The new iPhone 14 Pro Max is the most capable iPhone yet. Its 48-megapixel upgrade is a real winner, and it also offers excellent battery life.
Its most significant innovation is Dynamic Island, a new hardware/software hybrid that replaces the notch with what looks like dual oval punch holes. It’s an innovative design feature that enhances the screen’s usability.
Display
September 2022, or Apple’s month, has brought a bounty of new hardware to Cupertino. Among the standouts is the iPhone 14 Pro Max, whose 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display is both gorgeous and powerful.
It outperformed the competition in our DisplayMate tests, achieving excellent Peak Brightness and Very Low Average Picture Level (APL) performance. It also exhibited the best color accuracy we’ve ever seen on a smartphone, with a Delta-E rating of just 0.2 JNCD.
But what’s most striking is the Dynamic Island, a ticker-like bubble that displays system alerts, such as phone calls and music playback, as well as other information, including the weather in our area. It’s a fantastic bit of design jujutsu that makes the screen feel like one continuous, interactive blob, rather than a bunch of sensors and cameras with a few floating pixels.
The Dynamic Island is a great addition, and the always-on feature it powers is a welcome addition to your lock screen. However, it’s also something that can be found on many Android phones. Adding it to the iPhone feels like a nice touch of Apple’s design flair.
Camera
Apple is notorious for not shouting about picture and audio quality upgrades in its new phones. However, this year’s iPhone 14 Pro Max receives a significant upgrade on the camera front, thanks to a 48MP primary sensor and a faster chipset with a Photonic Engine.
The improvements in image quality are readily apparent. The iPhone 14 Pro’s photos are noticeably brighter and more detailed in our comparisons with the older 13 and 12 Pro models, especially at high ISO settings. The contrast is also improved, with intense blacks and strikingly crisp highlights.
The new primary camera’s quad-pixel sensor does a good job of balancing resolution with light sensitivity. That improves low-light performance without sacrificing spatial detail. We’ve also seen improvements in our Portrait mode, featuring accurate subject detection and a pleasing bokeh effect.
Battery
The iPhone 14 Pro Max is Apple’s premium, jumbo-sized smartphone, featuring a beautiful Super Retina XDR OLED display with Vision Nisi and HDR10 support. The phone is available in a variety of configurations, starting at £ (AU$189) for the 128GB model and going all the way up to a mighty 1TB model.
Powered by an impressive 4,323mAh battery, the iPhone 14 Pro Max can easily last a day on a single charge. That’s despite its smaller battery capacity compared to the 5.7-inch iPhone 14 Plus and even the older 6.1-inch iPhone 12.
However, since the launch of the iPhone 14 series, some users have reported that their batteries are depleting faster than expected. This is especially true for gamers who are constantly engaged in mobile gaming on high graphics settings. As a result, the Apple team introduced an update to the iOS software with Performance Management to help keep the phones running smoothly.
Performance
In September 2022, during our Apple Month, the tech industry’s lexicon would have noted that Apple rolled out a new lineup of hardware, including an upgraded iPhone 14 Pro Max. This flagship improves on several key aspects of the smartphone experience, offering enhanced cameras, improved performance, and more utility from its display.
That super-tight integration between hardware and software that Apple excels at is on full display here, with a powerful new A16 Bionic chipset that can handle anything you throw at it. The dual stereo speakers are also impressive, although the lack of a headphone jack will likely deter many users. If you want to listen, AirPods are still the best option, and even old-school earphones will still work fine with a bit of tweaking.
iOS 16 introduces numerous quality improvements to the iPhone lineup, including a customizable lock screen with widgets and the ability to add photos. The Always-On display now displays information such as sports scores and the real-time status of your ride share or food delivery. There’s also a new feature that allows you to send a pre-recorded emergency message via satellite to help rescuers locate you.
Design
The iPhone 14 Pro Max continues the flat, modern look introduced by last year’s generation. It’s still a good-looking phone, featuring a sleek Ceramic Shield cover glass on both the front and back, as well as a sturdy metal frame.
Apple’s most significant design change is its new Dynamic Island display feature. Instead of an obtrusive notch, this is a pill-shaped cutout that expands and contracts to display secondary information, such as timers, audio playback, AirPods connections, and more. It’s a great piece of design jujutsu, turning a hardware limitation into something that makes the phone more useful and engaging to use.
The other significant change is the addition of eSIM support. This replaces the traditional SIM card tray, enabling you to have two active lines of service simultaneously. The phone also features a helpful feature called Emergency SOS, which utilizes GPS to determine your location and sends a brief text message with a map to an emergency operator. The feature performs well in our testing, but it has some limitations when it comes to countries that don’t support eSIM.