Should you buy the iPhone 15 Pro Max?

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My first thought when I picked up the iPhone 15 Pro Max was that it felt light, certainly lighter than its predecessor. Turns out he was right: 19g lighter than the 14 Pro Max. Now, that’s only the equivalent of two seedless grapes (I just checked), but we spend so much time holding smartphones these days that their precise weight has evidently become as familiar to us as their appearance.

Two main factors contribute to the reduced weight of AppleThe flagship smartphone, the first is a new titanium casing that replaces the stainless steel of yesteryear: stronger, lighter and with slightly rounded edges compared to the more angular 14 Pro Max. Secondly, while the actual screen remains the same size (6.7 inches), the phone’s bezels are thinner than those of the 14 Pro Max, making the entire unit a little shorter and less wide. The result: it is beautiful to look at and pleasant to the touch. The basic attributes were marked.

It is good to look at and pleasant to the touch. Basic attributes marked

The most notable change to the body of the phone, however, is the removal of the ringer mute switch on the top left, something that iPhone Users have been inserting their thumbnails since the first model was released in 2007. In its place is a button, called the Action button, to which you can assign any task you deem useful. One press could activate the torch, the camera’s selfie mode, or a sequence of events you’ve defined in Apple’s Shortcuts app. What used to take three seconds could now take only one. After all, timing is everything.

Some of the features that were added to last year’s Pro line have now been extended to the base iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus (for example, the “dynamic island” at the top of the home screen, a brighter screen in general and a jump from a 12 to a 48 megapixel main camera). So what will Pro users get this time? Unsurprisingly, much of the focus (no pun intended) is on the camera, because that’s the battlefield where high-end smartphones fight these days. Thanks to computational photography, the Pro Max’s three cameras effectively become seven professional lenses, from 0.5x ultra-wide angle, through a series of common focal lengths, to 5x telephoto. My experience with the 14 Pro Max’s 3x zoom was the difficulty of keeping the frame stable; Apple has acknowledged this with a new three-way stabilization system that, on paper, can apparently make micro-adjustments 10,000 times per second. In practice, using the telephoto lens is much easier than before. A little extra icing sugar comes in the form of detailed portraits in night mode and a continuous zoom feature when you’re shooting video in cinematic mode – fluid motion through the lenses that creates a smooth, professional effect that you don’t really associate with . smart phones.

The use of the word “Pro” for Apple’s high-end phones always felt more poetic than literal, but one new change really seems to cement the Pro Max’s reputation as a formidable piece of audio-visual gear: the switch from a Lightning port to USB. C. Ironically, it seems like the only change Apple wouldn’t have made if European regulators hadn’t forced it to do so, but it feels like a real game-changer. Plug in a USB 3.2-compatible cable and you’ll get 10Gb/s transfer speeds, about 20 times faster than you’d get with a Lightning connection. In practice, that means you can use USB sticks, SSDs (on which you can record ProRes video directly, if you wish), and all sorts of compatible external kits, including microphones and game controllers.

I have a mild fear of computer games and their potential to take up valuable time from my life (I’ve been there, it wasn’t pleasant), but the Pro Max’s gaming potential has been boosted by a newly redesigned design and supercharged GPU. which brings the graphics closer to console quality. Apple hopes developers will use it; I won’t be, but that’s neither here nor there.

Hardware advancements go hand in hand with software development, and there are some neat tricks built into Apple’s latest iOS 17 operating system, also released this week. Portraits you’ve taken over the past year on an Apple device can now be reviewed and refocused on a different subject already in the frame. AirDrop, the transfer protocol between Apple devices, has been expanded to include NameDrop, where two collided phones can automatically exchange contacts. A new Check-In feature helps friends make sure you’ve both arrived home safely. Oh, and now you can design the screen (“Contact Poster”) that appears on other phones when you make calls. You still use a smartphone to make phone calls, right?

iPhone 15 Pro Max, from £1,199 or £49.95 per month, apple.com