I’ve only used the iPhone 16 Pro Max for a few days, and I’m already in love with these 4 upgrades
I’ve only used the iPhone 16 Pro Max for a few days, and I’m already in love with these 4 upgrades
I swapped my iPhone 15 Pro for Apple’s latest and greatest, and boy do I have some feelings
Every year, I upgrade my iPhone so I can stay up to date with what Apple’s up to. This year, I chose to go with the iPhone 16 Pro Max in Desert Titanium (the rest of the iPhone 16 Pro colors didn’t really appeal to me). It’s a pretty dramatic upgrade from my iPhone 15 Pro, which did everything but age gracefully. Sure, it’s still fast and damage-free, but I’ve grown tired of it a lot quicker than I thought.
From afar, it seemed the iPhone 16 Pro Max would give me a dramatically better experience than my 15 Pro, which is why I bought it. Well, that and the fact I’ll be helping with our iPhone 16 Pro hands-on review. But I wanted to see if it could fix some of the shortcomings with my previous daily driver, and just three days after I got it in the mail, I’ve discovered that it has… by a long shot.
Maybe it’s just the honeymoon phase kicking in, but I think I’m in love with these four key areas of the 16 Pro Max.
🔋 1. Battery life
I posted to X about this a couple of days ago: I’m pretty certain the battery life on my iPhone 16 Pro Max is double that of my iPhone 15 Pro. That’s during the first few days of using a new phone while it actively downloads data, calibrates itself, and your phone learns your usage patterns. It’s wildly impressive.
It’s easy to predict that battery life would be dramatically better on the 16 Pro Max versus the 15 Pro. The new phone has a huge 4,685mAh battery inside, while the 15 Pro ships with a 3,290mAh battery. On the surface, yeah, a bigger battery makes battery life better. But over the past year, I’ve also noticed my 15 Pro’s battery health drop from 100 percent to 91 percent, which doesn’t typically happen. That’s led to dramatically shorter battery life on full charges; I used to be able to get through a full day, and now, I can barely make it to dinner without charging up in the afternoon.
Fortunately, the 16 Pro Max has fixed that issue significantly. I’m getting 3-4 hours of screen time before hitting 70%each and every day, whereas I’d easily be down to 30-40%on my 15 Pro. I can finally have confidence that my iPhone will last the full day.
📱 2. The unnecessarily huge display
My iPhone 15 Pro had a 6.1-inch screen, which I was admittedly sick of. I used to think I valued using my phone in one hand more than having a ton of space, but I was wrong. I need a bigger screen.
The 16 Pro Max has the most screen space ever on an iPhone thanks to its 6.9-inch panel, which grew by two-tenths of an inch compared to the 15 Pro Max. The bezels are slimmer than ever, it can reach 2,000 nits of brightness, and it’s absolutely glorious.
No, I don’t think anyone actually needs a screen this big, not even the multitasking or gaming junkies among us. 6.7 inches is plenty for a big phone. But I will say, that having such an unnecessarily huge display in your pocket is very convient. It means I can watch a movie and actually enjoy it, type out news stories on the go, edit photos easier, and more. Everything is bigger and harder to manage with one hand, but in my early testing, it’s a worthy tradeoff.
🏎️ 3. Performance, which is somehow even better
Yes, I know this is a new phone and it’s not fully bogged down with a bunch of useless files and miscellaneous apps yet, but the iPhone 16 Pro Max feels genuinely faster than my 15 Pro.
For context, the 16 Pro and Pro Max feature Apple’s A18 Pro processor, whereas the 15 Pro series ships with the A17 Pro. Apple didn’t tout any major performance changes during the iPhone 16 launch event (outside of AI performance, of course), but it did promise slight improvements in your everyday usage. That seems to be what I’m experiencing. Apps open a little quicker, the system seems more responsive, and the whole experience is snappier than before, which is really nice.
It may also be due to the 8GB of RAM in every iPhone 16, including the non-Pros. Before, you’d only get 6GB which isn’t enough to handle most people’s workloads. Luckily, Apple has increased it this time around, and it makes flipping between apps and keeping things running in the background a lot easier.
I think the 15 Pro still performs well for most people, but if you want bleeding-edge performance, it seems that the 16 Pro series are the devices to get.
📸 4. Camera Control and Action Button freedom
When I got my iPhone 15 Pro with the added action button last year, I immediately set it to open the camera because I’ve always wanted a physical shortcut button for it. I never thought I’d see the day because the iPhone has only lost buttons since it first launched.
Camera Control takes some getting used to as I wrote in my iPhone 16 Plus camera impressions, but it’s still a convenient shortcut to your camera that’s at the ready whenever a moment pops up that deserves to be captured. All the sliding tools are great, and it’s easy to snap a quick photo or video without the need to edit beforehand.
Of course, because Camera Control is a thing, it frees up the Action button for whatever I want, which is the best part. Right now, I have it set to open the flashlight, but I can also set it to run a custom Siri routine, trigger Shazam to identify songs playing at the bar, and more. Despite the Action button still only being capable of running a single action (for now), it feels a bit less limited since there’s a separate button that launches my previous most common Action button settings.
😍 I’m a little obsessed with the iPhone 16 Pro Max
I might just be happy about returning my iPhone 15 Pro to T-Mobile after a year of putting up with a small screen and bad battery, but I’m also genuinely excited about using the 16 Pro Max moving forward. It’s one of the nicest phones I’ve used all year, and I’me excited to see how it ages in the coming weeks and months. I know I’m excited for Apple Intelligence to drop with iOS 18.1 in October.
We’re reviewing the entire iPhone 16 lineup, as well as the Apple Watch Series 10 and AirPods 4. Be sure to subscribe to The Shortcut for our full thoughts and opinions on those devices when they come out.