Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max review: The true Pro arrives? By Engadget

In, the old days before Ovid, I almost exclusively used big phones, but things have obviously changed since then. I spend nearly all my time at home, so I really don't feel the need to carry around an enormous phone, I'm almost always surrounded by big screens. Anyway, as something of a new small phone fan, I thought I would prefer the new iPhone 12 mini, but not this time, that's partially, because the mini has some issues with respect to battery life, but there's more to it than that. More than anything, it's because the iPhone 12 Pro max is by far the best big phone apple has ever made. That's for a few reasons and designs pretty high on the list, like the other iPhone 12s. The pro max has a new kind of angular look inspired by the iPad Pro, and I think this looks fantastic.

But what is more important is that this pro max is slightly thinner than last year's big iPhone. If you break out the calipers, the differences are really minimal, but every fraction of a millimeter counts when we're talking about big phones that you're going to hold throughout the day. Long story short, this thing is just more comfortable to use than last year's model, and that's a pretty big deal. Apple also gets credit for managing to squeeze in an even bigger display and 6.7 inches diagonal. This super retina Dr screen is the biggest that apple has ever packed into an iPhone, and I find it both gorgeous and daunting.

The gorgeous part is pretty self-explanatory. Once you look at it, it's plenty bright for outdoor use, even under the bright California, sun, and it's even brighter when you're watching certain kinds of videos. It also doesn't hurt that it makes photos and videos, look great thanks to its support for wide color, gamuts and Dolby Vision, HDR, the one real knock against it is that, unlike basically, every half decent android phone at this point, this screen only refreshes at 60 hertz leaks, published before apple's big event strongly suggested that the 12 pros have everything they need on the hardware front. To do this, they just don't maybe it's to prolong battery life in the company's first 5g phone. Maybe it's something else, whatever apple gambled, that people wouldn't miss it and that's largely going to be true, but if you have experienced faster screens, it's just hard to go back to something like this.

As for why this thing is so daunting, I mean just look at it. A few people have already spoken to you think the 6.1 inch iPhone 12 Pro is already too big. The pro max gives you a lot of screens to navigate, and it's pretty easy to shimmy around and reach corners. Now the bezels are smaller, but this is still going to be way too big for a lot of people. Unless you really care about camera performance, these smaller iPhone 12 Pro is size-wise more than enough.

Apart from that, the iPhone 12 Pro max shares a lot with the iPhone 12 Pro I already reviewed. It has a stainless steel body with a frosted glass back that repels fingerprints and makes it less prone to sliding around it has an ip68 rating for water and dust resistance and the same shadow resistant, but not scratch-proof ceramic shield covering the screen. I've already put a nick into this thing. It supports the full swath of MagSafe accessories, though, if I'm honest, wireless charging is still just too inefficient for me. If a portlets iPhone is really what apple is working towards, I am going to be super pissed.

It also just plays nice with just about all us5g networks, which I'm really not going to dwell on here, because high-end 5g phones aren't terribly new and how good your experience is depends on who your carrier is and where you use it. With that said, I have tested the pro max on T-Mobile and Verizon's nationwide 5g networks and with few exceptions, performance really wasn't that different from what I noticed on non-5g phones, the last and maybe most important thing. The pro max shares with the rest of this year's new iPhones is apple's new a14 bionic chipset. This is the fourth time I'm testing a phone using the a14, and I'm sure some of you know the drill by now apple's new chipset packs a significantly faster CPU, GPU and neural engine compared to last year's a13, which itself was crazy fast to start with. I should also point out here that, like the smaller 12 pro, the pro max has 6 gigs of ram up from 4 gigs in this year's non-pro models.

You're, probably not going to notice a huge performance difference as a result compared to the regular iPhone 12s, but it gives this thing extra headroom as iOS and apps grow more complex over time and really that's the whole ball game. Very little you're going to do to this thing is going to throw the iPhone 12 Pro max for a loop. It's gaming, it's multitasking, whatever you're covered, as I said in our iPhone 12 review video. The performance you get here is overkill by 2020 standards, and it's saying something that apple is reportedly using a souped-up version of this chipset for its first Apple Silicon max the point is it's easy to take this phone's performance for granted now, but I think you'll really start to appreciate it a few years down the road. Meanwhile, battery life has been pretty great, honestly.

In fairness, I've also been living with the iPhone 12 mini for a week, so literally anything better than that is a huge improvement. But overall I've been able to use the pro-max for full work days and still have quite a bit left in the tank the following morning. So far, all of this great performance better battery life- this is all typical stuff for a big iPhone. What's more striking, are the 12 primary's cameras for the first time in a few years? Apple didn't just use the same camera setup across both of its high-end iPhones, because it had more room to play with and possibly to justify this thing's existence. Now that the regular 12 pro is bigger apple kind of went out on a limb.

The ultra white camera is the same as you'll find on the 12 pro, and the same goes for this little LIDAR array, which makes AR apps run better and helps with focusing on low light. But honestly, I don't think we've seen this thing's full value yet. The other two cameras, however, are a different story for one: the standard wide camera, otherwise known as the one you're. Actually, going to use most of the time has a larger 12 megapixel sensor that actually moves around inside this body for better image. Stabilization apple says this new system can make up to 5, 000 micro adjustments per second for more crisp, looking photos and less shaky video and just off the bat I can tell you this is going to mean a lot more to some of you than it is to others.

Almost all the photos I take are purely handheld, and I really didn't see a huge difference compared to the regular iPhone 12s. The difference was a little more apparent when I was shooting video you still kind of see the telltale bob when you're walking, but some of the natural jerkiness that comes with handheld shooting has been smoothed out. A touch so hey, quick update. We just took the iPhone 12 Pro max out for another walk out here too. Whatever this is to see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge and upon second review, I guess the stabilization is actually a little more impressive than I thought we did a lot of handheld footage.

A lot of uneven surfaces here as I'm sort of scrambling up to keep my video back Kyle in the frame. I think it actually looks pretty dang good. All things considered, though, we did notice that the sort of the colors the sort of light everything going on in this video tended to sort of flicker a bit. Maybe this is just something we're seeing on the iPhone screen. Maybe this is something we'll see when we go back to edit, but it's something you should probably know.

This camera also has the same f 1.6 aperture as the smaller iPhone 12 Pro, which basically just lets more light hit the sensor. But there is a twist the pixels on this sensor are physically bigger, so they capture even more light in daylight. I don't think you're going to see a huge difference. This mostly just means that in some cases the camera won't automatically fire up night mode or when it does, it doesn't need to use night mode. For as long as, I said, I've been testing the 12 mini alongside the pro max, and I've seen that happen a few times the resulting photos from both devices look surprisingly similar, which is really kind of impressive.

When you consider the mini had to combine multiple exposures into a single photo, but with the pro max you shoot, and you're done, and then there's the telephoto camera, which still only just captures 12 megapixel photos but offers a slightly longer range. It's about a 65 millimeter focal length which, in this case, works out to a two and a half times optical zoom, up from the two times zoom in the smaller 12 pro look. I've said in the past that I'm not a huge telephoto person, and that is still true, but these things they have their uses. My favorite shot so far has been this gorgeous sunset, which managed to keep this tiny plane. Looking relatively sharp, as I tried to track it through the sky, the extra range you get with the pro max can definitely be helpful, though I have to say: Samsung still has the edge the note 20 ultra I've been shooting comparison, shots with has a maximum five times optical zoom, plus more, if you're willing to go into sort of weird space, zoom territory as usual, though, the cameras themselves only really tell part of the story.

Apple also made some under the hood improvements to its smart HDR image, processing, the most notable of which is the way it uses. Machine learning to selectively tweak different parts of the same photo. The end result is that images here tend to have a little more verve to them compared to last year. Colors are typically a bit warmer skies. Look more dramatic, there's just a touch more detail here and there to the point where these photos actually kind of look Samsung, by which I mean nicer than what you actually see with your eyes.

Overall, though, apple's image processing still skews towards the realistic, I really like the pixel, 5's kind of contrast photos and the note 20 ultras, super saturated everything's are great for some people, but the pro max is good at splitting the difference whether that yields exactly the photos you prefer is look that's up to you. Now, that's not to say these cameras are perfect. You'll, occasionally see big shifts in color temperature when you switch between the main camera and the others, and the way apple tends to process. Colors can vary pretty dramatically if you're moving from subject to subject or even if you're, just shooting at one thing check out these two photos of the iPhone 12 mini, which I shot within moments of each other, they're both good photos, but the vibe is completely different. I also have to say it would be nice if apple introduced a specific pro camera mode.

Like we've seen on plenty of other high-end android phones, I get that ease of use is basically apple's whole deal, but if you're going to market something as a pro device, I don't think there's anything wrong with offering more control for the people who do want. It apple sort of gets this, which is why the 12 pros are getting support for the new pro raw format later this year, and I'll cover that change when it goes live. We also have to talk video and, for the most part, we're looking at the same great performance. I noted in our iPhone 12 Pro review by default. This thing is set to shoot Dolby Vision, HDR video, which means two things one.

Your footage is going to look amazing, especially on the super retina Dr display and two working with or even just viewing that footage elsewhere is going to be tricky. Sometimes it can be difficult to mix iPhone HDR video, with footage taken on other cameras in certain editing programs, which is not great, and while many new TVs play nice with Dolby Vision, videos slightly older ones might run into compatibility issues all told these camera updates don't exactly seem like game changers, though I should stress, I'm definitely not a pro photographer or a video producer. I've learned how to take pretty good photos of phones and that's kind of it. With that in mind, I can still appreciate apple's extra work here. The pro max's cameras give you some extra flexibility that just isn't available from other models, and it sets an important precedent for bigger camera changes down the road.

If you don't mind living with a big phone I'd say this is well worth the 100 premium over the smaller 12 pro. So should you actually buy this thing? I can answer that question a few ways if you're a big phone person or if you care about camera performance, basically more than anything, then the pro max is definitely the one you should be looking at. It is a fantastic device and the blend of power and battery life and cameras makes it easy to overlook some things apple didn't do this year. Like I said, though, I have turned into a bit of a small phone guy during quarantine, but with that said, this is still the iPhone I would buy for myself and if you've upgraded your phone in the last year or two look, you know what there's no rush. Unless your battery life is awful or your phone can't run, the apps you like well enough, just hold off the world is weird and money is tighter than it was take care of you and yours and worry about buying expensive phone when it feels right.

That is our review of the iPhone 12 Pro max. I really hope you enjoyed it if you have feedback about the phone or the way we handled this review. Let us know down in the comments or email me at vadengadget. com. I want to thank all of you for your continued support.

Thank you for watching, and also special thanks to our video director Kyle for letting me shoot in his garage. Instead of my basement, I feel like it's. We got a good thing going here, so maybe we'll do this again sometime soon, but thank you again. We really appreciate your support, and I'll see you next time. You.

Source : Engadget