iPhone 13 Pro Max: A Review

When Apple introduced the original iPhone in 2007, no one outside of Apple knew how often there would be a new iPhone model. The cadence turned out be every single year. Since 2007, they have introduced at least one new iPhone every year, with some years having more models than others. On average though, it is closer to two per year, with the last two years being the outliers with five iPhones introduced throughout 2020, and four new iPhones this year. Each new iPhone brings its own set of features and enhancements.

Even though Apple has an increasing number of products and services in its repertoire, with desktops, laptops, iPads, and accessory hardware, and an ever increasing number of services, the biggest product for Apple is the iPhone. The iPhone is the largest portion of all of Apple's revenue and since the fourth quarter of 2009 this has been the case. At that point, the iPhone overtook the Mac for the largest percentage of revenue for Apple and has remained there since then.

2021 actually marks the 15th year of iPhone releases. This year's iPhone 13 lineup make it a total of 33 different phone models. The iPhone has seen its share of changes over the last 15 years, and the biggest amongst these was not the flat sides of the iPhone 4 in 2010, or even the first new screen size with the iPhone 5 in 2012. The biggest change came two years later.

Starting in 2014 Apple eschewed the standard single screen size for its flagship phones by introducing two brand new sizes. These were the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. These phones set a demarcation point that marked a shift to use larger screen sizes Each subsequent year introduced either two or three discrete screen sizes.

As has likely been the case with many people, how I use the iPhone has changed over the years. At first its primary usage was as a phone and music player. Soon, it shifted to being a game and app platform, music player, and social media consumption device. My usage of the iPhone has not expanded too much beyond that, except for the fact that it is also the camera that I use most often.

I have been lucky enough to be able to purchase a new phone every year since the original, and I have either picked up or received it on release day. From 2007 to 2013, the model of phone, storage size, and color have all varied, depending on the year. Here is a complete list of all of the iPhone that I have purchased over the years:q

Since I upgrade every year, I am not on a typical upgrade path. Most people do not upgrade every year. When the iPhone was first released it had subsidies from the carriers, so It is more likely that they upgrade their iPhone every two or three years. Now though most people keep their iPhones for a longer amount of time, typically for two years, but possibly three to four years.

As you can see I typically opt for Black, Space Gray, or Graphite. With the introduction of the iPhone X in 2017, the phone color itself became less important to me because the bezel on all of the phones was the same color, black.

Last year I purchased an iPhone 12 Pro Max in Pacific Blue. This was the first departure from the Space Gray, Black, and Graphite choices I made previously. The reason I opted for the Pacific Blue is two fold. The first is because the color was a dark shade of blue that I did not mind. The second is that it is getting handed down to someone else, who had some input on the color choice and if I didn’t like the color it would be likely gust I would only be using it for a year,

The iPhone 13 Pro models come in four colors, Graphite, Gold, Silver, and Sierra Blue. I thought about getting the Sierra Blue, but the product photos indicated that the phone was a bright blue, and it looked to be a bit too pastel for my liking, so this year I opted to go with the trusty Graphite.

As you can see the last few years I decided to get 256GB of storage. This is generally enough storage space for my needs. But this year I moved up the storage to 512GB of storage. The reason for this is future proofing, not necessarily for myself, because it is quite likely I will end up buying a new phone next year and the iPhone 13 Pro Max will get handed down to someone else, and they will continue to use it until it is their turn for another handed down phone.

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  Picking Up the iPhone

  Given the times that we live in, I debated on doing delivery or an in-store pickup. Last year I opted for delivery. The downside of this is that there is no way to know when my phone would actually be delivered. If I recall properly, it was almost 5pm when it was delivered last year, so instead I opted for in-store pickup. I got the earliest pickup time possible, so I would have a ton of time to do the actual setup of the phone.

  Given that this is the 15th year that iPhones have been released, the physical Apple Stores have a quick and orderly process for being able to get everyone through the store. Part of the quick process is that they were not allowing any setup of phones in the store. This meant that they could get more people through the pickup process even quicker because they would not be staying in the store very long,
  

  If you want to know how popular picking up an iPhone is, at the store I picked up my iPhone there were over 800 in-store pickups for launch day, and that was just what already scheduled. They still had slots open for those who wanted to see if they could manage to get a phone on launch day. Many were able to, but, as you might expect, there was a limited supply and limited quantities of phones to purchase on launch day.

  This is not my first time picking up a phone from the Apple Store, so I knew what to expect. From the time I entered to the time I left it was a total of 5 minutes, from start to finish. So, it was definitely orderly. Next, let us look at setting up the device.

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  Setup

  When you get a new iPhone, you will need to do the initial setup. If you are buying a new iPhone for the first time, and do not have any Apple devices, then you can do the setup as a new phone. Even if you have had an iPhone previously, this is always an option.
  

  However, most opt to transfer the information from their old phone to their new phone. There are a few different approaches to restoring data onto your new iPhone. These options include:

  1. Restoring from an iCloud Backup.
  2. Performing a device to device transfer.
  3. Restore using an encrypted backup from your computer.

  Each of these options has its own benefits and downsides.

  iCloud Backup

  It is likely that many users restore using their iCloud Backup. This is the method that usually takes the least amount of time, which is a plus. However, you do need to re-download all of the apps and media that were previously on your phone. So this can take a while, however you will be able to use your new device much faster, even if you have to wait for the apps and media to download.

  Device to Device Transfer

  A device to device transfer is a newer option where you scan a code that will pair your two devices and transfer all of your data from your old iPhone to your new iPhone. The data includes all of the apps, media, photos, and app data. The biggest downside of this method is that it can take quite a while to transfer the data, depending on the amount of data on your old iPhone. While you are transferring data, you cannot use either device, so your old iPhone will be out of commission until it finishes.

  Encrypted Backup

  The encrypted backup is the oldest and least used method. This method is very similar to the Device to Device transfer, but requires a Mac or Windows PC to transfer the data. Along with this, you need enough space on the device to do a full backup of your old iPhone.

  Those are the available options for restoring your iPhone. You can, of course, start completely new with your iPhone as well, if that makes more sense for you.

  How I transferred my data

  I ultimately ended up doing the third option, restoring an encrypted backup. Initially I had started doing a Device-to-Device Transfer, but the estimated time started at 2 hours, but quickly jumped to 7 hours and was staying there. Instead of waiting out that length of time, I opted to do a restore from an encrypted backup.

  I was going to do another backup of my iPhone before starting the restore, but the backup I had was from the night before, and anything that would not be updated could be replicated again. The initial restore that I had done failed, and this was after two and a half hours of attempting to restore. I then attempted to do another restore. This one too also took approximately two and a half hours, but did finish properly.

  One thing I would like to see with this approach is an estimated time until finished. Even if it is not 100% accurate, even an estimate would be helpful. There is an indicator within Finder, but it is a simple progress indicator and does not have any indicator for how much time is remaining until the restore is complete.

  Once I had the iPhone up and running, it was time to actually use the device. The first feature we will cover, is definitely one that you cannot miss, ProMotion.

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  ProMotion

  One of the more prominent features of the iPhone 13 is ProMotion. ProMotion is not a new feature to Apple’s ecosystem. ProMotion first appeared on the 3rd generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and the 1st generation 11-inch iPad Pro, both introduced in May of 2018. However, the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are the first iPhones to have a ProMotion display.

  ProMotion is a technology that can intelligently adapt the refresh rate of the screen, depending on the content that is currently being displayed. In terms of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, the refresh rate can range from 10 Hz to 120Hz. This adjustment is done automatically depending on the action being taken. For instance, if you are scrolling the refresh rate will go up to 120Hz. Conversely, when you are not scrolling and you are just reading content, the refresh rate will reduce down to 10Hz. If you are watching a movie, the rate should be around 30Hz, but while playing a game it may be 60Hz, if the game is designed to run at that frame rate.

  When you first see ProMotion on the iPhone 13 Pro Max it may be a bit jarring. For me, at least, this was the case. What I find strange though, is that I do not have any issues with ProMotion on the iPad Pro. I am not sure if it is due to being acclimated to ProMotion on the larger screen and not yet being accustomed to seeing it on the smaller screen.

  ProMotion does make some people ill, or have some other sort of side effects. If you need to disable it, you can do so by using the following steps:

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Scroll down to "Accessibility".
  3. Tap on "Accessibility".
  4. Locate the "Motion" Accessibility setting.
  5. Tap on "Motion" to open the Motion-specific settings.
  6. Locate the "Limit Frame Rate" setting.
  7. Tap on the toggle next to "Limit Frame Rate" to disable ProMotion.

  When you disable ProMotion the frame rate will be limited to 60 frames per second, or 60Hz. This should help reduce the sickness that some experience when using ProMotion.

  Upon first realizing what ProMotion is doing, you may think that the constant switching of frame rates might use more battery, where in fact, it can actually save battery power, because the screen does not need to be refreshed as frequently. And since the screen is one of the biggest power draws on an iPhone, instead of refreshing at a constant rate, the adaptive rates of ProMotion will ultimately preserve battery life.

  Not all apps will be able to take advantage of the full 120Hz refresh rate right out of the box, some app developers will need to add support for the screen resolution in order for their apps to be able to take full advantage of the technology,

  ProMotion should make a significant change for many users, particular if you want to be able to view 120Hz videos that you have recorded. On the topic of battery, let us look at that next.

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  Battery

  One of the areas of an iPhone that might, or might not, change between each version of a device is the amount of battery life. Of course everyone’s experience will differ depending on what the user does with their iPhone. Games will naturally use more battery power, as will using cellular data.

  It is Apple’s intention to be able to have at least the same amount of battery life as the previous year's phones. This is the case this year as it has been for every previous release. This year’s entire line of iPhone 13 models have seen improved battery length. Here are the reported battery lengths (in hours) according to Apple:

  Model	Video	Video (Streamed)	Audio
  iPhone 12 mini	15	10	50
  iPhone 12	17	11	65
  iPhone 12 Pro	17	11	65
  iPhone 12 Pro Max	20	12	80
  iPhone 13 Mini	17	13	55
  iPhone 13	19	15	75
  iPhone 13 Pro	22	20	75
  iPhone 13 Pro Max	28	25	95

  As the tables show, the improvements range from 10% for the iPhone 12 mini for audio playback to 108% improvement in the iPhone 13 Pro Max streamed video playback length. Of course these numbers will vary, but even if the iPhone 13 Pro Max only gets 20 hours of video playback, that is still a significant improvement over the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

  Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, not everyone upgrades their phone every year. Therefore, if you are upgrading from an older device, say an iPhone XS or earlier, the battery life improvements will be significant over your current experience.

  Battery life is not the only change, a much bigger change has been the Cameras. Let us take a look at those changes next.

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  Cameras

  As mentioned earlier, 2016 marked a big turning point in the iPhone. Beyond screen sizes there was another major change that took place that year, one that focused on the camera that were in the iPhone. It is not that the camera was not important prior to 2014, but it was not the highest priority and not much effort was put into making sure that the camera was the best it could be. The increased size of the phones did allow more that just additional screen real estate. The increased size also allowed for larger chips, additional battery, which all means more space for cameras lenses.

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  The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus began a trend for the iPhone where the camera would bugle outside of the back of the iPhone. The reason that this was needed was to allow the camera to be able to improve. If Apple had decided to keep the camera lens flush with back of the iPhone, the camera would likely not be able to improve a whole lot just due to limited space due to the depth of the phone.

  At the time there were many who thought that the camera protruding was not a good idea because the phone would not be completely flat when it was on a surface. For any though, it is not a problem because they put their iPhones in a case, and a almost every case would protrude just beyond the camera lens. The camera bulge, while seen as a negative to many, ultimately lead to the cameras we have today, which are absolutely fantastic.

  One of the biggest uses of the iPhone, for me anyway, is as a camera. I know I am not alone in this. My biggest use for the camera is taking pictures of nature. I also use the camera to take pictures of items that I review. Therefore, I always want to have the best camera possible. The iPhone Pro Max will likely always have the best camera available on an iPhone, regardless of the year.

  The camera on the iPhone 13 makes a number of improvements over the iPhone 12 line of cameras.

  	iPhone 12 Pro Max	iPhone 13 Pro Max
  Telephoto	ƒ/2.2 aperture	ƒ/2.8 aperture
  Wide	ƒ/1.6 aperture	ƒ/1.5 aperture
  Ultra Wide	ƒ/2.4 aperture and 120° field of view	ƒ/1.8 aperture and 120° field of view

  The camera on the iPhone 13 is an improvement in many ways. If you compare the two tables above, you can see that the Wide and Ultra Wide cameras both have lower apertures. When it comes to cameras, the lower the aperture the more light that is able to enter the lens. Subsequently the more light means that pictures should be a bit better and have a bit less distortion, or noise, in the picture.

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  The aperture on the Telephoto lens has gone from 2.2 to 2.8. This means that less light will be able to enter into the lens, so when you are in a low light situation the results may not be as good as you might hope. But you likely won’t be using the telephoto lens at night, at least not without a lot of light.

  even though the aperture is not as good as the iPhone 12 Pro Max, there is a good trade off for this. The telephoto lens now has a 3x zoom, which is the equivalent of a 77mm lens. This compares to the 65mm equivalent, with the 2.5x optical zoom on the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

  In practice, it is not likely that you will need the telephoto lens while in low light. If you do use it, you may notice a bit more grain and the zoomed in photos may be less clear. Overall though, I think that this is a very worthwhile trade off to make.

  Cinematic Video

  One of the features of the iPhone 13 Pro Max is the new "Cinematic Video". Cinematic Video is a new feature that can allow you to create videos much like larger and more professional cameras. Cinematic Video will allow you to add depth of field effects to your videos.

  With Cinematic Video you are able to set your desired ƒ stop, between 2.0 and 16, with the default of 2.8. When you switch the ƒ stop the amount of blur of the background will change. The lower the ƒ stop the more blur. Similarly, you can also adjust the exposure for the video. This range is for the exposure can be between -2.0 and 2.0.

  When you select the ƒ stop for the background blur, or for exposure, this data will be saved with the video. This data is not baked into the video, but instead it can be adjusted later so you can get just the right effect that you are going for while you are in the post-production phase of your video editing.

  In order to use Cinematic Video, you will need to choose Cinematic Video mode in the carousel. Once you have selected this mode you can make the adjustments to the depth of field and the exposure by tapping on the arrow button to expand the options. Here you will find both of the buttons. Tapping on either of the will allow you to make the necessary adjustments for the selected option.

  Here is a video example of some Cinematic video that show the focus changing between two Lego minifigs.

  After you have taken your Cinematic Video, you may need to do some editing. While the iPhone 13 models are the only devices which can take Cinematic Video, you are not limited to editing Cinematic Video on your device. You can use any of the following devices for editing including:

  • iPhone XR, iPhone XS or later
  • iPad Air 3rd generation or later
  • iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation or later
  • iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation or later
  • iPad mini 5th generation or later

  Complete instructions for Cinematic Video can be found on Apple's support site. Cinematic Video is not the only new Camera mode, let us look at the next mode, Macro Mode.

  Macro Mode

  The 3x Zoom Telephoto lens allows for a new mode for photos, called Macro Mode. Macro Mode will allow you to more easily take Macro photographic pictures. This mode is not one that you can manually trigger, it is an automatic mode that the iPhone 13 Pro Max will switch to if an object is detected and if you are extremely close to the object.

  When the iPhone 13 Pro Max goes into Macro photography mode, the screen will switch focus to Macro mode. What is actually occurring is that the lens it adjusting its focus in order to be able to capture the detail. When the iPhone 13 Pro Max enters into Macro Mode you will be able to take photos that are super close. Normally when you would do this, the resulting photos might be blurry, but not with Macro photography mode. Instead, they subject of the photo will be very much in focus. Here are a few examples of the results of Macro photography mode.

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    One of the downsides of Macro photography is that there is no way to identify which photos were taken using Macro mode. The only way to be able to tell is by looking at the Exchangeable image file, or EXIF, data. From what I can tell, any photos that are Macro should be 77mm with an ƒ stop of 1.5.

    Macro photography mode is not the last camera change, there is one more, called Photographic Styles.

    Photographic Styles

    The iPhone's camera is capable of being able to take some fantastic photos, without any sort of manual processing or any adjustments at all. Despite this, everyone has their own preferred look for photos. If you do perform some editing after the fact you may have a standard look that you attempt to go for with each picture. With the new Photographic Style, you can possibly save some post-processing.

    Photographic Styles are a means of being able to automatically have each photo you take have the same overall style. There are five different styles to choose from. These are:

    • Standard
    • Rich Contrast
    • Vibrant
    • Warm
    • Cool

    Each of these styles has its own look to them. These looks are accomplished by altering two different values. These values are tone and warmth. The tone and warmth values are modified from the default value of “0” in order create each of the styles. For example, the "Rich Contrast" style has a -50 Tone, and Warmth of 0, while the "Warm" style has a Tone value of 0, and a Warmth value of +50. Standard, has a value of 0 for tone and 0 for warmth.

    Photographic Styles are not filters that are applied after the fact. Instead, the style is applied to each of the numerous individual photos that are taken and combined to create the final overall picture.

    You can choose your default preferred style by performing the following steps:

    1. Open Settings.
    2. Scroll down to the "Camera" settings.
    3. Tap on "Camera" to open the settings for the camera.
    4. Scroll down to the "Photo Capture" section.
    5. Tap on "Photographic Styles". The available styles will appear.
    6. Scroll through each of the style to find your preferred style.
    7. Tap on the "Use Style" button at the bottom of the screen to enable the specific photographic style.

    After you have set a particular photographic style, it will be automatically applied to all of the photos that you take. Once a cinematic style has been applied to a particular photo, it cannot be changed after the fact. This is because the style is embedded into the photo itself.

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      When you select a particular style as your default, that does not mean that you are stuck using that particular style all of the time. You can actually choose the style on a picture by picture basis and even make individual adjustments. To choose a different style, perform the steps:

      1. Open the Camera app.
      2. Tap on the arrow near the Face ID sensor to open up the options.
      3. Tap on the triple square with a slash through it. This will bring up the various styles.
      4. Swipe through each of the styles to select the style you want to use for that photo.

      While you have the settings open you can also tweak the Tone and Warmth individually to your liking. Each of these values can range from -100 to 100.

      If you have changed the values and you want to reset it back to the default for that photographic style, you can tap on the reverse circle with an arrow at the end to reset it back to the particular styles default values.

      The new Photographic Styles allows iPhone users to apply their own individual style to each of the photos that they take. If you have a default style that you prefer, you can set that as the default, but it still leaves room to tweak the options to provide just the right style.

      There are some final things that need to be covered, so let us look at those next.

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      Other Changes

      The iPhone 13 Pro Max has a lot of headlining features. However, there are some other smaller changes that have also been made that you might not notice right away. These include changes to the Face ID notch, the weight of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and some changes around the eSim. Let us start with the Face ID Notch.

      Face ID Notch

      One of the changes that appears on the iPhone 13 Pro Max is a smaller notch. Apple was able to do this by moving the top speaker to above the Face ID module and then moving all of the lenses to be closer together. The notch is technically a bit taller, which is not likely noticeable. What is noticeable though is that the notch is a smaller width. This means that the "ears" around the notch are a bit bigger and can provide additional space for icons or buttons, if an app decides to utilize the space. Below is a comparison of the notch on the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the iPhone 13 Pro Max. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is on the left and the iPhone 13 Pro Max is on the right.

      

      Despite being the prominent feature of all Face ID-enabled iPhones, at this point I do not notice the notch at all. The only time I even really notice it is when I am watching a video in full screen and if I zoom in to watch the video full screen. This is because some of the video is being covered, and then I end up noticing the notch. When I first got the iPhone X, the notch was brand new and not something anyone had become accustomed to yet. Now four years after its introduction, the controversy with the notch has become a non-issue

      Weight

      For me the iPhone is the most used device throughout the day. No matter what else I am doing it is very likely that I am using my iPhone for one reason or another. This is very likely listening to something Luke music, a podcast, or an audiobook.

      Most of the time it is lying on a surface, but there are those times when I am carrying around with me. Having carried the heaviest devices introduced over the last four years, I am not going to notice a 12 gram, or 5 percent difference in weight. However if you are upgrading from an earlier phone to an iPhone 13 Pro Max, you may notice the difference in weight.

      In the overall scheme, the iPhone is not a heavy device. Yet, in comparison to other iPhones that have been introduced, it is quite heavy. Throughout the entirety of its lifetime the iPhone line has ranged from 112 grams with the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S, to 240 grams with the iPhone 13 Pro Max. The bulk of the weight is due to the battery being significantly larger than previous models. The battery improvements were covered earlier in the review.

      eSIM

      Throughout the history of the iPhone, each phone has had a physical slot for a SIM card. There have been dual physical SIM models of the iPhone, but these are only available in Mainland China where users are required to have a physical SIM for their carrier plans, therefore Apple has had to create custom phones just for Mainland China. Starting in 2018, with the introduction of the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, Apple included an electronic SIM, or eSIM, in addition to the physical SIM.

      With an eSIM you can add an existing carrier plan, or you can add an additional one along with the carrier that you have with your physical SIM. The iPhone 13 line has expanded beyond a single eSIM to now have dual eSIMs. This has ramifications in two ways.

      The first being that it has benefitted Apple because they do not need carrier-specific models because all iPhones 13s activated on a U.S. carrier will be activate on one of the eSIMs. The second, is that you no longer need to have a SIM ejection tool, nor visit a carrier, to upgrade your device.

      This change can allow you to activate carrier plans without needing to have a physical SIM card at all, which means you may not need to contact your carrier if you needed to in the past.

      If you have a physical SIM card you can use the physical SIM and an eSIM simultaneously, provided your carrier supports it. It should be noted, that even though there are two dual eSIM cards and a physical SIM, you can only have two carriers activated at a single time. Furthermore, if you have a Physical SIM, you can only activate one eSIM.

      The addition of two eSIMs will make it much easier for those who need to activate an account either while they travel or just on a daily basis. I know that this would have been great when I traveled to London in 2010, because no carriers were able to get me a sim because the iPhone 4 switched to a micro-sim. If I had an eSIM I wouldn’t have needed to try and get a SIM card.

      Benchmarks

      No iPhone review is completely without some benchmarks. Here are some benchmarks to compare the iPhone 13 Pro to various other devices. These benchmarks are not meant to be definitive, but as a means to provide a comparison to other Apple Silicon-based devices. These benchmarks were all run using the latest version of Geekbench 5. I did not run any comparison to Intel-based Macs, because it would not be a worthwhile comparison.

      Device	Single Core	Multi Core	Geekbench ML
      M1 Mac Mini (Late 2020)	1753	7758	N/A
      iPhone 13 Pro Max	1739	4691	2744
      12.9-inch iPad Pro (5th Gen)	1703	7316	2700
      iPad mini (6th Gen)	1603	4543	2543
      iPhone 12 Pro Max	1593	3726	2469
      iPhone 7 Plus	768	1397	419
      iPod Touch (7th Gen)	565	1077	308
      iPod Touch (6th Gen)	278	533	N/A
      iPhone 5s	259	498	N/A

      As you can see the iPhone 13 Pro Max with its A15 processor came in just under the M1 Mac mini in terms of single-core performance and does significantly better in multi-core as compared to the iPhone 12 Pro Max. There is one last thing to cover, the Apple Silicon Case.

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      Midnight Silicone Case with MagSafe

      

      Purchasing an iPhone is not generally a tasks that someone does on a whim, mostly due the cost of the device. The price of an iPhone ranges from $399 for a 64GB iPhone SE 2 all the way up to $1599 for 1 TB iPhone 13 Pro Max. Regardless of how much you pay for an iPhone you will likely want to protect it. This is typically done by purchasing a case. There are endless choices available when it comes to selecting a case for your iPhone. I typically go with the Apple Silicone cases. Not only because I know that they will fit, but because I like the feel.

      I am not one who typically goes for a color that varies too wildly from the color of the iPhone. Much like the color of iPhone, I have purchased a color that was very similar to the phone color, typically a Black case. Last year with the iPhone 12 Pro Max I stuck with a similar color, specifically the Deep Navy silicone case. I have continued sticking to a close color, this time I went with an Apple Silicon Case with MagSafe. There are no physical differences in the features or the feel for case from the iPhone 12 Pro Max version. Where it does differ is in the look, and not just the fact that this case is not a shade of blue.

      The Midnight case looks like it is dark gray, but at some angles you can absolutely see hints of blue in the case. Here is an example of where it looks blue, as opposed to dark gray.

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        The Midnight case is aptly named because at midnight it is not actually black because there is still faint light, thus making it a very deep shade of bluish gray.

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        Closing Thoughts

        At first glance you might think that the iPhone 13 Pro Max is just a slight upgrade over the iPhone 12 Pro Max. However, there are a number of features that make it worth looking at. This includes the ProMotion display, the battery, and the cameras.

        The new ProMotion display can adaptively adjust the refresh rate of the screen to be able to match the content that you are consuming, whether it is a video, game, or an app. if you are not doing anything but just reading the screen, the refresh rate will drop down to 10Hz. What this ultimately means is that battery should improve.

        The battery levels on the iPhone 13 Pro Max have increased significantly. Specifically for the streaming video has improved 108% or 25 hours, up from 12 hours with the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Similarly, watching video has improved 40%, and audio listening has improved 18%, to a whopping 95 hours. These are significant improvements. The trade off of this improved battery life is the iPhone 13 Pro Max is 5% heavier at 240 grams, up from 228 grams.

        The most important reason that people upgrade their iPhone is for the cameras. The iPhone 13 Pro Max has a slew of new camera features, like cinematic video, photographic styles, and macro photography mode.

        Cinematic Video will allow you to create videos similar to those you see out of Hollywood. Photographic styles allows you to create customized looks to the photos that you come out of your iPhone.

        The last big change with the cameras is the new macro photography mode. Macro Photography allows you to take close up photos that are detailed. Macro photography mode is an automatic mode that the iPhone will switch to when it detects an object.

        If you are upgrading from an older iPhone, like an iPhone 11 or earlier, the iPhone 13 Pro Max will be a fantastic upgrade. If you are looking to upgrade your phone I recommend giving the iPhone 13 Pro Max a good look, while it may be the heaviest iPhone ever produced, the weight may be worth upgrading, even if it is just for ProMotion and the new cameras.