Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max review: more about than not

The iPhone 11 Pro is the first and probably the last of its kind. This is the first professional iPhone model to enter the ranks of the iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro. IPhone for those for whom a smartphone is a tool. IPhone for those who want to dig a little deeper for maximum features. This is the best iPhone Apple has to offer, right?

Rating

pros

Cons

Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max release date and price

iPhone 11 Pro Max already available in stores. At least $ 1099 / £ 1140 is not exactly cheap - there is only 64 GB of memory for this price. For 256 GB, you need $ 1249 / £ 1299. A true 512GB Pro version costs $ 1449 / £ 1499. Apple also offers an exchange program.

More than just an old design

The iPhone 11 Pro is probably the last iPhone of this generation of design, but it's more than just an old model. This is the iPhone that Apple has developed based on the knowledge gained on the iPhone X and iPhone XS, and basically all previous generations of the iPhone.

Apple has followed this strategy since the first generation iPhone, but has now expanded the model for updating the so-called S-Class models from two to at least three generations of devices. Instead of spending resources on development every year on a basic redesign of the building, every few years you focus more on a new look, then build it for several generations, and then move on to further development and improvement of internal values.

Perhaps the iPhone 11 Pro at first glance looks like a boring update. But in addition to the third camera on the rear panel, Apple’s latest top model carries many more fundamental innovations that will not only accompany us for several generations, but will also become the standard in the entire industry.

Yes, the notch on the screen is still there and still large. The display frames also have not changed. Well, if you look very carefully, the frames will become even a few millimeters wider. In fact, the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max have grown in all dimensions by a few millimeters compared to their direct predecessors.

The back of the new Pro models is now equipped with a frosted glass consisting of “the toughest glass in the smartphone,” according to Apple, developed in collaboration with Corning, the company behind Gorilla Glass. This new glass looks pleasant and high-quality, looks subjectively good and objectively scratch resistant. It is also remarkably fingerprint resistant.

Apple offers Pro models in four colors: gold, silver, space gray and the new Night Green. The last shade has something from a hunter and resembles British wax jackets. Reserved noble.

The new triple camera system is built into the new rear of the glass case, and the square area around it is not the case, but part of the same glass, which has only a different finish. Yes, the cameras stick out a little, at least a hair's breadth. Personally, I find the triple camera design appealing. Judging by the comments, not everyone sees this. Even my colleague who recalls his favorite induction cooker when he sees a camera system. It reminds me of the lens revolver of old film cameras from the early days of television. Obviously, Apple does not want to hide the cameras at all, but allocates them in accordance with their performance. Tastes are different.

But the design not only describes how something looks, it also describes how something works.

One of the biggest design flaws of the iPhone 11 Pro and Max does not affect the appearance, but actually the function. The first iPhone is specially equipped for professionals with a USB 2.0 Lightning port. Every other Pro device in the Apple portfolio, including iPad Pro, has a USB-C port that is at least compatible with USB 3.0.

This means that if you want to drag and drop all photos and videos, you will shoot losslessly from impressive gigabytes of iPhone 11 Pro cameras locally from iPhone, for example, to a computer, you either have to go through the Airdrop wireless route or squeeze everything through USB 2.0 cable Fortunately, Airdrop is now a useful feature, but it is also not always available as an option.

And let's be honest, most of those who choose the iPhone 11 Pro and put so much money on the table are the so-called “pros” and want and will take with them gigabytes of photos and videos. I could have lost sight of this on a regular iPhone 11, but not on this model. As much of the courage Apple has shown in spreading USB Type-C, especially with its MacBook models that only have USB-C ports, Apple's commitment to USB 2.0 Lightning is incomprehensible, especially with this iPhone model.

Also worth mentioning is the certification of IP68 Pro models. Unlike standard water resistance up to two meters, Apple promises from four meters to 30 minutes. Our device survived several splashes and dives, as you will see in our separate review of the iPhone 11 Pro camera.

The best display for smartphones at the moment

While we're on the subject of fairness, we can't test the displays better than the experts at DisplayMate. According to their analysis, the Super Retina XDR display of the iPhone 11 Pro (Max) is by far the best display in a smartphone. Unsurprisingly, Apple displays have been considered the best in the industry for years.

The Super Retina XDR display reaches DisplayMate's highest A + rating to date, partly due to accurate factory calibration. It reaches a typical brightness of 800 nits and a maximum brightness of 1200 nits. This makes the display about 50% brighter than most other displays of modern flagship smartphones.

This is clearly visible when using the iPhone 11 Pro outdoors, in direct sunlight and in bright conditions in general. In addition, this OLED panel offers an impressive contrast ratio of 2: 000 combined with absolute color accuracy, support for HDR000 and Dolby Vision.

3D Touch technology, Apple's pressure-sensitive display technology, is no longer part of the design. It is replaced by Haptic Touch, a combination of the Taptic Engine (integrated linear drive) and software. It is assumed that this combination largely imitates the user’s work with 3D Touch without the necessary equipment, but, unfortunately, not quite so. I enjoyed using 3D Touch, especially for the keyboard trackpad function for moving the cursor. The lack of 3D touch equipment also created space for a larger battery. You win, you lose.

The resolution, screen size and pixel density of 458 dots per inch, compared with previous models, have not changed. Consequently, a 5,8-inch OLED with a resolution of 1125 × 2436 pixels for the iPhone 11 Pro and a 6,5-inch OLED display with 1242 × 2688 pixels for the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Each with True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts the white level to suit the ambient light and the expanded color space.

I'm not really complaining about this display, except maybe the camera cutout still claims to be a piece of this great screen for myself.

Face ID unlocks faster

Despite the fact that Apple Face ID does not want to deceive someone, it is still the standard of secure mobile face recognition. Many manufacturers offer similar solutions on their smartphones, but only a few do their best to make face recognition as safe, reliable, and easy to use as Face ID.

Advanced touch technology in the iPhone 11 Pro and Max models is designed to accelerate unlocking face scans by 30%. In everyday life, the procedure feels a little faster. Where the improvement is more noticeable, it is with extended scanning angles. This does not necessarily mean, as originally intended, the tilt of the device relative to the face, but rather rotation. In other words, you no longer need to align the front of the device accurately and parallel to the face to successfully unlock the iPhone.

iOS 13 brings gloomy fashion and more privacy

Apple's official PDF document with all the new features in iOS 13 includes 28 A4 pages, and even so, it's not very detailed. Therefore, we will fly only over the most important new features here:

iOS 13 comes with a system-wide dark mode, it can be turned on or off, or automatic according to the time of day. It also includes many third-party applications that easily connect to the system in dark mode. One dark mode switch for everything.

The official camera and photo apps in iOS 13 have been revised to reflect the new camera features. The new application automatically processes all photo and video materials and, thanks to the Neural Engine, sorts it, groups by events.

With the new Apple Sign In privacy protection feature, Apple competes with Google and Facebook, which allow its users to log in to other services with one click for many years. However, Apple’s partner relies entirely on privacy, disguises the user's email address, and aims to complicate the overall tracking of ads and social networks, while facilitating registration in online services and applications. In general, Apple's analytic companies, such as Google, Facebook and other trackers, should not be satisfied with this advantage.

Siri has also been improved. The voice of Apple's voice assistants now sounds a little more natural. It also now offers the best proactive offers for content and applications. Siri also gets even better with the Apple Shortcuts Automation app. Not quite a Siri function, but still it is a bit similar - the new voice control in iOS 13. This function is hidden under the operating assistant, from which all iOS, including almost all third-party applications, can be controlled exclusively by voice.

A13 Bionic succeeds

The iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max run on Apple's latest A13 Bionic internal chip. Its 6-core processor consists of two high-performance cores with a maximum clock frequency of 2,66 GHz and four energy-saving cores. Apple internally refers to the former as Lightning and the latter as Thunder.

So if someone asks you what technologies the new iPhone has, you can seriously say “thunder and lightning.”

The quad-core chip, also developed by Apple, takes care of graphic performance. Apple has also improved its Neural Engine in the A13, according to its own statement. This applies to an eight-core chip with an artificial neural network or artificial intelligence, if you want. It is used throughout the system, mostly intentionally unnoticed, but is also used, for example, to analyze photographs and videos in real time, including features such as HDR and scene recognition.

Following its predecessor, A12, A13 is the second chipset developed by Apple to be manufactured by TSMC using a 7-nanometer process. According to Apple, the A13 Bionic offers 20 percent more performance than the A12, but it consumes about 30-40 percent less power. The same goes for the GPU.

In everyday life, this means shorter loading and rendering times. There are only a few scenarios in which you can really make the most of the A13. Performance potential is usually napping. During my tests, I never had the feeling that the performance was insufficient or that the iPhone 11 Pro Max was slowing down in what I wanted to do with it.

The actual amount of memory used is still a mystery. Confirmed four gigabytes, another two gigabytes should be hidden somewhere, according to the development environment of Apple Xcode, and be exclusively accessible to the camera system. iFixit could not find it in dismantling.

iPhone and iPad, as a rule, are less demanding on RAM than Android devices, and can also cope with low costs, so possible comparisons are not easy.

The audio system is better than expected

The sound speaker is recessed into the notch, and the other is next to the Lightning port. This year's novelty is an audio virtualizer for an “immersive experience” that Apple calls “Spatial Audio”. Stereo speakers also officially support Dolby Atmos.

I find myself smiling when someone connects two small speakers for a smartphone with Dolby Atmos.
However, they sound surprisingly good for who they are. One evening, I watched the entire Martian movie in the Super-Duper-Dolby-Atmos-HDR-iTunes-Extra version on the iPhone 11 Pro Max without headphones, and it was better than expected.

Very nice camera

We have dedicated our own extensive camera test to the new iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max cameras. Scope is beyond the scope of this review. In short, they are very good.

More battery than you think

As reviewers, we do not try to be like fans, even if we love technology, but we must seriously and objectively judge the corresponding product and allow informed opinions. But sometimes you just have to and can only name things by name and say it as it is.
The battery life of the iPhone 11 Pro Max is just fantastic.

As part of the camera test, I recorded several gigabytes of photos and videos on separate days, edited these videos on the iPhone 11 Pro, edited photos, constantly synchronized all recordings and, first of all, via LTE, in iCloud and at the same time in Google Photos, streaming YouTube video and music and everything else you can do.

Since I have an unlimited LTE contract, I usually include all background processes and updates for the mobile Internet. Since the beginning of my iPhone 11 Pro test, about a week and a half ago, I have accumulated over 77 GB of mobile data transfer. Just to present the results in perspective.

More than eight and a half hours of operation with the screen turned on without the power saving mode using almost exclusively LTE are not exceptional when using the iPhone 11 Pro Max intensively. From time to time, it was very difficult for me to put the iPhone 11 Pro Max battery on its knees during the day so that I could check the quick charge function.

With a relatively normal, everyday and conservative behavior, including the power saving mode, you can easily do without a charger for two days, despite the much more powerful Apple A13 Bionic and the brightest display of the smartphone at the moment.

The modems needed for the upcoming 5G mobile radio standard are, at least at the moment, still extremely demanding on power consumption, so at present they can only be found in the corresponding large expensive flagship smartphones equipped with huge batteries. But Apple seems to be gearing up for 5G consuming power in future iPhones when it comes to power management.

Speaking of fast charging, Apple first included an 18-watt USB-C charger and a fast-charging cable from USB-C to Lightning in the Pro model. With this combination, the iPhone 11 Pro can charge up to 50 percent in half an hour, the iPhone 11 Pro Max takes almost five minutes longer, that is, from 35 minutes to 50 percent. These values ​​were also achieved in our test with the Max model.

However, starting at 50 percent, things are going much slower, probably in order to preserve the battery and increase its service life. After one hour, the charge can range from 78 to 80 percent, depending on general conditions. A full charge from 0 to 100 percent takes about two hours.

We also checked whether charging with Apple’s optional 30-watt USB-C power supply would be faster, but it’s not. All current iPhones can be charged wirelessly, although not as fast as some competing smartphones.

Technical specifications Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max

Real Pro Model

At a time when all manufacturers believe that they simply use the term “Pro,” the iPhone 11 Pro (Max) is one of the few that truly deserves a name suffix. The camera system is the best you can find on a smartphone.

The quality of photos and videos in some situations resembles the quality of mid-level mirrorless cameras, not to mention the greater versatility of the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

The Super Retina XDR display is a notorious landmark, despite the fact that the notch remains unchanged. The battery life is simply impressive. And the A13 Bionic has enough power for everything you want to do with the iPhone 11 Pro (Max) now and in three years.

Less promising is the Lightning connection with its USB 2.0 transfer rate. You don’t really like it now, not to mention three years. Even if next year the iPhone is likely to switch to USB-C, Apple could have installed at least Lightning with USB 3.0 with this first iPhone Pro, as it was with the first iPad Pro of that time.

In addition, the iPhone 11 Pro (Max) is a reliable device for demanding users. We have seen the design for several years, and the fact that it is copied by half of the industry does not help much. But the latest iPhone combines everything that Apple has learned over the past decade, and combines it with the latest technology.