iPhone 18 Pro Max Review: Bigger battery, real camera controls, and one heavyweight phone

Quick question: did the iPhone 18 Pro Max outperform every Google and Samsung device this year? What was the score on the Galaxy S26 Ultra? I think it was a 8.1, but I might be mistaken. Just asking for a friend!

The iPhone 18 Pro Max has officially settled the debate. Seeing these results confirms that Apple is operating on an entirely different level way above the competition. It’s no surprise to see it take the top spot on PhoneArena yet again.

FANGIRLS cry all you want FACTS are FACTS. Were done here.

If you THINK you can do "professional" purposes with this super tiny camera

sensor, you have another thing coming. Now, by professional, if you mean

these silly "influencer" types? 🤣

As for that variable aperture, the bokeh in the photo is terrible! Samsung and

others ditched the variable aperture because it isn't worth it in a super tiny

camera sensor given the cost to manufacture. I'm sure Apple will drop it in

one or two years as well.

This can be extremely useful for people who wish to use these cameras for professional purposes.

Can't believe PhoneArena called 2 years boring designs the best design 😂. They didn't even properly review the photo and video section well, they cut the whole section short because no difference between last year and this year, Chinese Android OEMs has been ahead and lost iPhone in photo and video capabilities were miles ahead. Can't wait for Vivo X500 series, Xiaomi 18 series, Oppo Find X10 series reviews and hope no biases here 🥱. Huawei Pura 90s smoke the newest iPhone in camera review and i was surprisingly shocked Mr Rad admit the camera blew him away.

hardware on the 18pm is pretty dang impressive, but software? yea not so much. I always roll with an iphone and an android. However I cannot justify purchasing the 18 series with all these bugs. Let me know when/if they ever get them worked out, until then you could rate this phone a 9.9 and I still wouldn't buy it yet.

Tiny detalj: You forgot to deduct for the Apple-bias on PhoneArena. The actual score then becomes 6.5, which is not that good.

Didn't you say that you were leaving?

I knew Apple would hit it out of the park again this year, and my expectations have proven accurate. Once again android has been relegated to a 2nd rate OS for inferior hardware. 🤣

Should add this information about the 1 and 2 TB NVMe drives in the iPhone 18 Pro and ProMax: in this model year, Apple switched to QLC SSDs for the two top capacity drives; the 256 and 512 GB ones remain TLC-based.

Why that may matter: if you actually fill up the Pseudo-SLC cache (ProRes in 4K Dolby Vision can help you do so😁), that expensive storage will suddenly drop down to speeds that many microSDs manage to surpass. So, rather than pay all that money for the extra-large internal storage, you might be better off with an external SSD. There are a number of them that are even designed to be carried as an attachment to an iPhone.