iPhone 12 Pro Max - Over 6 Months Later By zollotech

Hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and the iPhone 12 Pro max has been out for a little over six months, and it's been my main phone since it released. This is my pacific blue 12 pro max, and this is the 256 gigabyte model. I've used it every single day since it came out except when another phone came out, such as the 12 or 12 pro, and I use those for up to a week at a time. Otherwise, this has been my main phone every single day, and so I want to talk about its overall durability, how it's held up battery life and more and the first thing is its durability. Now this is a stainless steel phone with glass front and back as many of you already know, and generally I don't use a case with it, and so that's for a couple of reasons I generally like the feel of it, and it's also to help durability test it for videos like this to see how well it holds up, even if you're not using a case occasionally. I will use a case generally.

The silicone case when I'm out and about if I'm in a situation, maybe I'm on a beach, maybe I'll, throw a screen protector on it, so sand won't damage it or something like that. But generally, I do not use a case unless it's neat. This needs to be stored in a bag where it could bump into something else. Otherwise, I usually use it like this and then keep it in my pocket or put it on a desk just like this. So generally, I don't use it any other way than what you see here so durability wise outside it's held up pretty well, it does have a lot of fingerprints on it, as you can see, and if I wipe those off they come right back after I hold the phone, but if I wipe the fingerprints off you'll see that it's held up well generally, if you're going to have scratches on it, it's going to be on the bottom.

The stainless steel does tend to hold up well. But if again, if I wipe this off again, you will see some scratches on the very bottom they're micro, scratches though, so they're not a huge deal. The same is true around the frame. I don't have any issues at all around the glass of the camera lens or the sapphire glass here they haven't had any scratches. There's been no issues, no problems there whatsoever.

Generally. I will have a little of wear on the bottom just from setting it down like this, but I don't really see anything here. It's held up well, the stainless steel is held up well, and I don't drop my phone either. I do have a scratch on the display itself, but only one and as you can see, maybe right here by my finger, where there's a fingerprint and then a scratch right above it. This is the only scratch on the entire display.

There's none, and this is held up much better than the previous generation iPhone 11 Pro max, for example. So, just for a quick comparison, here's my 11 pro max, and it has scratches all over it. So, in my left hand is the 11 pro max. You can see the scratches, by my thumb, all across the display without using a screen protector or using a case, of course, that could be avoided by using a screen protector, but with the 12 pro max. I don't know if it's its frame or something else, it's held up extremely well with just that one scratch and that's actually where it fell off the table and hit a tripod stand and sort of nicked to the display.

Otherwise, that wouldn't be there at all, and so that's unfortunate, but it's held up incredibly well compared to previous iPhones with the ceramic shield. That's on this now, as far as its display, that's probably its best feature. It's super bright and if you're playing HDR content, it goes super bright. It's easily viewable in sunlight, and probably only the display. That's brighter is the new iPad Pro.

Otherwise, this is crazy, bright and has great viewing angles. So if you're outside in the sun or inside the viewing angles, are great, and it's great to watch HDR videos on as well, so the brightness is great, and you have HDR like I said now: I've used the camera to record HDR, and it looks great on this display. So if you go to YouTube here's one of my YouTube videos in 4k, HDR that you can watch here and if you'll see here under the settings, you have 2160p HDR, and it looks great it's super bright. Let me turn it down here for just a moment, but you can see it looks washed out to you in this video because the video is not in HDR, but the actual screen is- and I can see the background- the blue sky, no problem. So if I hit play and then turn the brightness all the way up, I can see all the details of this image.

But unless you have a HDR display, you can't see that, but it looks really, really nice. So that's a huge advantage with this, whether you're watching a video on YouTube or you have a HDR, video playing from say, Apple TV, for example. It looks great on this display now as far as PWM the display does have PWM, and it does flash to control brightness. However, the rate that it flashes at is high enough that it doesn't bother my eyes at all. Now I've talked about this at length before, but generally it affects 1 in 10 people.

If you can see higher frame rates, it will bother you, for example, and usually tends to bother me. This display doesn't bother me at all, because it's at a high enough rate, where I just can't see it, you can only capture it with a slo-mo camera at 240 frames per second, where it's actually flashing. Otherwise, you just can't see it as far as green tint. Well, a lot of people have had that issue when maybe in settings you're on dark mode and depending on your brightness level, you may see some green fringing around the outside edge or something like that. I've not seen that on the 12 pro max.

In fact, I haven't seen it on my 12 pro or any of the current iPhones that I've seen some people still have it, despite the newer updates, generally fixing most of those issues, but I haven't seen that at all, and it seems to hold up well as far as that goes, and I haven't had any problems with that or even the backlighting effect, if you're watching HDR, where it looks like some black pixels didn't turn off. I haven't had that issue, although that was fixed for most people with iOS 14.5 and more recently 14.6. So in general it seems much better. As far as the speakers go they've held up. Well, they go nice and loud like normal, like you would expect, and they held up well, meaning they still sound as good as they did.

When I got it new, so here's a camera comparison. I did with some background music from the different phones. Here, take a listen to this, so you can hear how they still sound. So the speakers still sound great, even at the highest volume levels. However, just like when it was new, I would normally back that off just a little because it distorts at its very highest volume, otherwise back it off a little, and it'll sound great now as far as overall reception, while I've had the least amount of issues with this phone compared to the others.

This has the new Qualcomm modem in it with 5g and millimeter wave. If you actually have that I'm on T-Mobile, so I don't have use of the millimeter wave antenna, but I do have 5g. So if I turn off, Wi-Fi you'll see that it'll switch over to 5g here and where I'm at I currently have 3 out of 4 bars of 5g. Generally, I get good speeds indoors. I have great coverage and I don't drop calls it's very rare.

If ever it's happened and generally, if it's happened, it's usually on Wi-Fi, not when I'm connected to cellular. So it's pretty good. That way and if we go into speed test we'll go here, go to speed test, wait for it to load, and we'll just hit, go and see what kind of speeds we get speeds generally tend to get a little better and with the initial launch of the 12 pro max, I did have some issues from time to time, switching between 4g and 5g. Those have since been resolved with recent updates for me, and it's much better and, as you can see, we're getting about 85 megabits per second as far as download up to 86 and upload speeds we're at eight to nine megabits per second as far as upload. So it's not incredible upload speeds, but I am indoors this increases if I go outside, and it's plenty fast to stream, 4k video, for example, or upload a YouTube video.

Even so it might be a little slow compared to some internet, but it's generally pretty fast and as you get to different areas, you'll have different speeds, of course, without millimeter wave, I'm not going to get gigabit speeds, but in general it's pretty good. As far as Wi-Fi I haven't had too many issues occasionally I will have some issues with Bluetooth and that seems to be typical to everyone today with the most recent updates. So with my AirPods Pro, for example, sometimes they just take a moment to connect or play, and that seems to be an issue with maybe Bluetooth and the software rather than the phone. So at the beginning it was fine, sometimes now it's just not great but other times it seems to work okay and in general I haven't had any disconnects really or any problems like that. With a few of the different versions, I'm testing different iOS versions, all the time.

I've had some issues, but in general I really haven't now as far as battery life and battery health. If we go into settings here, we'll go down to battery under battery health, it's at 100 percent. Now I charge this every single night on a MagSafe charger. I put it on a Balkan, MagSafe charger. I did a video on that and that's how it's charged every single night.

If I'm in the car it's wirelessly charged now not having a case on, it probably helps dissipate some of that heat, but it's stayed at 100 capacity. It's normal for this to go down so if you're, at 99 or 97 or even 95, it's completely normal as 80 after two years is normal. So I do expect this to go down at some point, but right now it's still at 100 percent and I generally just enjoy using the phone. If we look at the last 10 days of battery life, you'll see a couple of days ago, I used about fifty percent of my battery and got four hours and four minutes of screen on time two hours and twelve minutes of screen off time. That's about what I can expect eight to ten hours of screen on time with a few hours, maybe two to four hours of screen off time playing music and things like that.

In the background, it easily lasts me through a day again eight to ten hours and that's if I'm just using Twitter and YouTube and just doing different tasks in general, it seems to hold up well. I will say that it's not as good as the 11 pro max was early on, where I would regularly get 10 to 12 hours of screen on time. I think the 5g modem has some a little to do with this, and you could turn off 5g, but I generally tend to use that, so I leave it on since normally by the time I go to bed, I'm at about 50 of my battery life left. So in general, it's holding up well with that software updates can affect the overall battery life, so it seems to be doing good for me in general. Now, as far as the cameras are concerned.

Well, this is a huge high point for this phone cameras, in particular with video with Dolby Vision. HDR, I've recorded quite a few videos using this camera on these phones. These are phenomenal cameras that can do 4k60, Dolby Vision, HDR. In fact, I would recommend that if you don't have a camera yet- and maybe you want to get into photography or even maybe you want to start a YouTube channel, I would highly recommend this as a camera, because the microphone is great in it. You can use external audio with it, and the clarity overall is good.

If I hit record here, you can see the video from the iPhone. It looks pretty much as good as what we're seeing from my main camera, which is a Sony a7s3, it's working, fine and in general you can use it for whatever you'd like. If you want to use it to maybe vlog, you can do that. So if I flip it around here, hit record you'll see now I'm recording from the forward-facing camera of the 12 pro max. All I did was hit record, and we're using the microphone from it as well.

So it's pretty good compared to even my studio microphone that you have here so as far as that goes with photos and everything else, some people use this for their thumbnails on YouTube. Even professional photographers use it from time to time. When they're in a pinch- and they don't have their main camera- or maybe they run out of memory for example, so it's a really great camera has great night photos as well, and it's definitely something that's a highlight of this device now as far as iOS versions and in the future. Well, you can expect this to go for at least five years based on what apple's done in the past. So that means it was shipped with iOS 14.

That means probably iOS 19 or even iOS 20 at the time when it won't get updates anymore, so you're good for another four to five years. At this point- and I think it's really a great device as far as what it offers with its battery life and everything else, so iOS 14.6, updates and 14.7 to 15 you'll get all the latest updates for many years to come, and so that leads me to should you still pick up an iPhone 12 Pro max. I probably get asked this question every single day and I would say if you have a phone that just stopped working. For example, maybe you have an older phone, an iPhone 7, for example, and it just stopped working, and you want to pick up a new phone. Well then definitely go ahead and pick one up.

However, if you're someone that wants the latest and greatest all the time well we're only a few months away from seeing what iPhone 13 is, which will usually be in September. If apple continues to do what they normally do, so that will get updates with things like the camera, the processor, and we're even hearing battery life. So if you have to have the latest and greatest and those things matter the most to you, then sure go ahead and wait until September. Otherwise, you could pick one up now, generally sometimes with discounts or good trade-in deals as well from your carrier. So I highly recommend it.

If you need a new phone, or maybe you don't care about having the latest, then definitely I would recommend picking one of these up. So that's it for the iPhone 12 Pro max I'll still continue to use it until the next iPhone comes out, and it's what I really enjoy using. I love the squared off design. By the way I forgot to mention that earlier on, it's just something: I've wanted for years to come back since the iPhone 5. So I like the squared off design.

I know some people like the rounded edges, but I like the square design it's easier to hold, and it just makes it feel more sturdy to me overall. But let me know what you think about the iPhone 12 Pro max in the comments below and, of course, I'll link. This wallpaper in the description like I normally do if you haven't subscribed already, though, please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the video please give it a like, as always thanks for watching this is Aaron I'll, see you next time you.

Source : zollotech