The iPhone 13 Pro Max: A Review of Its Features and Drawbacks

As I started using my new iPhone 13 Pro Max, I couldn't help but feel excited about its features and capabilities. However, as with any new device, there are some teething issues that need to be addressed. In this article, I'll share my thoughts on the pros and cons of this powerful smartphone.

One of the things I love about video recording on this phone is its ability to shoot at 1080p 30 frames per second. While 4K would have been nice, it's great that we have an option to record at a lower resolution if needed. Additionally, the camera features are impressive, with excellent low-light performance and advanced editing capabilities. However, I do wish Apple would fix the issue of lens flares, which seem to be present in every single one of my photos.

Another feature that's been on my mind is the auto macro mode. While it seems to have been fixed in the latest software updates, it was a frustrating issue for me initially. The same can be said for the finger not registering touches, particularly on the YouTube app. Thankfully, with the latest 15.1 beta 3 software, this issue has been resolved.

Speaking of software, I do have a few wishes for future updates. One thing I'd love to see is a universal back button, which would allow users to swipe in from either side (left or right) to go back to the previous screen. This feature was available on my old Android phone, and it's a convenience that I miss dearly. Another issue I have is with multitasking options, specifically split screen mode. While it's available on iPads, I wish we had something similar on iPhones. The lack of split screen mode can be frustrating, especially when working or browsing on the go.

I also noticed that the battery life could be improved, particularly in terms of charging speed. Although the phone technically supports 27W charging, it doesn't seem to make a significant difference in terms of charging time. In my tests, it takes around an hour and 46 minutes to fully charge, which is slightly slower than some of my Android competitors.

Finally, I'd love to see Apple include a fingerprint reader on the iPhone. While Face ID is excellent, there are times when I wish I had a more traditional biometric option for security purposes. A fingerprint reader or even just a power button that doubles as one would be a convenient feature that many users would appreciate.

In conclusion, while the iPhone 13 Pro Max has its flaws, it's still an incredibly powerful and capable device. The pros far outweigh the cons, and I highly recommend this phone to anyone in the market for a new smartphone. However, with ongoing software updates and improvements, Apple can continue to address these issues and make the iPhone even better.

The iPhone 13 Pro Max is my everyday daily phone, but as always, there's room for improvement. Whether it's through software updates or future hardware features, I'm excited to see how Apple will continue to push the boundaries of what a smartphone can do. If you have any thoughts or feedback on this device, please let me know in the comments below. Don't forget to like and subscribe for more content, and thanks for watching!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennew studio it's finally finished well built at least it's still a bit of a work in progress but uh yeah not too bad better than my dining room anyway and that's for a different video where i'll do a full studio tour and everything else that's been going on but today is all about this it's a great phone but there are still a couple of issues with it uh some of which can be fixed others that well maybe we'll have to wait for the iphone 14. so first of all and it's not a big deal really but it doesn't support the latest wi-fi 6e which is a bit of a shame there were some rumors that it would support the latest version of wi-fi which theoretically is the same speed as wi-fi 6 but because 6e uses its own dedicated 6 gigahertz spectrum of radio waves it's less congested and therefore you're more likely to have better bandwidth and therefore more likely to reach those potential max speeds now you do need a wi-fi 6e router as well as compatible devices and it is still quite rare but most flagship android phones if they have the snapdragon triple eight do support it but not on the iphone so really that's gonna be something else to wait for uh the iphone 14 hopefully it's not a huge deal right now and almost no one actually owns a wi-fi 6e router in terms of future proofing because you might want to hold on to this for two three four years it would have been nice to see the second problem and one that was rumored to be coming but unfortunately didn't materialize is having an always on display again it's a pretty standard feature on android now and while you could argue it drains battery well it does drain battery the flip side of that is that you might not actually have to unlock your photos often to check what's going on because you can at a glance see all your notifications and that could actually in fact end up saving your battery either way it's a moot point because we don't have support for it yet again but it is something i'd like to see possibly that could come with ios 16 or an update it's not necessarily something we'd have to wait for an all new iphone to see but uh right now no aod okay problem number three and as i was researching this video i came across a few people who had uh sort of auto brightness and screen dimming issues uh max tech who i'm a big fan of he actually had some of that screen dimming when he was recording with a drone using the phone now there's a couple of things here firstly you can actually disable auto brightness if you want it's in the accessibility and the display settings something that's a bit hidden away and most people don't know is there so you can turn that off and that prevents while the screen dimming based on the ambient light around it it also turns out that true tone can cause some issues with dimming depending on the environment so generally i actually recommend turning true tone off not least because it might cause that dimming that some people are experiencing although that also may have been fixed with an update but for me i often forget that i've turned it on and then editing a photo in lightroom or instagram or something and i post it and i realize uh i've had true tone on so my photos then actually a lot cooler in real life and i kind of forgotten about it so while true tone is nice in terms of reducing blue light and making it a bit more comfortable for your eyes particularly in low light for me at least i just prefer turning true tone off so this next problem was actually widely talked about when these iphones first came out and a lot of reviews mentioned it the camera would automatically switch between the main lens and the ultra wide when you got close up to your subject so you get this weird ghosting transition effect so in a lot of situations you don't want to use the ultra wide you want to stick with the main so hats off to apple actually they acknowledged this issue and they fixed it i'm on the ios 15.1 developer beta 3 right now i believe it will be coming to the public version soon it may already be as you're watching this but in the camera settings we now have this auto macro toggle so i would suggest making sure this is turned off so that it doesn't automatically switch unless you do it manually sticking with the camera and another new feature we've had with the latest update is support for apple's pro res video they've been talking about it but it's just come out now and so you can actually shoot in much higher bit rate so much higher quality video at up to 4k 30. but there are a couple of issues with this firstly you can't shoot in 4k 60 it tops out at 4k30 which is fine but having that 60fps option is nice for videographers who then like to slow down the footage in the edit to get slow motion but the bigger issue is file sizes and then actually how to get the files off the phone because we're talking six gigs of storage for every one minute shot at 4k it's like 600 megabits per second of data realistically if you are going to shoot a lot of this go for at least the 512 if not the one terabyte storage option but then the bigger problem is how you then get those huge files off the phone you can airdrop to your macbook or your mac or something or your ipad but then you'll need a very fast internet connection if you've got tens or hundreds of gigs of videos to transfer or you can do it through a wide connection but because we've still got this bloody lightning port rather than the latest thunderbolt usb-c this is essentially usb 2 so it is painfully slow and it really would have been a good reason for apple to update this to usbc as they have done on every ipad except the cheapest entry-level ipad which is the only other device to still have a lighting port it just makes getting these files off the phone a bit frustrating it really should be usb-c with thunderbolt 3 like we have on the higher end ipads then we have this cinematic mode which i actually have been quite impressed by although i would suggest uh reducing the bokeh blur a little bit to make it look less artificial but the issue is you can only shoot it at 1080p 30 and while 4k would have been nice actually more importantly would be an option to shoot at 1080p 24 which is a more cinematic frame rate okay the last thing i say about video as you can see we still have these lens flares it's something jj abrams may love because every single one of these movies has length flares everywhere but for me it's a bit annoying and i do wish apple would fix it because we've had this for years now another problem i was having but it does seem to have been fixed with the latest updates is my finger not actually registering touches was particularly in the youtube app i could touch the thumbnail of a photo it just wouldn't launch it wouldn't start playing you'd have to touch the profile picture or open and restart the app it's something i know a few other people have experienced but with the latest 15.1 beta 3 software that i'm running here it doesn't seem to be happening anymore so that was another problem like that auto macro mode with the camera but again it seems apple have fixed it so just teething issues with a new launch it seems speaking of the software though and i do have a couple of things on my wish list especially as someone jumping ship from an android phone recently and the first one is i really wish we had a universal back button most apps let you swipe in from the left to go back but not all and then sometimes you have to go up to the top left and press back which is a little bit awkward on the size of the pro max but also since i mostly used the phone in my right hand it would be so convenient to be able to swipe in from the right hand side to go back as well like we can do on android also particularly on the pro max with this huge 6.7 inch screen the fact that we still don't have any kind of split screen multitasking option is a bit frustrating and also considering how good the split screen mode is on ipads i wish we had something like that on the iphone the other thing i missed a little bit about my s21 ultra it's just how much faster it felt well obviously they're both 120 hertz screens and this is incredibly powerful with the a15 the fairly lengthy animations that we get on iphone just makes it feel a little bit more sluggish particularly if you're a bit techy and you're happy to jump into the developer options and then reduce those animation times further it would be great to have an option for faster animations or something on here and while there are some accessibility modes around turning off those sort of transitions it doesn't actually speed anything up so again that is something i'd like to see now one of the absolute standouts with these new iphones and particularly the pro max is the battery life but the problem is the charging hasn't really kept up and while this does technically support 27 watt charging it really isn't much faster than just the basic 20 watt it's only about two minutes faster charging up to 50 and in my tests it takes the exact same one hour 46 minutes to top up to a hundred so while this technically does support a higher wattage it doesn't really make much difference to the charging speed which is still really lagging behind some of the android competition and finally i have to say i would quite like to see a fingerprint reader on the iphone it's something that we had obviously on the older ones with the touch id home button we have on ipad still but not on the iphone which isn't the end of the world because the true depth face id is the best in the business particularly with the ir sensor so it's great in low light but when you're out and about and you want to pay for things you know through content less and you have to put your mask down to the face id for me at least i would quite like to have a in screen or even just a power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader but maybe that's just me so that is a lot of complaining about the iphone but don't get me wrong it is a terrific phone i still highly recommend it i think the 13 pro is probably the best phone in the world right now for most people uh and of course this pro max is my everyday daily phone but nothing's perfect there's always room for improvement and actually it has been good to see that apple have addressed some of the early issues through software updates already but what about you are there any other problems you've been experiencing with the 13 that maybe i've missed let me know in the comments below and if you did enjoy this video and want to see more from me and this fancy new studio then a cheeky like and subscribe would be lovely thank you so much for watching guys i'll see you next time right here on the tech chat\n"