It's been over two weeks since Apple started selling iPhones 18 ProSo it's been over two weeks since I've been testing iPhone 18 Pro Max. Compared to the previous generation, it's not as big a leap as it was with the iPhone 17 Pro Max compared to iPhonem 16 Pro Max, the new product still has a lot to offer. But this time, it's more for professionals than for regular users.
I will admit without hesitation that there are not that many new features. On the other hand, we all have to answer ourselves as to where we actually want to push the upgrades. In my opinion, he did Apple in the case of iPhone 18 Pro Max all logical decisions that fit the phone into the role of the best-selling iPhone to date and listened to many of its fans. All the news that is here is important and mainly concerns the following categories:
- Design improvements
- Improved performance, but we will only appreciate it over time
- Improving photography
- Proextending battery life on a single charge
A minor design change that everyone was complaining about last year (not me)
When I look at this year's line and compare it to last year's, my heart still cries out for that cosmic orange. It was and still is the perfect color for my eyes, which Apple It was particularly impressive, but also surprising, and has become iconic due to its new aluminum design. This year, it is followed by burgundy red, which is more elegant but not so flashy.
The most interesting thing about it is that it looks different under every light. The orange was still orange, but here you have a dark red in the shade, almost black in poor lighting conditions and radiant in direct sunlight. You can also notice that there are tiny glitters in the polish. It looks interestingly effective and unusual.
Gallery
But colors are just subjective. Some people like them, others don't, so maybe this year Apple He expanded the palette, so there are also neutral silver and black, which are complemented by glacier blue. I like the burgundy red, but there is one criticism: It really catches dirt and especially fingerprints. All dark colors do this, so one recommendation: If you don't like it, go for lighter shades.
But now for the design improvements. iPhone 18 Pro Max looks the same as iPhone 17 Pro MaxIt has almost the same chassis, so the advantage is that your old cases and covers will fit the new model (but be careful with the smaller display glass). Dynamic Island). The design change here was made with respect to the shade of the rear glass surface. Last year we had each of the three colored variaIt's not a clear distinction from the aluminum shade (which I honestly liked). I don't know if that was intentional, but many criticized it. Apple either listened to them or simply adjusted the colors to match them more. What else I find very interesting about the color is the almost black Camera Controller.
To make sure I don't owe you anything, the dimensions of the phone are 163,4 x 78 x 8,75. However, the weight has increased between generations, from 231 g to 248 g. This is a relatively large difference, which is probably due to the larger battery and cooling. iPhone 17 Pro Max was a brick and iPhone 18 Pro Max It's the same. But I find it interesting that even though I was afraid of this increase, it doesn't actually limit me in any way during those 14 days. ProI take it that yes, it is the heaviest regular phone on the market, but it balances that out with its capabilities and features.onedurability. And that's actually what I want from the best iPhone, so I can't complain about that. I'll also add that when it comes to durability, everything has remained the same and is still very good: On the front is Ceramic Shield 2, Ceramic Shield on the back and water resistance is 30 minutes at a depth of 6m.
Gallery
Dynamic Island is smaller and better
Practically immediately after the introduction of the element Dynamic Island v iPhonech 14 Pro there was talk of shrinking it. So that's only now happening and it's actually the only change with respect to the display, which remains the Super specification Retina 6,9" XDR with technology ProMotion with an adaptive refresh rate of 120 Hz. Its resolution is 2868 × 1320 at 460 pixels per inch, outdoor peak brightness can reach 3,000 nits, miniThe minimum brightness is 1 nit. It also retains anti-reflection, although it is Apple It doesn't speak and there's practically nothing to complain about with the display. It's a top-of-the-market device that, with its size, provides you with a proper view and room for your fingers.
Gallery
If you thought that Dynamic Island disappears, it hasn't disappeared. It's still there, it's just smaller, and what I measured with a caliper, exactly 4 mm. On the iPhone 17 Pro Max measures 2 cm, on iPhone 18 Pro Max It is 1,6 cm, and is set back 3 mm from the top edge. The company achieved the reduction by moving certain sensors Face ID below the display, which is located in the upper left corner. And Applu it worked incredibly well. If you have the display turned off and you turn it under a certain angle of light, you can see the wheel there, but if you use the phone in any way, you have no idea about it. It doesn't bother you at all, you won't notice it with the naked eye.
Reduced Dynamic Island is definitely nice not only because it is less distracting when watching videos or playing games, but it also fits more information, now from up to three applications. Android users will certainly not forgive the mockery that they only have a bullet hole, which hardly matters at all, but on the other hand they cannot rely on biometric face verification, so even though I have experience from both worlds, I still prefer the solution Applu and I am slightly disappointed that iPhone Duo it has a fingerprint reader in the button like iPads. So even though Apple He reduced this element, still not enough to make it unobtrusive on the closed display of his first puzzle, which is why he chose this compromise there.
The power that crushes the rest of the world
Every new Pro iPhone has been receiving the last few years as well Pro chip. Now we have the new 2nm A 20 chip Pro, which has not only a six-core CPU but also a seven-core GPU and a dual 16-core Neural Engine. Not to forget hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Apple It says it has an architecture inspired by the M-series chips that the company uses in computers and iPads. Personally, I would highlight the most interesting thing as the company says that the graphics performance here is 40 percent higher than the A19 chip for v iPhonech 17 Pro.
But something this powerful also needs to be properly cooled, so the evaporation chamber (next generation) has 3x the surface area, which is supposed to dissipate even more heat. It is made of materials with better thermal conductivity and contributes to the fact that you can play highly demanding games on the device for longer and run larger, more complex AI models. Sure, we in the EU are still somehow being ripped off in those, but you can tell just by the new AI features in the Photos app, which work faster.
Geekbench 7
Although I consider myself Pro users, that's why I also use Pro iPhone models since the iPhone 13 generation Pro Max, but the new product has such reserves that I am not able to bother to reach any of its limits right now. Whatever you imagine, it will be done immediately. No other can do it faster iPhone and I dare say that no other Android, although the comparison here is misleading because it is a different world.
During recovery iPhone 18 Pro Max of course it was slightly hot, it also heats up when you have long photo shootsance, so you click one photo after another without turning off the Camera app. It heats up even when recording 4K video for a long time. But subjectively it is a little less, or rather it takes longer to reach the temperature of previous generations. This heat is also not concentrated in just one point, where the chip is located, but thanks to the cooling it is evenly spread across the back of the phone. It also has an effect on games, where your fps will not start to decrease after a while, if you have them set to max.
I deliberately use the phone without a cover so that I can feel the heat, but I haven't reached a point where I'm limited by the heat in any way, either in terms of performance or in terms of feeling uncomfortable in my hand. Without further ado, it's easy to say that the A20 Pro chip is the best there is. iPhonech available and no matter how much you torment it, you won't hit its limits. And if you do, there's nothing on mobile that can handle it better anyway. Period.
It will last a little longer.
Looking back at the battery life of the iPhone 17 Pro Max, was unbeatable. Two days of my use without the need for charging. Almost unbelievable. What can I say iPhone 18 Pro Max? Thanks to a more efficient chip and a larger battery, the paper value of the endurance is even greater. Apple It says that for video it is 43 vs. 39 hours, for streaming it 38 vs. 35 hours. If I look at my current usage statistics, I am at seven charging cycles, after two weeks of using the phone. So the value is the same, but not very telling yet.
I'm quite bothered by the phone, trying it out, testing it, at the beginning I also refreshed it for half a day. So before I say that the battery life is the same, wait for a longer test. By the way, I have and will have a charging limit on 100 %, optimized charging off. However, in those 14 days I nesthello, to be able to drain the battery in a day. From what I remember, I had at least 43%.
Gallery
But the news didn't just come in terms of battery life, but also in charging. Thanks to 60W charging, you can charge the battery to 50% capacity in just 15 minutes. It's still true that the more charged the battery is, the slower the charging speed. But while wired charging has improved, wireless charging has gotten worse. However, this is due to the larger battery, which has 50% of its capacity, of course, placed a little higher. So to charge it to half its capacity wirelessly, you need a 35W adapter, not the 30W one, as was the case before.
Theoretically, one shouldn't have too many complaints about the battery life and charging itself, but there is one but. Apple gave the iPhone 18 Pro Max a giant battery, not only in capacity but also in physical dimensions. ProI have to mention that it could have been done with a little less. Samsung is already using silicon-carbon batteries, which have a higher density and therefore a higher capacity in a smaller body. If Apple If Apple had used this technology, the battery could have been significantly larger, or smaller, resulting in a smaller/thinner chassis and weight. So we're still left with the lithium-ion battery, which the company also used in the iPhone. DuoWe'll probably have to wait a while longer for the battery technology upgrade.
You might be interested in
U variaThe blinds moderate your enthusiasm
If you thought it was variathe shutter in iPhonech 18 Pro gamechanger, you need to temper your passions a bit. Yes, it's nice, but no, it's not something you can't live without and you have to throw your previous iPhones in the trash. Personally, I see the f/1,48 and f/4 values as the biggest plus, although iPhone On automatic mode, it tries to shoot at f/1,8 most of the time, in most cases when you have "ideal" light. Incidentally, this trio is completed by an aperture of f/2,8.
Spread the zoom
The widest aperture, which is f/1,48, is great for portraits without portrait mode, it's great for details where macro is still poor, and it's useful in night shots where there's little light. The narrowest aperture, which is f/4, is great for natural scenery in ideal lighting conditions and architecture where you don't need to use a telephoto lens or ultraThe result is ideal sharpness across the entire scene.
Differences in aperture settings
We first got to play with background blur on the iPhone 7 Plus, which was the first to offer Portrait mode. It's still there now, but it's still software-based. VariaThe variable aperture gives you the ability to play with hardware-based sharpness, and that's the main thing it brings. But thanks to the automatic, you don't have to play with anything if you don't want to.
Alone variaI don't want to drop the aperture in any way. It's an interesting technological advance, but you need to temper your enthusiasm. If you have a boring scene and you're snapping one photo after another, it won't improve the resulting images in any way, and you can stay with your current iPhone model with peace of mind. It will only be important to you when you have greater ambitions and at least a little creativity and time - the Camera app has added Pro functions that go hand in hand with manual aperture setting.
Telephoto lens and ultrawide-angle lens
Whatever, Camera is the best photo taking app in terms of intuitiveness, consistency, and speed. ProI'm glad I got into it. Apple from Pro options, not because I need to use them on a daily basis, but if you want them, you don't have tooneto solve which third-party application to launch. There is not only control of the aforementioned aperture in its four stages, but also manual focus, selection of exposure time, i.e. shutter speed, white balance and exposure. You can also turn on the histogram, but Zebra Stripes are missing. I devoted more attention to this whole thing in separate article.
Even according to the expert test in DXOMark je iPhone 18 Pro 2nd best camera phone on the market, and because it shares optics with iPhonem 18 Pro Max, which has a larger display and battery but an identical photo setup, this actually applies to it as well. Is it necessary to elaborate further? Even if you find some mistakes and imperfections in the photos, practically no other phone can do it better. I still enjoy using the absolutely amazing telephoto lens, I still enjoy the interesting perspective on it ultrawide-angle and I'm still glad that the entire trio has 48 MPx.
Gallery
But I would like to stop for a moment and look at the next generation of photographic styles. When I wrote about them article with introduction, I've really started to like them. I never used the previous generations much, I just tried them out and forgot they existed. The current version, especially the one with the film look that adds graininess in combination with the black and white finish, looks very interesting. I'll give them another try.ancI'll try them out in detail. But I still think it's a shame that you can't apply them until after the photo has been taken.
By the way, on the front we still have an 18MP selfie camera with centering of the frame, which Apple This year, he didn't touch it - at least with regard to the hardware, which is certainly not a problem. However, he worked on the software processing, especially for wide selfies, which have better details at the edges.
Camera specifications iPhone 18 Pro Max
- Main: 48 MPx, f/1,5-4,0, focal length 24 mm, 1/1.28″, 1.22µm, dual pixel PDAF, sensor-shift OIS (gen2)
- Telephoto lens: 48 MPx, f/2,8, focal length 100 mm, 1/2.55″, 0.7µm, PDAF, 3D sensor‑shift OIS, 4x optical zoom
- Ultrawide angle: 48 MPx, f/2,2, focal length 13 mm, field of view 120˚, 1/2.55″, 0.7µm, PDAF
- TOF 3D LiDAR scanner
- Front camera: 18 MPx multi-aspect, f/1,9, focal length 20 mm, PDAF
The complete package of the best
It is probably obvious that if you own iPhone 17 Pro Max, you have few reasons to switch to the new one. However, it should be added that iPhone 18 Pro Max It is not intended for owners of last year's TOP models. It is more for owners of iPhones 16 Pro Max, where it makes more sense and especially the iPhone 15 Pro Max and older ones, where the sum of technological progress is properly accumulated and the difference is immediately visible - in the case of the latter, even with regard to the display size.
Gallery
iPhone 18 Pro Max shows the gradual evolution that Apple managed to pack it into a new design, the one introduced by last year's generation. If you skipped it for some reason, there is an improved version that has nothing to disappoint you in terms of hardware or software, perhaps the only thing you should watch out for is the weight. That 27g increase compared to the iPhone 15 Pro Max I'm sure you'll recognize it. I was also afraid of it, but as I switch to a newer generation every year, it doesn't really hurt that much, because the jump is logically smaller.
With the purchase of an iPhone 18 Pro Max you will get a complete package of the best Apple now in the classic phone portfolio it can do. But it is the top not only for it, but also compared to the competition, so it is actually difficult to find negatives. Even if you don't like the red one, you have a choice of other shades. Then there is of course the price, but it is what it is and you either accept it or not. With regard to the memory crisis, phone prices are rising worldwide and from all manufacturers, so there is not much to criticize here. In addition, I will allow myself a quote from Jurassic Park: "Is it difficult? So it is expensive!" And iPhone 18 Pro Max It's heavy, so you know it's expensive the first time you look at it. The 256GB version starts at 37,990 CZK/1,299 USD/1,599 EUR.
