Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Max will bring some upgrades to the line. Maybe not enough to get you to trade-in an iPhone 14 Pro Max, but if you are an owner of the 2-year-old iPhone 13 Pro Max, you may be itching for that upgrade.
Apple has just launched the iPhone 15 series and we finally know what the new Pros have got for us! The question is, should you rush to upgrade to one?Well, if you have an iPhone 13 Pro Max, you are pretty good in terms of having a 120 Hz screen, a 3x zoom camera, and a processor that is still very much a performer. In fact, you are probably not even itching to upgrade to that “Dynamic Island” slab.But the iPhone 15 Pro Max will give you a new 48 MP camera with improved image processing, a new titanium frame with a beautiful brushed finish, and a more powerful SoC that will be able to play actual console-level games. Well, we assume slightly downgraded… Anyway, here’s the compared to the
Slightly thinner bezels on 15
Dynamic Island vs Notch
Titanium frame on the 15
Mute switch upgraded to Action Switch
A17 Pro is a noticeably faster processor
iPhone 15 Pro Max options start from 256 GB vs 128 GB for 13 Pro Max
Upgraded 48 MP main camera
New 5x optical zoom on 15 Pro Max
USB Type C instead of Lightning with faster data transfer
The still has the “old style” design — with a notch cutout at the top of the screen, that is. The has the new Dynamic Island cutout, as on the 14 Pro Max… for better or worse.Also, you will immediately spot the pretty brushed finish of the . Its frame is now covered with titanium, meaning it’s slightly lighter than the with its shiny stainless steel frame.
The screen-to-body ratio up front, meaning the bezels around the screen are now very, very thin. That also slightly reduces the overall size of the phone. Another first for the series — the mechanical mute switch is gone from the . Instead, it is replaced by an “Action Button” — a-la Apple Watch Ultra. By default, it’s still a mute toggle button. But you can program it to launch any app, Siri shortcut, flashlight, Focus Mode, or accessibility feature you choose.The also has slightly beveled edges on the back, making it sit a bit softer in the palm, but otherwise — the phones look very, very similar. Both are flat-sided rectangles with MagSafe compatibility and stove-shaped cameras on the back.Display Differences The Pro Max series hasn’t changed much about its screens for some years now — the and both have 6.7-inch OLED panels, 120 Hz ProMotion, and 1290 x 2796 resolution. Of course, the will get the Dynamic Island where the has a Notch. The former being a hardware feature that fuses with the software — iOS floats different widgets around the Dynamic Island, improving the multi-tasking capabilities of the iPhone and hiding the selfie camera in an element that looks “intended”.Furthermore, the has a higher peak brightness of 2,000 nits, which is pretty insane at this point. Are we going to be watching HDR movies while at the beach? No, we don’t recommend you do, imagine the heat. The taps out at 1,200 nits during HDR playback, and we’d say that was already plenty enough. But hey, the 15 Pro Max will give you more brightness headroom.
Both screens look very similar otherwise, with a slight yellow-ish tint on the whites, but otherwise very accurate color reproduction. And both give you True Tone and Night Shift for warmer colors and more reading comfort.The Pro Max’s A17 Pro chip is built on a 3 nm process — it’s the first 3 nm smartphone chip at that. It comes with more powerful performance cores and a GPU that now supports hardware ray tracing.
