Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max vs. iPhone 15 Pro Max: Should you upgrade?

The iPhone just lately went by way of yet one more improve cycle at Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” occasion. This 12 months, the main target was extra on Apple Intelligence and fewer on {hardware} upgrades. However we do see sure new components on the Apple iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, particularly the brand new multifunctional Digicam Management button. There’s additionally a brand new and controversial Desert Titanium colour, as a substitute of the tranquil blue from final 12 months.

Apple doesn’t are likely to drop radical modifications with each iPhone technology, so the small-scale modifications have been already anticipated. That, nonetheless, doesn’t imply there aren’t any thrilling modifications in any respect. That’s why a lot of you might be tempted to check out the iPhone 16 Professional Max as a substitute of the older iPhone 15 Pro Max, particularly in case you’re coming from a a lot older technology.

However what about of us who’ve the final 12 months’s mannequin? The iPhone 15 Professional Max was the bestselling iPhone till June 2024. If you happen to’re among the many fortunate hundreds of thousands who purchased the iPhone 15 Professional Max, must you improve to the newer iPhone 16 Professional Max? Let’s reply that query!

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: specs

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: design

On the floor, you might not have the ability to determine many variations between the iPhone 16 Professional Max and the older 15 Professional Max. However there positive are some. For starters, the iPhone 16 Professional Max is marginally taller, wider, and consequently heavier than the final 12 months’s Professional Max. This permits the brand new mannequin to accommodate a brand new and expansive 6.9-inch OLED show — up from the 6.7 inches of final 12 months.

The general design of the iPhone 16 Professional Max stays largely unchanged, apart from the addition of a brand new multipurpose Digicam Management button. You possibly can merely faucet the button to launch the Digicam app, after which faucet once more to click on a photograph or tap-and-hold to start out recording video.

Like an precise digicam’s shutter button, the iPhone’s Digicam Management button permits for two-step clicks — backed by haptic suggestions — to allow you to accomplish a variety of capabilities equivalent to citing handbook controls or zoom ranges. As soon as any menu is activated, you too can slide over the button to navigate the menus or zoom in or out. Within the coming months, Apple will add extra performance, equivalent to a Google Lens-style visible search utilizing the Digicam Management button immediately.

Other than the brand new button, there are few different noticeable modifications, however those who stick out embody the brand new and smoother finishes on each the glass again and the titanium body. Though three of the 4 accessible colours have the identical names as final 12 months, there may be some visible distinction, with this 12 months’s fashions showing much less matte than final 12 months — at the least within the pictures. We can have a greater thought over the course of the subsequent few weeks as we assessment the cellphone.

Along with these outward modifications, Apple has now added 4 microphones to help you shoot extra spatially apt audio that can be utilized with AirPods, Imaginative and prescient Professional, or different sounds techniques able to encompass sound.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: show

The show, as famous above, is now greater than on final 12 months’s mannequin. At 6.9 inches, the show is even greater than that of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and might appear impractically giant for some individuals. If that doesn’t apply to you, you can be happy to see Apple chisel down the encircling bezels even additional. Which will permit for simpler gesture-based swiping throughout the interface and will look barely higher when each telephones are in contrast aspect by aspect. However in any other case, you most likely received’t discover.

The bigger dimension additionally ends in a better decision, however that’s many of the benefit you get right here over final 12 months’s mannequin. Not like different producers cashing in on the brightness bid, Apple isn’t excited by pushing ever-higher nits values. The iPhone 16 Professional Max nonetheless presents the identical 1,600 nits of typical brightness and a pair of,000 nits within the high-brightness mode. That’s to not say the iPhone 16 Professional Max’s show will appear uninteresting as compared, particularly since most different producers depend on jargon to state increased figures than what we’d expertise in actual life.

You get the purpose, although, and that’s, the iPhone 16 Professional Max show will get naked minimal enhancements during the last 12 months. The 120Hz dynamic refresh fee switching, due to ProMotion and LTPO tech, stays the identical, and so does the Dynamic Island up high.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: efficiency

Regardless of minimal modifications on the floor, there are substantial upgrades beneath the hood, primarily as Apple seems to be to ship ample energy for on-device AI functions. Apple’s new A18 Professional chip on the iPhone 16 Professional Max succeeds the A17 Professional from final 12 months. As a part of Apple’s second technology of 3nm iPhone chips, the A18 Professional is fabricated on TSMC’s N3E course of, leading to higher effectivity than the earlier technology.

For its CPU, the A18 Professional maintains a six-core design (two efficiency and 4 effectivity core) however the frequencies are anticipated to be bumped up. Whereas Apple doesn’t reveal the particular clock speeds, it claims a 15% efficiency increase over the A17 Professional. The CPU additionally has two devoted sectors or Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) items for higher efficiency in AI or machine studying duties, whereas low-level duties can run off it with out partaking the devoted neural engine.

Subsequent, the GPU on the A18 Professional additionally comes with the identical six-core design as final 12 months, however Apple claims the “desktop-class structure” permits 20% higher efficiency. The brand new chip additionally helps rendering of frames that’s twice as quick with {hardware} accelerated ray tracing.

The 16-core neural engine is able to as much as 35 tera operations per second (TOPS). Whereas Apple says it’s twice as quick because the “earlier technology,” it’s referring to the A16 and never the A17 Professional — suggesting there will not be a bodily enchancment.

What might contribute to raised AI efficiency is the brand new 17% sooner reminiscence on the iPhone 16 Professional Max. In addition to AI functions, the sooner RAM might additionally lead to an total enchancment in efficiency.

Whereas Apple Intelligence is a compelling cause to improve to the iPhone 16 Professional Max, know that the iPhone 15 Professional Max may even be able to all of the AI-related performance, and Apple hasn’t explicitly introduced plans to restrict something to the iPhone 16 Professional.

Moreover, there’s an upgraded passive cooling resolution contained in the iPhone 16 Professional Max. Contemplating the iPhone 15 Professional Max ran too hot initially — and the issue really hasn’t gone away completely — we hope the extra environment friendly structure and cooling upgrades will carry some respite. We shall be testing this side additional throughout our assessment.

When it comes to connectivity, the iPhone 16 Professional Max will get a brand new Snapdragon X75 modem, and you must anticipate sooner 5G speeds. It helps Wi-Fi 7, although help for the 6GHz band continues to be lacking. The iPhone 16 Professional Max additionally will get satellite tv for pc connectivity with help for emergency SOS, calling, messages, and Discover My through satellite tv for pc when a normal community isn’t accessible.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: battery and charging

Apple claims the iPhone 16 Professional brings a “large leap” in battery life. It doesn’t precisely reveal the scale of the battery pack on the brand new cellphone, however the claimed figures for video playback and video streaming are as much as 33 and 29 hours, respectively, from 29 and 25 hours on the iPhone 15 Professional Max, which had a 4,441mAh battery. We will’t say if the improved battery backup has to do with a extra environment friendly chip or a much bigger battery, however we’ll take a look at this quickly.

One factor to notice is that the iPhone 15 Professional Max has proven an unreliable pattern with its battery backup. On its finest days, the cellphone lasts solely as much as two days; on its worst, greater than half of the battery is depleted inside just a few hours of unplugging the charger.

The charging speeds have but to be examined as properly. Apple doesn’t make any claims about sooner charging speeds, however has amped up the MagSafe pace to 25 watts on the iPhone 16 Professional Max from 15W beforehand. For non-Apple or non-Apple-certified equipment, the iPhone 16 Professional Max will nonetheless be restricted to 15W charging with Qi2 chargers. That, sadly, additionally means you’ll have to purchase a complete new set of chargers to get the quickest speeds.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: cameras

The variations between the cameras on the iPhone 16 Professional Max and the 15 Professional Max are barely seen from the skin. However two of the three cameras have been upgraded. First, the 48MP main sensor from final 12 months has been swapped with a brand new “Fusion” digicam sensor. Though it nonetheless has a 48MP decision, Apple says the sensor now shoots sooner photographs.

Subsequent, the iPhone 16 Professional Max now comes with a 48MP ultrawide digicam as a substitute of the earlier 12MP. Apple says the sector of view is now wider, and you too can use this sensor to seize 48MP ProRAW pictures. In the meantime, the 5X periscopic telephoto and the 12MP selfie cameras stay unchanged from final 12 months.

The iPhone 16 Professional Max — alongside different iPhone 16 fashions — can seize spatial photographs with a 3rd dimension of depth to them, to allow them to be later seen on the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional. Beforehand, the iPhone 15 Professional fashions might solely report spatial movies — however not spatial photographs. Apple doesn’t say in case you can view these photographs on different digital actuality headsets, however we’ll discover out quickly.

The brand new main digicam and the improved picture sign processors on the A18 Professional may also permit 4K video recording at 120 frames per second (fps) with Dolby Imaginative and prescient, ProRes, and Log (the latter two require exterior storage). The video clips can be slowed all the way down to 24 fps for a cinematic slow-motion impact. Apple dietary supplements 120 fps video with 4 microphones. Along with capturing spatial audio, the mics additionally help you seize sounds or voices from totally different distances, and machine studying algorithms on the cellphone assist eradicate any undesirable background sounds, which might be particularly helpful whereas in postproduction.

Lastly, Apple has rebooted its Photographic Kinds, that are subtle lux filters. The types have been optimized to match colours to topics and offer you a two-axis slider to alter the depth of various dominant colours within the filters. You possibly can apply the filters in preview earlier than capturing the picture or tweak it at a later stage. It seems to be actually cool based mostly on the demo, and we will’t wait to strive it.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: software program and updates

The iPhone 16 Professional Max comes with iOS 18 preinstalled. The most recent model of the OS, which we’ve got skilled by way of Apple’s demo at its Worldwide Builders Convention (WWDC) earlier this 12 months after which by making an attempt the beta variations ourselves, has loads of promising new modifications. These embody, however are usually not restricted to, customization choices for app icons and components within the Management Middle, new Photographs and Digicam apps, and a bevy of intelligence options. Our devoted iOS 18 article covers these modifications in far more depth.

The iPhone 15 Professional Max is eligible to get iOS 18 when it releases later this month, in addition to all of the Apple Intelligence options — besides those who depend upon the Digicam Management button. We wouldn’t essentially anticipate any distinction in expertise on each the gadgets. The one profit with the iPhone 16 Professional Max can be an additional 12 months of software program help. However with Apple’s glorious monitor report of pushing software program updates out for over 5 years, with day one entry to all gadgets without delay, we wouldn’t essentially fear concerning the iPhone 15 Professional being omitted.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: worth and availability

The iPhone 16 Professional Max has a beginning worth of $1,199 for the 256GB unlocked variant. It will likely be up for preorder beginning September 13 and shall be accessible beginning September 20.

With the introduction of the brand new mannequin, the iPhone 15 Professional Max is not listed by Apple, although you might discover it being provided by third-party sellers like Amazon, Finest Purchase, Walmart, or sure carriers.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional Max vs. iPhone 15 Professional Max: Do you have to improve?

For years, Apple has progressively improved the Professional iPhone fashions little by little as a substitute of adjusting them drastically. This doesn’t instantly make the older iPhones redundant or give homeowners FOMO over the newest tech options. On the similar time, the sluggish progressions additionally make the newer iPhones simpler to improve to, even in case you’re doing it only a technology later. The iPhone 16 Professional Max, due to this fact, lacks any swooping modifications.

So the largest query is, do you have to improve from the iPhone 15 Professional Max to the brand new iPhone 16 Professional Max? The brief, easy, and apparent reply is “no.” The iPhone 15 Professional Max is almost as succesful as the brand new mannequin and can proceed to serve you properly for a number of years.

Nonetheless, there are many explanation why you must improve. First is the brand new Digicam Management button, which helps you grasp numerous facets of images and allows you to take the reins of handbook controls equivalent to publicity, ISO, or shutter pace. This might set off the return of horizontally shot pictures, one thing we’ve got been shedding with the arrival of vertical feeds on social media. The video controls equip you with talents that will assist enhance your filmmaking or encourage you to ditch your video cameras for a extra helpful iPhone 16 Professional Max. The brand new A18 Professional chip presents top-notch efficiency and will endure the evolving processing wants of on-device AI.

The final bit that might make the iPhone 16 Professional Max a pretty improve over the iPhone 15 Professional Max are the hefty trade-in advantages and preorder offers from Apple, which might knock a number of hundred {dollars} off the worth and make the brand new Professional Max far inexpensive than its daunting $1,200 price ticket.