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Pro, Max!

Entry 2300, on 2023-10-21 at 16:37:15 (Rating 1, Computers)

I usually buy myself one new major gadget each year: like a computer, tablet, phone, etc. This year I figured it was time to upgrade my phone, which was an iPhone XS. That phone was still fairly good, but the back cover was cracked and it needed a new battery, and the cameras were good but not as good as the new ones, so I decided to go all out and got an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The full retail price is a rather hefty $2800, but I got $500 off and am paying it off over three years, making the cost not too painful. So after using it for a few weeks, what are my impressions? Well, I'm not going to waste a lot of time repeating specs you can get anywhere, so I am just going to give my thoughts in comparison with my previous phone.

The screen is very good. The colours are more saturated and clearer, even than the excellent screen in the XS. It's bright enough to be usable in bright sunlight. The screen is still a bit reflective, so you need to avoid holding it at angles which pick up strong light sources. There is an always-on display which shows time and other information, even when it is asleep. I have seen no sign of the burn-in some people have reported.

The sound is also improved, with better balance and more bass, and good stereo imaging.

It is very fast. The XS rarely lagged much, but this is noticeably better. It's probably the fastest phone available, right now. I run a lot of apps simultaneously and there is never any hesitation swapping between them. It has much faster CPUs and GPUs and more memory than the previous phone, and I also got 512G of storage. It's amazing to think it has 100,000 times more storage than my first hard disk based computer (an Apple III) and 4 million times more than my first floppy drive based machine: an Apple II.

The battery life seems good, although not great. After thrashing it all day I usually have over 50% charge still, so since I am in the habit of charging my devices every night, that is as much as I need, in fact it's a lot more.

I have never noticed the overheating issues some people have reported. When playing some games which are more demanding it feels slightly warm, but that is all.

The cameras are maybe the main reason I upgraded. They are good quality, with finer detail, less noise, a much higher range of zoom, more pixels, and faster lenses. The ultra wide angle is really great; you can capture a whole room from any position with it, and I use it quite a lot. The normal camera has three fixed focal lengths and up to 48 MPx, and the telephoto zoom gives a 5x zoom ratio with the top being about the same field as a 140mm conventional telephoto lens.

Using the total zoom range, a feature on a wide angle shot which is barely visible becomes zoomed into about half the frame on telephoto. That does use some digital enhancement though, to go beyond the 5x optical zoom.

The new programmable button is quite handy. I have it bring up a small screen with some of my favourite shortcuts on it, like silent mode on and off, remind me at home, etc.

The Pro Max is quite a big phone, but I don't really notice it being too much less convenient than the smaller XS. The camera lenses do stick out quite a bit, which is a bit annoying some times, but it's worth it for those cameras! The titanium frame apparently makes it stronger and lighter, but it doesn't feel unusually heavy or light to me.

So yes, it really is a great phone. It would be nice of those cameras didn't stick out so much and if it was a bit cheaper, but those are the only faults I can think of, apart from the paranoia I have that I'll drop it and break the screen or back!

Just while I'm talking about Apple tech, I should report on another recent upgrade: software this time. I have used the latest Mac operating system, Sonoma, for a while now (since it was first released) and while it doesn't have much that is new over previous systems, it has been totally solid for me, and all 600 apps I have installed still work, although I seem to remember having to apply a couple of free updates.

The biggest advantage for me is that iCloud Drive seems to work far more reliably. Previously it would occasionally stop syncing for no apparent reason, but that has not happened in the months since I did the update.

My machine is pretty fast - it as an M1 Pro processor with 10 CPU and 16 GPU cores - but there were a few hours after the update when it was slightly less speedy than usual. It was probably building the search database and caches at that stage, so that was expected. After that it is as fast as it ever was.

Sonoma seems to work fine, although you might not notice too much new after upgrading from Ventura. Whether you bother to upgrade or not probably depends on if you are the type of person who likes updates or not.

Yes, things are good if you are an Apple tech geek. All the current hardware is very good, after a few fairly average computers around 2017 to 2019, they are now back to making awesome machines. My 16" MacBook Pro is great: super fast and so much spare capacity that I've never heard the fans yet. The new phone is a thing of beauty. My iPad is pretty sad though, so maybe that will be my update for next year!

Comment 1 (7525) by Jim on 2023-11-17 at 10:13:06:

What is your opinion on the idea of buying a cheaper phone and replacing it more often instead of buying the best phone and not replacing it much?

Comment 2 (7526) by OJB on 2023-11-17 at 21:42:22:

That idea has some merit, but the cheap phones don't really do what I want. The best iPhone from 5 years ago is still better than the cheapest one today, in many ways. I wanted all the cameras the new phone has because I do a lot of photography. For other people, your strategy might be useful.

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