iPhone 11 Pro Max review: what's the "Pro" feature does the annual flagship offer us?

iPhone 11 Pro Max review: what's the "Pro" feature does the annual flagship offer us?

by:musa mina

For Apple, products with the name "Pro" often represent extreme performance. These products bring excellent product experience to users through state-of-the-art hardware. Especially in the field of productivity tools, this is true of Mac, and so is iPad.

In this before, Apple has launched a number of products named "Pro", including MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iPad Pro and so on. These devices have become the best companions for professionals because of their powerful hardware performance. This year, "Pro" finally came to the iPhone product line, and the new iPhone 11 Pro Max, has naturally become the focus of people's eyes.

So where on earth is this new iPhone "Pro"? Powerful hardware? Excellent three-camera system? A better screen? These are the highlights of the iPhone 11 Pro series, but they don't seem to be all. Let's unveil the mystery of iPhone 11 Pro Max and see what's so special about the first "Pro" of the iPhone product line.

iPhone 11 Pro Max design

Starting with iPhone 8, Apple returned to the glass backplane design and further removed many elements from the backplane to make it simple. As a new Pro series, iPhone 11 Pro Max obviously goes a step further, with its backplane logo moved to the center of the fuselage and the word "iPhone" removed from the bottom. It seems that Apple is preparing to implement "simplicity" to the extreme this time.

This year's iPhone 11 Pro Max also has many special features in appearance, such as the choice of backplane glass, which uses a new foggy glass backplane instead of the previous bright glass. For people like me who like to run naked, the advantages of foggy glass can be said to be quite obvious. It feels similar to MacBook's trackpad, does not stain fingerprints as easily as glossy glass, and appears to have a premium texture exclusive to the flagship product, coupled with a bright stainless steel frame of the same color, fully demonstrating its "Pro" characteristics.

When many people first see the iPhone 11 Pro Max, they focus on the matrix triple shot in the upper left corner of the fuselage. Because Apple uses more advanced polishing technology this time, the crater-like camera bulge is polished on a whole piece of glass. This design is very similar to the previous iPhone 7 series, which is integrated by grinding in a whole piece of material, but this design is also very demanding, and currently only Apple dares to implement this kind of design on the glass back panel in the industry.

In my opinion, another advantage of this "crater" design is that it reduces the sudden sensation of the back three-camera module. The crater design, which is slightly higher than the glass cover, can effectively reduce the bulge of the camera and make the whole phone look more harmonious.

And in daily use, this integrated molding cover also has a major advantage, that is to support IP68 grade water resistance. Apple officials say the new iPhone 11 Pro Max can stay at a depth of up to four meters for up to 30 minutes, so common liquid splashes will have little effect on it.

In fact, after the iPhone 11 Pro Max, there are some details that have to be paid attention to, that is, the weight and thickness of the phone. This time, the weight of the iPhone 11 Pro Max is 226g, and the weight after putting on the phone case is almost half a kilogram, so if you think this weight is a bit unacceptable, maybe you can consider the 5.8in version of the iPhone 11 Pro. After all, there is no difference between the two except the screen size and battery capacity.

In terms of thickness, the iPhone 11 Pro Max is 0.4mm thicker than the previous generation, but considering that the iPhone 11 Pro Max has a larger capacity battery, the thickness increases slightly, which is actually within the acceptable range. 

In terms of appearance, the screen of the iPhone 11 Pro Max is almost no different from that of the previous generation, but in terms of screen quality, the improvement of this generation can be said to be quite great.

Tactile touch

 This time the iPhone 11 Pro Max is equipped with a "hyperretina XDR display", and as we can see by the name, Apple believes that this screen on the iPhone 11 Pro Max is as powerful as the Pro Display XDR. "hold the Pro Display XDR screen in the palm of your hand" may be the best interpretation of this screen.

iPhone 11 Pro Max is equipped with super-retinal XDR display

According to official data, the screen quality of iPhone 11 Pro Max is indeed among the top, with a contrast of up to 20000000 Pro Max 1, a maximum brightness of 800N for daily use, and a surge of screen brightness to 1200N when viewing HDR content, greatly increasing the dynamic range. 

And in addition to the increased brightness, the iPhone 11 Pro Max screen performs better in terms of power control, which is one of the reasons why the iPhone 11 Pro series has better battery life.

From the iPhone XR released last year to the new iOS 13, Apple seems to be deliberately reducing the presence of 3D Touch. On iPhone 11 Pro Max, the 3D Touch feature officially said goodbye to us and was replaced by the "tactile touch" of the previous iPhone XR. But despite the removal of the touch layer, most of the 3D Touch experience remains, and we can re-press the screen by pressing the screen for a long time, with little difference in daily use with iPhone's built-in Taptic Engine.

But for some gamers, or users who are used to 3D Touch, it is obviously a pity to cancel 3D Touch. For example, many "Game for Peace" players have become accustomed to re-pressing the screen to open the scope, and now after canceling 3D Touch, these players may need to re-adapt to the new manipulation.

After actual measurement, the removal of the pressure layer will not affect common operations such as moving the cursor and opening the secondary menu, and the cancellation of the pressure layer also provides more space for large-capacity batteries. From this point of view, it also seems to be a positive.

iPhone 11 Pro Max camera performance and samples

The biggest update to the iPhone 11 Pro series this year is the brand new back three shots. Apple officially calls it a "Pro-level camera system", which is a sign of official confidence in it.

Has to say that Apple did take some thinking into the design of the iPhone 11 Pro Max Tri-shot, which is to create a unified photo experience. In terms of parameters, the three cameras are all 12 million pixels, which are the equivalent 13mm focal length ultra-wide-angle lens, the equivalent 26mm focal length wide-angle lens and the equivalent 52mm telephoto lens, which just correspond to different shooting scenes.