Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max vs iPhone 15 Pro Max: Save your money!

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is finally here.

The new model doesn't score that many upgrades in comparison with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but all the new features are seemingly enough to have it crowned as the most advanced iPhone out there currently, as usual. Scoring some pro upgrades aimed at professionals, the gap between the regular iPhones and their Pro brethren has never been smaller. 

There's a faster new chip, a new ultra-wide camera, a larger display with the thinnest bezels we've seen on an iPhone, and a whole new Camera Control button that will please the shutterbugs. Add in a larger battery and greatly improved video-recording capabilities, and you get a pretty solid round of upgrades that are coming to the one iPhone Apple really wants to sell you!

How will the iPhone 16 Pro Max measure up to its predecessor, what's changing, and what's staying the same? Is it snatching that coveted best iPhone "award" on day one, or are the upgrades simply not sufficient?  

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The iPhone 16 Pro Max inherits the same design language as the iPhone 15 Pro Max, employing the same titanium frame with a completely flat screen. There's an improved new Ceramic Shield at the front, which is twice as tough as the regular Ceramic Shield up front, apparently. 

The major differences between the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the iPhone 15 Pro Max are size-related. The new model's screen grows to 6.9 inches across, a significant bump over the iPhone 15 Pro Max's 6.7-inch display. Apple has achieved this important display increase by simultaneously making the device bigger and slimming down the bezels as well. 

The iPhone 16 Pro Max measures 163mm in height and 77.6mm in width, versus 159.9mm and 76.7mm for the iPhone 15 Pro Max, respectively. A small, but notable change, all things considered. 

The iPhone 15 Pro Max debuted with an Action Button instead of a mute switch and a USB Type-C port at the bottom, so those two features will be carrying over to the newer model as well. However, the iPhone 16 Pro Max keeps things fresh by scoring a new Camera Control button, which delivers a whole new way of interacting with your iPhone's camera. 

It's a fully capacitive button that resides on the right side of the device, below the power button. It allows users to quickly open the camera, start recording a video or take a photo, adjust the exposure, focal depth, or switch between the Photographic Styles.

The Camera Control button doesn't take an awful lot to get used to, you can get fully accustomed to it in a couple of minutes. One thing that doesn't really sit right is its not very ergonomic position. At least in my large palms, the Camera Control button happens to be a bit difficult to reach in both portrait and landscape orientation, which isn't helping with its use case.

You may happen to like it, I just don't feel comfortable using it. 

We have four color options on both the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the 15 Pro Max, but three of the four shades are slightly different, and the fourth model is a new color.

 

As mentioned, the iPhone 16 Pro Max comes along with a significantly larger display, measuring at 6.9 inches across. Apple has achieved that by employing a larger frame as well as thinner bezels. A 6.9-inch display will make the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the iPhone with the largest screen ever. 

Aside from the size bump, we don't really get any other major changes. The Liquid Retina XDR display with an OLED panel delivering superb colors, contrast, and good peak brightness (2,000 nits) is still here and is largely the same. The minimum brightness has been improved to a mere 1 nit, though.

The screen supports 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, which will be the fourth consecutive iPhone generation equipped with this tech; it makes scrolling through the interface and on-screen content way smoother.

How does the new phone's screen fare against the older one?

Well, we measured slightly lower peak brightness by a little, as well as the promises of a lower minimum brightness also stand. The display of the iPhone 16 Pro Max is warmer than the one on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but the rest of the color accuracy properties are mostly the same, so if you've seen an iPhone 15 Pro Max in person, then the iPhone 16 Pro Max's screen won't be much different. 

Display Measurements:

You may ask why our measurements show slightly over 1,000 nits for either iPhone, whereas Apple promises 2,000 nits. We measure a 100% APL (fully lit display showcasing a pure white image), whereas most manufacturers measure the brightness over a small portion of the screen, which enables the diodes of the OLED display to draw more power.

Both iPhones rely on Face ID for authentication and phone unlocking. 

The iPhone 16 Pro Max features the 3nm Apple A18 Pro chip, a tiny but important step over the 3nm Apple A17 Pro inside the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The new chip features dual performance and quad efficiency cores, as well as a greatly improved hexacore GPU and a new neural engine unit for enhanced on-device Apple Intelligence processing. 

More importantly, Apple has improved the inner design of the phone, delivering more efficient thermal management, which should improve the efficiency and minimize the risk of overheating during intense tasks. 

As with every annual Apple chipset upgrade, we get a palpable bump in both the single- and multi-core Geekbench 6 tests. The same applies to our graphics-heavy 3DMark Extreme, which clock in a slight bump in performance in favor of the newer model, as is normal. 

The iPhone 16 Pro Max also supports Wi-Fi 7, which theoretically delivers 4X the data throughput speeds of the Wi-Fi 6E on board the iPhone 15 Pro Max. There is a new 5G modem in the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X75 5G, which will consume 20% less energy. 

The iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with iOS 18 out of the box. 

Customization in iOS 18 is enhanced with freely movable icons, a multi-paged Control Center, and more flexible dark mode options. Accessibility features are expanded with innovations like Vocal Shortcuts, Eye Tracking, and Music Haptics, which cater to a broader range of users. Some core apps, like Photos, have scored controversial overhauls, which haven't really been welcomed by most users. 

However, the big deal with iOS 18 has been Apple Intelligence, a robust AI framework that significantly enhances Siri’s capabilities and integrates various AI-driven features. Most of the AI processing occurs on-device, but complex tasks can leverage Apple’s Silicon-powered cloud servers.

The Messages app benefits from AI-generated quick replies, emoji creation, and message summarization, making conversations more efficient. The Photos app introduces AI-powered object removal and memory creation, allowing users to craft personalized media. Additionally, iOS 18 supports RCS messaging for a smoother experience between iOS and Android devices.

You also get notifications and email summary, Writing Tools that let you proofread and rewrite text in different styles, Photo Removal tool in Photos that lets you edit out unwanted objects, generative images and emoji (dubbed Genmoji), custom memory movies, and so on. 

And, with the help of the new Camera Control button, the iPhone 16 Pro Max will allow you to make use of Visual Intelligence. This one will let you hit the Camera Control button and have the phone identify landmarks, venues, or businesses for you.

Siri is also getting overhauled: it is about to become much more capable in early 2025. App Intents will Siri to execute multi-step actions within apps, such as finding and sharing specific photos. Safari is upgraded with Intelligent Search for content summarization and Distractions Control to hide webpage elements.

The only problem is that iOS 18 doesn't come with any Apple Intelligence features just yet. Apple will release those in a staggered fashion, with some coming in iOS 18.1 this October, while others arriving later in 2024 and early in 2025. 

Some other new features that have arrived on the iPhone 16 Pro Max are the studio-quality four-mic array, which reportedly delivers excellent audio quality and has native wind noise reduction, as well as an Audio Mix feature, which lets you select an audio mix when you're recording video. 

Camera

New ultra-wide incoming and Camera Control

Last year, the iPhone 15 Pro Max delivered a host of important camera features, chief among which is the new 120mm telephoto lens that delivers a 5.0x optical zoom to the iPhone camera. A year ago, the main camera of the iPhone Pro Max got upgraded to 48MP. 

Well, this year, Apple improves the camera setup by employing a new 48MP ultra-wide camera. We expect greater detail capture, as well as better image quality in low-light conditions, as the camera will be able to combine four sensor pixels into one for increased image sensitivity. 

More importantly, however, we get vastly enhanced video-recording features. Chief among these is the 4K@120fps video-recording option, which unlocks a whole new layer of creative control on the iPhone, allowing for creative slo-mo and cinematic scene capture. All of this is available straight on the device, in the Photos app, so you won't have to export your clips to a more capable device. 

The iPhone 16 Pro Max also introduces new Photographic Styles, which are more customizable than the first generation of the native color-grading filters for the iPhone camera, introduced back on the iPhone 13 series. These act as advanced filters of sorts, allowing to tinker with the vibrancy and tone of your photos. 

Overall, the iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 15 Pro Max are neck-in-neck. As per the PhoneArena Camera Score test, the older iPhone 15 Pro Max actually emerges victorious. The reason for that is mainly due to the more consistent video quality of the older phone. In terms of regular photos, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a slight advantage in the ultra-wide and selfie tests, while the regular camera and the zoom score.

PhoneArena Camera Score:

We struggle to find any notable difference between the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Detail, colors, exposure, and overall dynamics look pretty similar in our test samples. This means that if you aren't concerned with all the new Photographic Styles, by default the iPhone 16 Pro Max doesn't deliver significantly better image quality than its predecessor. That's great news for iPhone 15 Pro Max users.

At lower light, the same is true once again. We get pretty similar dynamics and detail, with decent information captured both in the lighter and darker areas of the scene. 

At 5X zoom, which is native for both the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, both phones exhibit similar amounts of sharpness. There's some oversharpening, yes, but it's mostly bearable and doesn't take away from the mostly natural-looking detail. Colors are similar on both, slightly warmer on the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but with the arrival of enhanced Photographic Styles, do we need to talk about color any longer? After all, you can change everything with the flick of a button, literally. 

The same applies to the longer 10X photo sample. Decent sharpness, clean detail, minimal amounts of oversharpening.

The new 48MP ultra-wide delivers slightly more detailed images, with slightly better dynamics, just look at how more detailed the leaves of the trees are. The colors look slightly more vivid as well. All in all, while good, the new ultra-wide camera doesn't deliver anything groundbreaking over the iPhone 15 Pro Max. 

At night, the iPhone 16 Pro Max takes slightly warmer photos when many incandescent lights are involved in the mix.

In regular low-light conditions, we actually like how the iPhone 15 Pro Max performs: it delivers moodier photos with richer color and dynamics that are more suitable for a low-light photo. The iPhone 16 Pro Max appears as it's trying to turn the dusk into day, which isn't cool. 

 

The front-facing camera didn't score any major updates with the iPhone 16 Pro Max, so it's totally unsurprising that the selfies look mostly the same. Good detail, great colors, great selfies overall! 

There's a large 4,685mAh battery inside the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the largest one ever fitted on an iPhone. We can't complain: we love when companies overlook their innate desire to come up with super-thin devices and instead focus on better battery life. 

The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with a 4,422mAh battery, slightly smaller in comparison. Along with the less efficient chip in the iPhone 15 Pro Max, this doesn't really spell good things for the iPhone 15 Pro Max battery life. 

And that's precisely the case. 

As per our custom battery tests, the iPhone 16 Pro Max outperforms its predecessor by a fair margin. In the PhoneArena custom web browsing test, which emulates a regular web browsing workflow, the iPhone 16 Pro Max reaches a solid result of 22 hours and 39 minutes, beating the iPhone 15 Pro Max by a couple of hours. 

The same applies to our results in both our custom video and 3D gaming tests, both conducted at 60Hz and with the displays set at 200 nits. The iPhone 16 Pro Max beats is predecessor in both tests. Have a look at our test results right below. 

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

In terms of wired charging speeds, the situation is more convoluted. Officially, Apple says its iPhones charge at up to 20W. That's mostly bogus, as we've measured charging speeds around 26W during regular charging, and around 39W when heavily using the device during charging. This mostly falls in line with the rumors that Apple has outfitted its Pro models with 45W wired charging.

Does this matter, however? Well, it still takes an hour and 42 minutes to fully charge the iPhone 16 Pro Max, so probably not. A short 30-minute charge get you 57% of battery life, though, which is better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. 

The iPhone 16 Pro Max features dramatically faster MagSafe wireless charging:25W. That's a serious bump over the 15W that the MagSafe wireless charging inside the iPhone 15 Pro Max supports. The new phone also supports the new Qi2 standard.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max versus iPhone 15 Pro Max specs are available here, and we've summarized the essentials for you below. 

Well, it's mostly certain that it's unwise to upgrade to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. 

It's a phone that definitely delivers some improvements to performance and battery life, but the image quality is mostly the same, the display size increase isn't that game-changing, and Apple Intelligence is mostly a mirage still. Finally, the lauded new Camera Control button happens to be a not-so-ergonomic addition that feels weird to use. 

Of course, if you're a dedicated fan and upgrade every year, we can't stop you from getting the latest and greatest iPhone to date. 

But think hard if it's worth getting if the differences aren't that grand.