Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max Review

The iPhone 17 Pro Max is the biggest of Apple's September 2025 phones, and among the best selling phones in the world: Counterpoint counted it in the top three of the first quarter of 2026, behind the iPhone 17. It is also the one that changed the most. The titanium frame is gone for an aluminum unibody with a plateau across the top of the back for the cameras, which keeps the weight down and, with a new vapor chamber, is meant to hold performance longer under load.

Inside is the A19 Pro with 12GB of memory, behind a 6.9 inch ProMotion OLED rated to 3,000 nits with an anti-reflective Ceramic Shield 2 front. Storage starts at 256GB and for the first time reaches 2TB, and the price stayed at $1,199.

The cameras are three 48MP units: a main sensor, an ultrawide, and a new 4x telephoto at 100mm that crops cleanly to 8x, with an 18MP Center Stage selfie camera on the front. Video is class leading, and photos are reliably excellent, though GSMArena still placed them behind the best Chinese flagships. The battery is the clearest gain. The 4,832mAh cell gives the longest endurance Apple has shipped, and the phone now charges to half in about 20 minutes on Apple's new 40W adapter, or at 25W over MagSafe.

The trade offs are real. The aluminum scuffs and scratches more easily than titanium did, the two-tone back divides people, the sustained performance gain from the vapor chamber is smaller than Apple implied, and iOS 26 arrived rough. GSMArena called it possibly Apple's strongest phone yet but probably not its most loved. Battery, camera, screen and performance are all A grades, reliability and the software are B, the design change is the only real innovation, and it is an A.