Turn it up to 11
Four cameras, brighter screen, better battery life... we test Apple’s new iPhone Pro Max
WHEN Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood on stage in San Francisco 12 years ago to reveal the first iPhone to the world, he wanted to talk about phone calls.
He even placed a call using the phone during the demo – dialling up the phone’s designer Jony Ive, who was in the audience.
Last week, when Tim Cook, the current Apple CEO, showed us the newest iPhone – the iPhone 11 – phone calls were not mentioned at all. Not once.
And now I’ve had one in my hands, I can see why. This is no longer a phone that can take photos. It’s a camera that can make calls. As well as many other things.
On test this week I had an iPhone Pro Max – the biggest and most expensive of the new phones.
It’s an improvement in almost all ways on the phone it replaces in the line-up, the XS Max.
CAMERAS
THE first ever iPhone had a 2MP camera that didn’t even take video.
Wind forward 12 years and we’re looking at a phone that features four cameras, each capable of capturing 12MP images and 4K video.
If everything else had improved as much in 12 years, we’d be living in that fabled sci-fi future with flying cars and instant food-making machines by now.
On the back there are three cameras. One has a normal wide lens, another a telephoto lens (as found on previous iPhone X models), while the third has a new super-wide lens.
I’ve long believed smartphone cameras would hit a wall that bars against further improvement, just because they’re so small and you can’t beat the laws of physics.
The cameras on the iPhone 11 show that belief is a failure of imagination, because these cameras are worthy of the Pro name they sport.
And the laws of physics that prevent small cameras from taking the kind of images you can get from a “proper camera” are beaten by a combination of outstanding physical engineering and software.
For example, as you zoom in and out using the camera app, the software switches between the three lenses, but you can barely tell when that happens – it feels like a zoom lens on a traditional camera.
Oh, and the photos it takes are of stellar quality.
The camera on the front has been upgraded to a 12MP unit, so your selfies will look better than ever.
And because of the extra horsepower the phone has, it can capture two streams of 4K video at the same time – an update to the third-party video camera app Filmic Pro will take advantage of this when it comes out later this year. With that you’ll be able to capture video from the front and back cameras at the same time…
SCREEN
THERE’S a new screen on the 11 Pro and Pro Max that is so good it needs a new and much longer name than any screen has ever had before – say hello to the Super Retina XDR display.
It’s both brighter and has a higher resolution than previous screens, meaning it’s viewable in bright sunlight. If you’re watching HDR10 video or looking at HDR (high dynamic range) photos, it’ll go even brighter.
Despite all this, Apple says the new screen is 15% more power efficient, which helps with the longer battery life…
BATTERY
MY first day with the 11 Pro Max, when by all accounts I must have been using it more than normal, saw me run the battery down from 100% to around 42%. That should be all you need to know about the battery in this beast.
I’m not saying you’ll get the same mileage, it’ll depend on what you do.
But there is no doubt that Apple isn’t joking when it says this phone will get five hours more battery life on average than its predecessor.
OTHER STUFF
THE phone may look similar, aside from the camera array on the back, but it’s all new inside and there’s little Apple hasn’t improved – another example, this phone is now waterproof in up to four meters of water for up to 30 minutes. Two meters deeper than you could take the XS Max.
The glass on the front and back has been toughened up, too. So it’s less likely to shatter of you drop it (although that’s not something I would recommend you test).
The new version of iOS that runs on this phone, iOS 13, brings lots of improvements. The camera app introduces an automatic Night Mode for taking images in very low light, which is like magic. The Photos app brings a new curated section of your best images and new and comprehensive editing tools that can now also be used on video.
I have only touched on the extra power this phone has, despite the longer battery life. The A13 Bionic chip inside is Apple’s fastest yet, which makes all the clever stuff like machine learning and all that photo trickery possible in the blink of an eye.
This phone is expensive – the 11 Pro Max with a 6.5in screen starts at £1,149, dropping to £1,049 if you go for the 11 Pro which has a 5.8in screen.
The iPhone 11, which has a 6.1in screen is the iPhone most people will go for this year. It starts at £729 and for that you get almost everything you get with the Pro models.
The only material differences are that the screen is not as good (though still great), and it lacks the telephoto camera on the back.
Any way you slice it, the iPhone 11 is the bargain of the bunch, although those who want the best will still have the Pro models on their wish list.