There are three different lenses on the iPhone 16 Pro. Which one gets used is determined by the "zoom" level you pick. The "0.5x" picks the widest angle lens, the "1x" and "2x" use the same lens, and the "5x" uses the third lens.
If you wish to reduce optical distortion and can get farther away from the subject, you'll want to pick the "5x" zoom. Think somebody else here said it was a 105mm equivalent, which sounds about right.
Intermediate values are obviously crops... although given that the 0.5x and the 1x lens are both 48mp sensors (IIRC), and the resulting image is typically 12mp, it doesn't make as big of a quality difference as one might ordinarily think.
It appears the long lens on that phone is 120mm-equivalent ("5x") and any intermediate zoom is just cropping. A 2x "zoom" (crop) would get pretty close to the field of view of the author's dedicated camera lens, but with further reduced image quality.
Actually using the iPhone telephoto for a group photo like the one shown in the article would require the photographer to stand a considerable distance from the subjects, and then we might start noticing a little perspective distortion from the 45mm-equivalent lens on the Sony.
