iPhone XS Max: Is it Worth Buying Now? By Mark Spurrell

Hey guys mark here, and recently I was scrolling through my Instagram feed when I came across a post by john retainer, with the picture of a 10s max and the caption. Is it worth it to upgrade your iPhone every year? Of course, the answer from me personally would be no, because whether it's iPhone or android, smartphone updates from year to year tend to be pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. So unless you want to be on the bleeding edge, the forefront of tech every single year, there's not much need. So with all that in mind, I want to take a look at the 10s max that john posted to see if it's still a phone that you should consider buying. After almost two years since its release, the 10s max was released alongside the 10s and the 10r in the fall of 2018. It received positive reviews in general, but one of its biggest downfalls was the price at 1100 us dollars, making it one of the most expensive iPhones ever made at the time lucky for us that price has fallen significantly.

You can pick up a 10s max directly from Apple refurbished for 7.99 or better, yet pick it up on the used market for around 550 to 600. So what do you get for that 600 bucks? Well, the 10s max has a relatively current design, given that apple only refreshes their phones every few years. So it has a very familiar look to the iPhone 11 lineup. With this same notch and Flemish bezels around the bottom and sides, the back is a little different given that they've moved the Apple logo, down to the middle of the phone on the newer models and changed the camera bump. Quite significantly, I still prefer the look of the camera bump on the 10s lineup over the 11, even though the 11 does come with that ultra-wide, whereas the 10s max only has a standard and telephoto, but I'll get into that more in the camera section of this review.

The one downside to having a smaller bump like this, though, is that it rocks back and forth on a table. If you don't have a case on it. Most people use cases, though, so I wouldn't worry about that too much. Thankfully, you won't need something like a lightproof case, because this phone is ip68 rated for water and dust resistance, which is nice. I think the phone still looks great and very modern overall, yes, it still has that huge notch at the top.

But to me, it's really not a big deal. I'm used to having these notches on my devices and even my galaxy fold, has a huge notch on the inside display you just kind of tune it out after a while, according to the newest leaks, Apple might not even shrink that notch on the iPhone 12, so you might as well get used to it. The biggest advantage of it is that it provides room for face ID, which overall is a pretty top-notch facial recognition system. It's pretty fast form of unlocking your phone, and it rarely fails. That being said, it still falls behind the likes of the iPhone 11 series, which is just a touch faster.

The only downside to face ID right now is that most people are wearing masks when they go outside, so you're forced to use that passcode unlocks instead, there's no fingerprint reader on these newer phones from apple. After all, the display is one of the strong points of this phone. It's a huge 6.5-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 26.88 by 1242, which is roughly 1440p. It's definitely one of the better displays in a smartphone because of its large size, deep inky, blacks from it soled nature and HDR support. Furthermore, it's an excellent phone for watching movies and TV shows on the screen.

Isn't exactly perfect, though, when these phones first came out, there was a little controversy around off-axis color shift on these displays, and, unfortunately I didn't win the panel lottery either when I got mine as soon as you start to view this screen off axis, it turns an ugly shade of magenta that increases the further off access you go in reality. This isn't actually a big issue since you don't use your phone like that. Anyway, it's just worthwhile to note that displays really shouldn't have this problem, especially on a phone that costs north of a thousand dollars. The screen does get plenty bright thanks to its peak brightness of over 600 nits, which makes it enjoyable to use even in direct sunlight, oh and if you're, enjoying this video so far, maybe hit that like button and subscribe, I'd really appreciate it. I'm going to dig into the cameras, but just before I do I want to quickly thank the sponsor of this video skillshare is an online learning platform for creative people, where you can learn from thousands of extremely talented people through their online classes.

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Let's talk about the cameras, there are three cameras in total on the 10s max the front has a 7 megapixel, selfie camera and the back has a 12 megapixel standard and a 12 megapixel telephoto, as I mentioned earlier, there's no ultra-wide on this camera, which is a bit of a bummer, because I think that it's more useful than a telephoto lens in most circumstances, sometimes I'll, be in a small room and I won't be able to take a picture of you know the full room, because I can't back up any further. Funnily enough. The front-facing camera has the same sort of issue. Even with my really long spaghetti arms. It can be pretty tough to fit two people in the frame of the front-facing camera.

The front-facing camera also only shoots up to 1080p 60fps video, unfortunately, but at least it's pretty good in dynamic range and the photos come out great with plenty of sharpness. The amount of megapixels a camera has really isn't everything, and it shows in the photos from the front-facing camera here. The rear, telephoto and standard cameras produce excellent photos as well with great colors and contrast, but the portrait mode photos tend to fall apart. A little with complex objects like this shot of the bike, it's a great shot, but without a depth sensor the phone doesn't do a great job of picking out what should be in focus and what shouldn't be. It does do a lot better with people which is probably what you're going to be using it for most of the time anyway.

The rear cameras shoot full 4k 60fps and are generally pretty good. iPhones and pixels tend to be perfect with color, and it shows here, although the stabilization isn't great, unless you switch to 1080p, which ends up being a little soft. It's great for getting stable, handheld telephoto shots like this one though. So what does it feel like to use every day? Well, it's an iPhone. So you probably know what using iOS is like, although I've opted into the iOS 14 public beta, so I've got all the new home screen widgets and a bunch of other stuff.

Generally speaking, the experience has been nearly flawless aside from the bugs that you get from using a public beta. The phone has been very fast to use with very few performance related glitches. Like hang-ups or slow-downs, it's running apple's, a12 bionic CPU, with four gigabytes of ram. The low ram spec might come into play if you have a lot of apps open, but you really won't see a slow-down in performance. The phone is just going to close out apps that you haven't been using recently to free up memory for other apps.

The phone still feels like a flagship to use. The only thing that it doesn't have is a high refresh rate display. So it's not going to feel quite as snappy as something like a Samsung s20 or an OnePlus 8 pro, but I think that's fine, no reason to complain about that in a phone that came out almost two years ago. I do have something to complain about in regard to battery life, though, while the maximum battery capacity hasn't really dropped over time, all that much the battery life definitely has not improved at all. Since its release don't get me wrong.

It'll still get me through the day, just barely I'm getting around four and a half to around five hours of screen on time, which is about average, if not a little below average for smartphones these days. Couple that with the slow charging speed from the included 5 watt charger, and you got a bit of a recipe for disappointment. However, the 10s max does include an 18 watt fast charging capability. So if you want to pick up a cheap, fast charger for it, I'll have a link to a good one in the description down below alright. So, let's bring it all back around to the beginning of this video and answer your probably rhetorical question, Mr retainer, with the experience that you can currently get on an iPhone, 10s or 10s max.

No, you absolutely don't have to upgrade your iPhone every year. The 10s max is still a great phone, even almost two years after it came out. But let me just tack on one more reason to buy a phone like this apple typically supports their phones for years and years and years into the future after they come out. For example, the iPhone 6s that came out way back in 2015 is still fully supported, with iOS 14 that hasn't even released yet, which means, if you buy the 10s max now in 2020, you could be potentially getting updates for the phone into 2023 and beyond. So if you've got a 10s max, and you're feeling that upgrade itch, don't bother to upgrade.

Hopefully, after watching this video, it went away on its own, but if you've got an aging phone, that's on its last legs. The 10s max is a great option to have here in 2020. If you like this video, please give it a like and subscribe to support my channel and, as always, have a great day.

Source : Mark Spurrell