It’s iPhone 16 pre-orders day and that usually means one thing – overthinking which color you’re going to go for this year. With Apple introducing deeper tones on the iPhone 16 base models and a new Desert Titanium shade for the Pro, it’s a tricky decision – so we’ve conducted a poll to help you decide.
Over on the TechRadar WhatsApp channel (which we’d recommend following if you aren’t already), hundreds of you have revealed which color you’re planning to buy today when pre-orders start at 5am PDT / 8am ET / 1pm GMT on the Apple Store (in other words, right now).
As you can see below, there’s a clear winner for the iPhone 16, but the iPhone 16 Pro vote is much more divided. We think the results reflect a lot of the online chatter we’ve seen about the most popular shades for Apple’s new phones, but they may also be a useful guide on what soon-to-be-ubiquitous colors to avoid.
Naturally, the color of your iPhone 16 or 16 Pro may be secondary to which case you’re going to get, but if you’re buying a transparent protector then these are the hues that most TechRadar readers will be pre-ordering today…
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | US starting price | UK starting price |
| iPhone 16 | $799 | £799 |
| iPhone 16 Plus | $899 | £899 |
| iPhone 16 Pro | $999 | £999 |
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | $1199 | £1199 |
iPhone 16 winner: Ultramarine
There’s a clear winner in our results (below) for the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus – a massive 49% of you said you’ll be pre-ordering Apple’s base phones in Ultramarine.
That’s understandable – it’s the one that also stood out to us in our hands-on iPhone 16 review. The color is technically a mix of blues, just don’t let Apple hear you call it blue.
What’s a little more surprising from these results, given how much Apple freshened up the iPhone 16’s palette with bolder colors, is that the second most popular color is Black (with 29% of the vote). Then again, Black is a classic, understated choice that’s more in line with the neutral shades of the Pro and Pro Max.
In third place with a surprisingly low 11% of the vote is the rather lovely Teal shade, while White (6% of the vote) and Pink (4%) battled it out for last place. Pink is a real opinion-splitter, but those who plump for it can also be sure they’ll be in select company.
iPhone 16 Pro winner: Black
This was a close one – and given the iPhone 16 Pro’s colors are much more subdued (or some might say, underwhelming), that isn’t much of a surprise.
But the overall winner was Black Titanium, which garnered exactly 50% of the vote. This is the color we played with in our hands-on iPhone 16 Pro review, in which we noted that “its Black Titanium body felt just as solid and smooth as before”.
(Image credit: Apple / WhatsApp / Future)
In a close second was the new Desert Titanium, which won 32% of the vote. That new shade has caused some discussion online, where many have debated whether it’s more gold or copper – we think it definitely leans more towards the former, making it something of a Rose Gold successor.
Surprisingly, Natural Titanium (which we now consider to be a ‘default’ iPhone Pro color) only picked up 10% of the vote, while White Titanium came last with 8% of readers saying that they’ll be pre-ordering it today.
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