The iPhone 12 Pro Max is one of the four iPhone 12 models this year, and it is the biggest iPhone ever made. And it comes with big ambitions. It has the largest scree ever on an iPhone,it has the biggest camera sensor of any iPhone, including the other iPhone 12s. It has got bigger battery, 5G. This is the most iPhone you can get.And it's priced to match.
I want to focus on the iPhone 12 Pro Max for three reasons.
- I'm just generally someone who likes big phones with big batteries.
- My main phone for the last six months has been the iPhone 11 Pro Max so this is the natural successor.
- Because for this year in particular the Pro Max is not just a big version of the Pro like it has been in the past. This is a phone that can do more. This is more like the iPhone 12 ultra.
So I was probably excited about this. The moment it dropped through my door, I'd completely switched over to it because it's always exciting testing new phones. It's especially exciting when you know that it's a phone you're going to be using as your main phone.
So anyway as you'd expect, it's wider and taller than the normal 12 Pro and very slightly thicker too. Being a Pro phone you get the Pro black packaging and the color accents will match whatever color option you're getting. However the more I've used this phone, the more I'm convinced that this is the one to get. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is so much more of a better phone than the iPhone 12 Pro that it never really makes sense to get the Pro. With just one tiny little asterisk, the one fear that I did have about the 12 Pro Max right from the very start has kind of come true.
DESIGN
See one of the big changes with the entire iPhone 12 lineup is the new flat design, not pretty much flat, not slightly curved just flat. Every time I take out the iPhone 12 even a month on, I still think to myself, Yeah ! That's a pretty swab looking phone. But at the same time, it is kind of confusing. If you look around you'll notice that generally speaking tech is moving towards curvature, towards adapting to the human form and just feeling really organically woven into our lives. You'll notice how phones now are softer and smoother. How earphones are now built around the actual shapes of our ears. How cars are more streamlined and comfortable.
The iPhone 12 design kind of feels at odds with that and to be honest it's not a big deal on the smaller iPhone 12. But it's just that the iPhone 12 Pro Max is a combination of sharp design, the dense stainless steel rim that the Pro phones get and the fact that it's not a small phone. In fact this thing has the largest physical footprint of any iPhone ever. Thanks to an even larger 6.7 inch display versus last year's 6.5. The buttons are also higher up so there might be a bit of extra hand shuffling involved every now and again. It is a bit slimmer than last year but yeah I mean there has never been an iPhone whose presence is more felt.
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Okay here's the important thing, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is worth it. So normally when Apple releases iPhones, you might know this that they tend to just release the entire lineup at once. This year they didn't do that. They released the first two phones in October and the second phone's just now. From a business perspective, I think it's a really smart idea. It gives Apple time to make sure they have enough stock of each. But also it gives them two separate waves of coverage so that each one of these four phones gets its own time in the spotlight.
But what has meant for me is that I've been using a phone that I probably wouldn't have otherwise picked. I would have just gone for the big one but instead I've been using the small one and having had that time to properly use 12 Pro before switching to the iPhone 12 Pro Max has made me realize that there's an absolutely enormous difference between the two. Don't get me wrong, I've been sort of happy on the 12 Pro. I'm getting 5G signal in places I wasn't expecting to. It's so fast but in the end it is a small phone with a small battery. And when you factor in the extra drain that comes from having 5G on it, it doesn't last nearly as long as the iPhone i'd come from.
BATTERY
And because the screen is larger while the bezels have remained about the same size. It's a more visually impressive phone as in the screen to body ratio is higher. You've got a speaker system that sounds a little louder and fuller. Thanks to just having more room to be able to push sound out. It's kind of weird that Apple didn't mention this.
CAMERA
And yes the cameras are an improvement and does feel next generation. Like for me, the iPhone 12 Pro Max camera is a bigger jump over the iPhone 12 Pro camera than the 12 Pro is over last year's iPhones. Or in other words the difference in camera quality within the 12 generation is bigger than the difference between the 12 and the 11 generation. You've got more zoom, 2.5 times optical zoom instead of the two times that you've got on very other Pro iPhone.
Although the difference that this makes I've got to say is subtle. It basically means that you can get to about 12 times zoom with the same quality as you used to be able to get to 10 times width. We've also got sensor shift stabilization otherwise known as in-body stabilization. So usually the way it works with cameras is that the lens has the ability to move slightly to kind of counteract the shake of your hands. This takes that a step further and moves the camera sensor itself. Although it is kind of a weird feature to have on a phone because the main benefit of this on cameras is that it allows you to swap lenses freely and still keep your stabilization.
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But obviously being a phone, you're not gonna be swapping lenses very often so it leads to three perks but they're all quite subtle.
- Just the fact that it kind of helps to counteract the fact that there is a bigger heavier sensor on this phone than all other iPhones.
- It's slightly better at also adjusting for jittering. So if you're filming while sitting in a car for example that gentle rumbling motion seems to be a bit less noticeable here.
- The third thing is that because your lens is now locked in place and it's just the sensor behind that's moving. It plays a little nicer with third-party accessories like Gimbals or clip-on lenses.
But by far the most important improvement is the fact that the main camera sensor is almost 50% bigger than the one on the normal iPhone 12 Pro. This in itself brings five separate benefits.
- The first one is slightly more detail. The fact that it can process more light now means it can gather just a bit more information.
- The extra light you're getting makes more and more of a difference, the darker you get.
- It can also shoot those night mode shots a little faster in an environment where the iPhone 12 Pro might need to be held still for 10 seconds, this phone might be able to do it in 3 seconds.
- It's got even better dynamic range.
- Most importantly for me is improved depth of field. So you can take photos without using portrait mode and still get the lovely separation of foreground and background.
SOFTWARE
Now there's one more important thing here. There's nothing to do with specs or cameras or software. The software experience is basically the same. It's iOS 14 and I do like it. I love the new Siri and how it doesn't take up the entire screen. Widgets are a nice touch but still fairly limited versus what android can do. Probably the biggest thing for me is actually just picture in picture. You can watch your Netflix shows while browsing Instagram.
PRICING
But here's the kicker, I've already said that I think the iPhone 12 Pro Max is enough of a jump ahead of the Pro to be considered Apple's Ultra phone. Its competitor to the Ultras from Samsung and Huawei but unusually this phone doesn't really carry the ultra price premium. Now bear with me here because Apple's pricing is a bit all over the place around the world. Like in India this phone is something like 30% more expensive than the Galaxy S20 Ultra.
That's the kind of price gap that's quite hard to justify. In the UK these two phones are exactly the same price to the penny in which case I would say if you're considering the iPhone 12 Pro Max, I can recommend it. And then you've got the US in which it's almost 30% cheaper than an equivalent Samsung where for a lot of people that then becomes a complete no-brainer.
So the price of Apple products versus those of other companies, it varies a lot based on the country. But the one thing that's quite consistent is the fact that the price of the 12 Pro Max versus the price of the 12 Pro is not a big price jump. If you look at Samsung or Huawei, their ultra flagships are both something like $300-$400 more than their baseline flagships. The gap between the iPhones is a $100.
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Now that doesn't necessarily mean the 12 Pro Max is amazing value versus Samsung. But what it does mean is that if you find yourself considering the 12 Pro, I think it'd be wise to either save a bit and go for the normal 12 with very little compromise or just go all in and get the Pro Max. You get a bigger higher resolution display, You get better audio, you get better battery life in a generation that kind of needs.
Let thanks to the introduction of 5G and you get more of a camera improvement than Apple often makes between generations. Literally the moment I saw the Pro Max get announced and the fact that it was only a $100 more, I kind of already suspected that I was going to come to this conclusion anyway. So I just decided to wait until I had the Pro Max so I could be sure.
With that being said, let me know your thoughts about this in comment section below and as always I'll see you in the next one......
Peace Out !!!
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