iPhone 12 Pro Max Long-term Review - Skip the iPhone 13? By Max Tech

By Max Tech
Aug 13, 2021
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iPhone 12 Pro Max Long-term Review - Skip the iPhone 13?

I’ve been using my iPhone 12 Pro Max for over 2 months now, and while I can say that this is my favorite iPhone yet, there are definitely a couple of annoying issues with it, so in this video, I’m gonna cover both the good and the bad with the goal of letting you know whether it’s worth buying compared one of the other iPhone 12 models, or if it’s worth just waiting for the next iPhone that’s rumored to have some very interesting changes. But before I talk about some of those iPhone 13 leaks and rumors, I want to get into my experience with this 12 Pro Max. First off, I’ve gotta say that I love the new 6.7” display, being noticeably larger than the one on the 11 Pro Max, helping it be super immersive for watching videos and playing games, and basically everything else, especially since the bezels are now slimmer thanks to the now flat front glass panel. The display quality is even better this year with improved viewing angles, so it doesn't turn blue when you look at it off-axis like you get with the 11 Pro Max. And in terms of the speakers, they’re now a bit louder and they have brighter highs as well, which is great because I felt like the 11 Pro Max was lacking that, and this helps when trying to listen to a youtube video or podcast when you don’t have any earbuds on hand. In terms of the actual size of the new 12 Pro Max, it’s definitely quite a bit larger, and while some people had issues with it being too big, I personally think it’s right on the edge of being too big, but still being fine for me.

On top of that, the new flat-edged design makes it easier to hold in the hand even though it feels thicker, so it seems that the square edges offer more grip compared to any previous iPhone. These new completely flat sides seriously make it feel like a totally different phone, since the frame of every iPhone for the last 5 years has been basically the exact same shape, so this one feels completely different, giving you a new and fresh experience. As far as the performance, the A14 Bionic chip has been great, feeling very snappy all the time, and basically every game I’ve tried to run has no issues at all, being perfectly smooth. However, I honestly haven’t noticed much of an improvement compared to the 11 Pro Max, and part of the reason is the fact that the iPhone’s design is now limiting the performance due to thermal throttling. We know this for a fact because the iPad Air 4 comes with the same exact A14 Bionic chip, and that iPad actually gets much higher graphics performance compared to the 12, which shows that Apple turned down the GPU clock speed so it wouldn’t have overheating issues.

And very recently, leaks and rumors point to Apple Aggressively researching vapor chamber thermal systems, trying to get it done in time for the next iPhone, and I’m almost 100% sure that they will because if they don’t, the graphics performance is gonna stay the same with the A15 chip, and Apple can’t have that. So I guess that’s one reason to wait for next year’s iPhone, but even with limited performance, the 12 Pro Max is still faster than Samsung’s brand new S21 Ultra in basically every single way. I personally think that at this point, display refresh rate is really what makes your phone feel faster, not raw performance, and unfortunately, we’re still stuck with a static 60hz display, and that’s extremely disappointing for an $1100 flagship phone, especially since the S21 Ultra can now use 120hz mode while at full resolution. I’m starting to think that Apple held off on that feature on purpose because they knew that 5G, the new design, MagSafe and everything else would be enough to get people to upgrade, and to be honest.. It actually is.

Now before I get into the new MagSafe wireless charging feature, I wanna cover the controversial topic of 5G, and the experience I’ve had with it over the past two months. First off, it’s not just the new 5G capability. The iPhone 12’s come with a new top of the line modem from Qualcomm, which also features much faster LTE as well. This made a massive difference in my basement, where my 11 Pro Max always struggled with getting Service. And not only that, but it was better at random spots in my city as well.

I previously had issues with YouTube videos buffering every once in a while, but now I rarely have that issue with my 12 Pro Max, even when not using 5G at all. But in terms of actual data speeds, we’ve never seen anything like it, even though we don’t have mmWave 5G in our city. My church has an office building where I basically never had a decent cellular signal, but now, with the 12 Pro Max, it’s perfectly fine. About a month ago, we were making very long comparison videos which ended up having huge file sizes, and hilariously, it was faster to airdrop the final file to the iPhone 12, go out on the roof and upload it to youtube than to upload it on our Macs using WiFi. We did that on probably 10 different occasions when we were in a crunch for time, so yes, the new Qualcomm chip and 5G has actually been very helpful, which I didn’t expect.

However, I have noticed that when my phone is using 5G, the battery does drain a bit faster than it did before, and in general, I still feel like my old 11 Pro Max had a little bit more juice than this one, but it’s still more than enough to get through my day, and the rest of the new features including the new design definitely make it a worthwhile tradeoff. Now moving onto MagSafe, this is actually one of the features that I was really excited about, not for the wireless charging aspect, but for the possibility of awesome accessories that you magnetically attach to the back of your iPhone. We recently did a video where we looked at a few of the best third-party MagSafe accessories for the iPhone 12, and I was surprised by how well they worked after just two months since the release. One of those was this cheap little aluminum stand that lets you insert your existing MagSafe charger, and it simply holds your iPhone in midair while charging it with super fast 15W charging, so it’s perfect for an office type job like we have. But even more exciting than that are the future MagSafe accessories that we can expect, like PopSockets that can be easily taken off magnetically to access wireless charging, which fixes the main issue that PopSockets have had for a long time.

There’s also some new battery packs that hold on magnetically while wirelessly recharging your iPhone, which is incredible, and I can’t wait till Apple gives us an official version of their smart battery, so MagSafe has been great so far, and I think it’s only gonna get better in the future. Now I wanna get into the cameras, which have recently been a strong suit for Apple. The biggest complaints I had with the cameras on the 11 Pro Max were mostly software related. Night mode was limited to only the main camera, which basically made taking selfies at night useless, and same for any of the other rear lenses. But now, I can confidently use any lens I want to, and I know I’ll get a great picture at night, especially now that you can take a Night Mode Portrait photo, which is my personal favorite because it looks so good.

And for the daytime, Apple continues to kill it with their HDR, auto white balance and colors. The new Lidar scanner greatly helps portrait photos turn out much better, with more accurate depth mapping with cleaner edges. LiDAR is also being used for video autofocus as well. As you can see right here. It catches onto focus perfectly every single time, so Apple has really killed it with this new feature.

And I absolutely love the new sensor-shift image stabilization that’s exclusive to the 12 Pro Max which basically makes it look like I’m using a gimbal to get super smooth video, but I’m literally hand-holding the phone. But with all of that said, there are two things that really bug me about the cameras on the 12 Pro Max. First off, there’s this really annoying light reflection effect that’s very noticeable at night. As you can see here, the lights reflect inside of the image and they can totally ruin video, as well as photos, like this one of my son, which has glare over the image. The second issue I have is the telephoto lens which is now a longer 2.5X zoom. In order to make it zoom more, Apple had to raise the F stop, which takes in less light than the regular 12 Pro’s 2x zoom, which in turn introduces noise, especially when taking portrait mode photos.

Because of that, I’ve found myself switching to the main lens all the time to take portraits, so I honestly wish that Apple would’ve kept it the same. But other than that, the camera has been amazing, and there are people sharing reviews of the brand new Galaxy S21 Ultra, saying that the iPhone 12 Pro Max still has a bit of an edge in the camera department. So overall, my experience with the 12 Pro Max has been amazing, but I’d honestly have to say that if you don’t care about having the biggest display, I would just go for the regular iPhone 12 Pro since it comes with the very convenient 6GB of RAM and it gets the better 2x zoom lens. But there’s still one question to answer, should you go for a 12 Pro model or wait for the next iPhone to come out later this year? Based on recent leaks, the iPhone 13 or potentially the 12S is gonna come with a number of advantages like a vapor chamber cooling system, sensor-shift stabilization coming to all of the new models, FINALLY a smaller notch, 120hz refresh rate, which is huge! A touch ID sensor under the display, and potentially a new MagSafe smart connector replacing the Lightning port. If any of that is extremely important to you, then it might actually be worth waiting another 8 months for the new iPhones, especially if you’re planning on keeping your iPhone long-term.

So there you guys go, that was our Long-term iPhone 12 Pro Max review after 2 months, if you enjoyed it, go ahead and click the circle above to subscribe and check out one of those two videos right over there. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one.


Source : Max Tech

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