Apple brings the flagship experience with the inclusion of AI and more!
Apple has been at the forefront of smartphone experience with its iPhones. This year, we have the newer iPhone 16 series, which Apple has created a buzzword with its AI features. The iPhone 16 series comprises three smartphones: the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Pro, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is the one Apple has packed with many flagship specifications.
Last year, the iPhone 15 Pro Max (Review) was a well-rounded flagship smartphone that, with its specifications, generated a huge market sale. Now, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is set to rule the flagship smartphone market. Compared to its predecessor, it offers some noticeable upgrades, like a newer and slightly more powerful chipset, a newer ultrawide camera, a slightly larger battery, and a display. The main talking point has to be the Camera Control Key.
So is the iPhone 16 Pro Max worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.
iPhone 16 Pro Max Design:
The iPhone 16 Pro Max sports a design similar to its predecessor, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, except that some changes are noticed up front. The back is made of Corning Gorilla Glass, the version of which is unspecified. The design remains similar, with a squarish camera module that has triple cameras, an LED flashlight, a microphone, and a LIDAR system.
The triple cameras are slightly protruded, making the smartphone wobble slightly when kept on a flat surface. The back of the smartphone is flat and has a smooth matte finish thus providing solid grip while holding in hands. Like the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a side frame made of titanium but now it is made of grade 5 which is even stronger.
The front of the display is protected by a Ceramic Shield for protection which is now of third generation making it even stronger compared to previous versions of Ceramic Shield protection on the iPhones. The smartphone has an IP68 rating which makes it dust and water-resistant and now it can survive up to 6 metres under fresh water for 30 minutes.
The titanium frame makes it lighter and the smartphone weighs around 227 grams which makes it slightly heavier compared to the 221 grams weight of the iPhone 15 Pro Max but you would not feel much of a difference. Around the sides, the left side houses the volume buttons along with an Action key that provides multiple functionalities like a silencer, magnifier, flashlight, etc.
On the right side, there is a power button and the newer addition is the Camera Control Key which provides some extra functionalities which will be discussed in the software section further. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port which continues here from the iPhone 15 Pro Max and there are two dotted grilles where one of which is the loudspeaker and the other is the primary microphone.
On the front, the display has very thin bezels and this time around they are even thinner compared to its predecessor. The cutout pill which houses the front camera remains unchanged and provides a host of functionalities as seen on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Overall, the build and design remain unchanged except for a few changes but feels sturdy and premium.
iPhone 16 Pro Max Display:
The iPhone 16 Pro Max has a slightly larger display this time which is now 6.9-inches compared to 6.7-inches on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The display has a screen resolution of Full HD+ (2868x1320 pixels) Super Retina XDR display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. The display has a ProMotion feature which ensures the display refreshes at 120Hz and can drop to different refresh rates depending on the content of the display.
The smartphone's display has the ProMotion feature, which ensures that it can refresh as low as 1Hz when viewing static content. The display supports Dolby Vision and HDR10, so HDR is supported on YouTube and even on OTT platforms. In terms of display brightness, the smartphone's display can reach around 2000 nits of peak brightness, which is very good.
In auto brightness mode, the display can reach around 1000nits which is good and the sunlight eligibility of the display is very good. In terms of colour reproduction, there is only one setting present which includes the TueTone adjustments which cover the sRGB colour space and provide punchier colours on the display. Overall with the slightly larger display, the multimedia consumption feels much better on the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
iPhone 16 Pro Max Performance:
The iPhone 16 Pro Max sports the newer and more powerful Apple A18 Bionic Pro chipset, which provides 20 per cent better performance than its predecessor, the iPhone 15 Pro Max. This chipset is based on a hexacore setup, with the first two cores clocking at 4.05 GHz and the other four cores clocking at 2.42 GHz. It is built on an efficient 3nm process.
Coupled with the chipset is also a 6-core Apple GPU which is said to provide 20-30 per cent better performance compared to its predecessor. In terms of daily performance, the smartphone handles all the tasks easily without breaking a sweat. In terms of gaming, all heavy games like BGMI, and Genshin Impact run smoothly at the highest graphics settings.
Just like the last year's Apple 6-core GPU, here also you are getting hardware-based ray tracing in games, and better network connectivity but the main upgrade has to be the heat dissipation capabilities as the newer chipset helps maintain a sustained performance without any kind of overheating and keeping the thermals in check. Other than that there is not much of an upgrade over last year's chipset.
In terms of network connectivity, you get support for all bands of 5G and have good carrier aggregation. The iPhone 16 Pro Max just like its predecessor is available in three different variants - 256GB/512GB/1TB storage where all of them have 8GB LPDDR5X RAM. There is no microSD card slot for storage expansion though.
iPhone 16 Pro Max Software:
The iPhone 16 Pro Max runs out of the box on the latest iOS 18. The user interface has a couple of newer additions, including advanced personalization for the lock screen, home screen, and Control Center. The Notes, Camera, and Photos apps have been redesigned. A few newer applications, such as Journal, Passwords, and a slightly modified Calculator application, have also been added.
The Action Key provides a host of functionalities as it gets triggered when you long press that. There are many predefined actions, including silencer, torch, magnifier, Focus, Voice Memo, Camera Shortcut, accessibility shortcut, etc. that come in handy most of the time. Now another main talking feature this year on the iPhone has to be the Camera Control Key.
The Camera Control Key is a touch capacitive button which gets triggered when you lightly press the key while using the camera application. This button also acts as a touch as well as a slider key for various activities. After unlocking the smartphone, a single click on the Camera Control Key launches the camera with a clean preview.
When you double press the Camera Control Key, it launches the Camera Control menu which consists of different options like Exposure, Depth, Zoom, Cameras, Style, Tone, etc. You can long-press the camera button to record a video. You can also set your own camera settings option when you do a single press on the key and swipe right and left for different options.
The Camera Control Key can also be used for opening third-party camera applications like Magnifier and CodeScanner other than the Camera. In the accessibility menu under settings, you can also set the sensitivity of the Camera Control Key from a lighter to a firmer press which is a good option. You can also disable this Camera Control Key from the settings.
Like before you can customize the lock screen with different widgets and also you get a variety of wallpapers and themes to choose from. The Control Center continues to stay and opens up when swiping from the top right and this time it has been tweaked slightly with more widgets, different toggles, and provides different pages to access.
You can now lock individual applications and different contacts through FaceID which is good for security. As usual, there are different Focus modes which include Work, Personal, Driving, Gaming, Do Not Disturb, etc. iOS 18 supports three different widgets - 2x4, 4x4, and 4x2 and you arrange them in the lock screen and the Today page where they get arranged automatically.
With the iOS 18 now you can customize the icons where you can change the colour of the icon, hide the name of the icon, enlarge the icons, and choose from lighter to darker themes for the icons. The Dynamic Island continues to provide different functionalities just like the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The Photos application has been revamped slightly as it shows all photos in the form of a grid.
You get different collections for different photos and also it recognizes the faces of friends or family photos by providing quick access to a collection. The new Passwords application lets you store passwords, passkeys, and Wi-Fi passwords and also lets you know if any password is weaker or used multiple times which is a good move in terms of security.
The Journal application acts as a personal diary where you can write your own notes for personal usage. The Calculator incorporates the Maths Notes which provides more mathematical functionalities, the Map application gets new topographic maps for hiking-related things, and there is the Game Mode which provides a great game-playing experience by minimizing the background activity and also increases responsiveness if you are using external game controllers.
The TV App also provides a lot of functionalities as it acts as a default player for all videos and moves downloaded from iTunes and provides the Apple TV+ streaming service. Now talking about the AI functionality which Apple calls Apple Intelligence seems to be trickled into the iPhones this year as it brings a host of features like enhanced privacy for all your personal data.
Apple AI will let you create images based on your conversations with friends and family. Using the Apple Image Playground you can create different images using sketch, illusion, and animations which are present in most of the applications. You can create something which Apple likes to call "Genmoji" which means creating an emoji of some person in a picture and AI lets you search the images and videos using natural language.
The Apple AI Eraser is a good addition which lets you remove unwanted objects or subjects from the image. Memories let you create a video using image and language recognition by using the images and videos when you are writing a description. The big update is to come to Siri where can it recognize more languages and also will store a history of different conversations which will be triggered when asked.
In the Phone application, you can record the conversation which gets notified to the other person and it generates a summary of it. Now you can also transcribe notes, record, and summarize the notes in the Notes application which is very good. In terms of software updates, just like all iPhones, this smartphone will receive another five years of software updates which is very good.
iPhone 16 Pro Max Cameras:
The iPhone 16 Pro Max has a triple camera setup which includes a 48MP f/1.8 primary camera with a sensor-shift OIS, a newer 48MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 12MP f/2.8 periscope telephoto camera with support for a 5x optical zoom and comes with OIS. On the front, there is a 12MP f/1.9 selfie camera for selfies.
The images from the primary camera come out with excellent details that look sharper and have a great dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colour saturation is very good as you get close to natural colours in the background without any kind of oversharpening. There is also a 24MP camera mode using which you can take some very good images with sharper details and good dynamic range.
In HDR shots, the details look great with sharper details and human skin tones look natural without any oversharpening in the background. The 48MP mode also provides sharper details and has a good dynamic range with almost no noise present in the background. The primary camera can also capture 2x images at 12MP which comes out with sharper details and has good dynamic range with saturated colours in the background.
At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have an excellent dynamic range with almost no noise present in the background. The exposure in low-lighting areas is very well handled and also the details in shadows look very good. Whether you are using the dedicated Night Mode or not, you will get almost similar results as the image processing is spot on.
Even 2x images have sharper details with good dynamic range but there is some noise noticed which will not cause any concern as the white balance is handled very well. In terms of the ultrawide camera, Apple has gone with a newer 48MP sensor compared to the 12MP sensor on its predecessor i.e. iPhone 15 Pro Max. The images during the daylight come out with sharper details and excellent dynamic range from the ultrawide camera.
The colours look close to natural and almost similar to that of the primary camera but now you get a much larger field of view with almost no noise in the background. There is no distortion around the edges which is great. At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details and has a good dynamic range with less oversharpening in the background.
The noise is well under control and the white balance is handled very well. At times the exposure is not handled properly leading to some darker areas with average details. The Night Mode here gets triggered automatically depending on the scenario but when you compare this with last year's iPhone 15 Pro Max's ultrawide camera, there is not much of an improvement.
The ultrawide camera also doubles up as a macro camera and you get some very good shots with crisp and detailed images which have great dynamic range and colours look saturated with almost no noise left behind. Now talking about the 12MP telephoto camera, which remains unchanged from its predecessor does perform really well.
During daylight, it takes images with excellent levels of detail and dynamic range with almost no noise present in the background. The colours look saturated almost close to natural without any kind of oversharpening. At 10x zoom, the images look great without any loss in detail and the dynamic range remains consistent as on the 5x images which is a great thing.
At 10x zoom, there is some noise in the background and the white balance is not as good as on the 5x zoom but still the difference is negligible. At night, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper, have good dynamic range and exposure is well handled. There is a fair bit of noise present in the background whether you are using it with or without Night Mode.
Even the 10x zoom images during the night look good and the colour retention is well handled as in both the level of zoom, you get saturated colours without any kind of oversharpening in the background. In terms of portraits, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details and dynamic range is great. The noise is also very low in the background.
The edge detection is very good and you get proper background blur without any oversharpening in the background. The primary camera also does a good job in terms of portraits at 2x zoom levels which results in sharper details and dynamic range with less noise in the background. The skin tones look natural in human subjects without any kind of oversharpening.
The front camera does a good job in terms of selfies as the selfies come out with good dynamic range and details look sharper with almost less noise in the background. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening. The selfie portraits come out with good edge detection and proper background blur without any oversharpening.
In terms of videos, all four cameras of the iPhone 16 Pro Max can record 4K videos at 60fps and now the primary camera can also record 4K videos at 120fps which is a great thing for slow-motion videos. The primary camera takes very good videos with excellent levels of detail and dynamic range with saturated colours and almost no noise in the background.
The ultrawide camera also does a good job in terms of videos but there is slight distortion around the edges which would not be noticed much. The telephoto camera provides excellent videos with sharper details and a wider dynamic range. Since it also has the OIS present, there is no noise present and on top of that, the colour saturation is natural.
The videos from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The skin tones look accurate with no overshapening in the background.
iPhone 16 Pro Max Battery Life:
Apple does not reveal the battery capacity usually for its iPhones. The iPhone 16 Pro Max houses a larger battery at 4685mAh, which is 240mAh more in capacity than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. In terms of daily normal usage which includes casual gaming, streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, attending calls very often, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for two days with some charge left which is really good.
With heavy usage which includes playing games like BGMI or Genshin Impact for 4-5 hours, rendering videos, running benchmarks, taking videos from the camera, etc. the smartphone easily lasted one and half days which is a good improvement over the iPhone 15 Pro Max. With the newer Apple A18 Pro chipset built on an efficient 3nm process, Apple is delivering one of the best battery life out there for its smartphone.
In terms of normal usage, the smartphone could achieve a standard screen-on time of around 8-9 hours which is far more than many other Android flagships out there. With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came to around 5.5-6 hours which is very good. In terms of charging, just like the iPhone 15 Pro Max, here there is support for 25W fast wired charging and there is also 25W fast wireless charging when using the new MagSafe charger.
However, here also Apple does not provide a dedicated charger inside the box and you need to separately buy the 20W fast charger using that charger, the smartphone takes around 0-55 per cent within 30 minutes whereas a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent takes around 1 hour 40 minutes which is very much time consuming according to today's standards where we have smartphones that support 100/120W fast charging.
There is also support for 15W wireless charging by using any standard Qi2 wireless charger which takes the smartphone close to 2 hours and slightly more. There is also support for 4.5W reverse wireless charging using which you can charge other smartphones supporting that feature by placing them on the back of the smartphone.
iPhone 16 Pro Max Audio Quality:
The iPhone 16 Pro Max sports a dual stereo speaker setup where the earpiece and the speaker grille besides the USB Type-C port together produce a stereo effect with great bass and treble and add to that the sound is adequately louder and clearer.
Verdict:
The iPhone 16 Pro Max does not seem to be a large upgrade over the iPhone 15 Pro Max but still, it seems to be a good upgrade when it comes to the chipset, battery life, a slightly newer ultrawide camera, and some other features like a Camera Control Key which may or may not suite all people out there. On top of that biggest improvement over the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the overheating issue which is not there.
Other than these, the iPhone 16 Pro Max proves to be a solid flagship smartphone which brings the best industrial design with its titanium frame and Ceramic Shield for protection. The display is larger and along with stereo speakers provides a great experience in terms of multi-media consumption, the chipset is very powerful and great for gaming.
The cameras are very good both in terms of photos and videos and the battery life is impeccable as it provides a solid battery life. However, there are a few areas where the iPhone 16 Pro Max could have been better. The Camera Control Key is a newer addition for camera functionalities but at times it feels gimmicky to use as the finger accidentally gets pressed on the key and it is placed way at the bottom.
The ultrawide camera is an upgrade but still in terms of low-light photography and videos there is a lot of improvement needed. The battery life is excellent but the charging speeds are still slower at 25W which is slightly disappointing as competitors or smartphones priced lower than the iPhone 16 Pro Max provide much faster charging speeds.
The Apple AI features are also right now not present on the smartphone which will trickle later this year to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. So other than these few areas of nitpicking, the iPhone 16 Pro Max still proves to be a solid buy in the global flagship market and since it is an Apple product it definitely makes a statement for itself in the market.
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