Apple

Speed is essential when you’re taking smartphone photos — it’s the whole reason the iPhone 16’s Camera Control exists. If the Camera app is chugging, or outright freezing, there are a few things you can try:

Update to iOS 18.0.1 or later. One early bug caused the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max to freeze when recording macro videos with HDR (high dynamic range) turned off. That was patched in iOS 18.0.1, and even if that doesn’t apply to you, there’s a chance your specific problem has been solved since. Go to Settings > General > Software Update.
Try closing some recent apps. While iOS does its best to automatically pause unused apps to free up resources, there’s still a chance an app is creating problems in the background.
If your iPhone is new, you may have to wait. As I mentioned in a previous point, new iPhones can take up to a week or so to index and cache all your files. This makes them more efficient later, but in the short-term, this background activity may affect performance.
Close and reload the Camera. However unlikely, there is the possibility that reloading the Camera app will solve an unseen error.