Phone 16 Pro Max - An Incomplete Upgrade?

iPhone day, it's iPhone day, it's iPhone day. Hey, what's up guys? Justin Page here. Just came home from a 12-hour ER shift. It is now 1:30 in the morning as I'm recording this. I've waited all day to do this video and for this unboxing. As you guys already can tell by the thumbnail, it is time to unbox the iPhone 16 Pro Max. All right, right off the grip here, looking at the box, super sleek box here. I believe this is the actual size of the iPhone. This is going to be the color. The color that we are rocking with today is going to be the new Desert Titanium. Excited about this. Apple's got the nice new tabs. No more needing the knife. I actually missed the knife days where you— my old switchblade— and cut it that way, but it is what it is. Ah, look at that. You know, at first glance, with all the colors that are out nowadays for all the iPhones, This is a low-key pretty pale in color. I don't know if you guys can really tell in here, but ah, it's got the golden borders. It's almost like a, um, it's not true gold, it's more of like a muted gold, but it does feel nice in the hand. I love the new titanium. I am a huge fan of the titanium over the stainless steel, I will admit that. Before we get into that, let's get into our box here. Apple has now changed the old cable, which was— do I have one of those cables? So this nice braided USB-C cable compared to the old boo-boo silicone one that always gets frayed on the edges. I honestly did not like these cords at all. They always get beat on the ends. So they have now changed to the braided cable, which looks a whole lot nicer. This is the same cable that comes with the MacBooks. Right now, that's a huge upgrade. They've also changed the box. It's not like a pill shape, almost like the Dynamic Island, almost. Instructions here, which nobody really reads. And honestly, that is it. Now, considering how the boxes used to be, which used to be the fat boxes that had your brick, there's no longer stickers. So it's always interesting to see people who drive around their cars and they put the stickers on their actual windows of their cars or decals. I don't know. I've never been that kind of guy. As much as it's been cool seeing Apple with the stickers, this is very interesting that they don't include it anymore since this has been an ongoing thing since maybe the first iPhone. When were stickers first introduced? Comment down below if you guys know exactly when stickers were first introduced in iPhones. Now back to the phone here. Right off the rip, I am a fan. My favorite colors are black and gold. I'm in a fraternity called Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated, and our colors are black and old gold. Shout out to the frat brothers if you're watching this. I have not owned an iPhone, a gold iPhone, since the iPhone 6. Feels really good in the hands, I'm not gonna lie. Honestly, this This feels just like last year's phone. Doesn't feel any difference. Maybe a little bit bigger. So you got your USB-C. Oh, the camera. What do they call this? The action— no, the camera, camera control. It's funny because in Apple's video or any interview that they had, they never call this a button. It's almost like your tactile, like on a MacBook, but that's definitely a button. When it comes to the colors, I typically go with the color they advertise because that's the featured color. New. I guess that can be your differential of the last year's iPhone versus this year's iPhone, the new color maybe. But it's interesting that they got rid of the Blue Titanium, which they had last year, and they came out or came back with the gold, AKA Desert. I mean, looking back at the colors, what, the 11 Pro, they introduced the Midnight Green. The 12, they had the Pacific Blue, which I really like that one. For the iPhone 13, they had Sierra Blue, which it grew on me. It was like, ah, do I like this? Not a hot take, but the 13 Pro definitely had the better battery so far. Then your iPhone 14, you had the Deep Purple, which they did introduce that Dynamic Island, leading to the 15 where they had the Natural Titanium, but they also had the Blue Titanium as well too. That was kind of interesting how they kind of made the silver— oh, hi Cleo— the featured color over the titanium, which again, you're introducing titanium, I could understand why. Now we have got rid of the blue and now we are back to the gold. So we are back to our basic colors of what was introduced when the Pros first came out. There was that rumored brown iPhone, but obviously that didn't happen. But an orange one, or maybe a Product Red. Fun fact, they have not had a Product Red iPhone since the iPhone 14. Yeah, now if they made a red one, bet that's next. All right, so going through the step-up process here, which thing I love about the iPhones Whenever you're setting up, you just put a phone nearby and we are connecting to set up. While this is setting up, just for some quick comparison here, some of the differences between the 16 Pro Max versus the 15 Pro Max is that the 16 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch display compared to the 6.5-inch display on this. They made up to 30% smaller bezels, I believe Apple said. Just going to Apple's website here and looking Oh, didn't mean to share. You can see the difference between the two. The bezels are definitely thinner on here compared to this, and it's just going to continue to keep sharing every time I hold the two phones next to each other. The phones do feel a little different. This feels maybe— I don't know, because this is a year older, but this feels smoother on the edges compared to this, as it feels a little sharper. But you can feel there's like a little edge here while this feels a little more flush. I don't know if it's just long-term use. I can't remember this feeling the same when I first got the 15. So I don't know. Another thing with the back, even though everything looks exactly the same, is that the 16— is— you're gonna watch me record? All right. Is that the 16 Pro Max on the ultra-wide display has a 48-megapixel compared to the 12-megapixel on the 15. To me, that is a huge upgrade because When I do my ultra wide angles, it gets very distorted, especially when it goes between camera to camera. It drove me crazy and it made making content a little difficult when it's not the same quality, especially with low light. In the 16 Pro series, you have the A18 Pro chip compared to the 15 Pro series, you have the A17 Pro chip. That's kind of hard to say if you were to say that really fast, almost like saying toy boat, toy boat, toy boat, toy boat. Also for Wi-Fi, you're rocking Wi-Fi 7 in the 16 compared to this. You're rocking Wi-Fi 6E. I don't know many things that take Wi-Fi 7, and my routers are definitely not Wi-Fi 7 but 6E. So if you have Wi-Fi 7 at your house, well, there's your first device probably to utilize that. Battery life is supposed to be getting up to 2, 4 more hours than compared to the iPhone 15, which they say is going to be the longest battery lasting in an iPhone. Again, 13 It's always been the champ because my 15 is definitely getting charged multiple times a day. So I can't wait to put this to its paces. As with the 15, they got rid of the physical switch here and we are now with the Action Button. Most people ended up using for the camera. And now that we are using this for other things, we have our camera control here, which click on it, brings you right to your camera. The one thing about this is that You gotta go this way in landscape to use it. Now you can push on it and oh, it activates, which is super nice actually, very intuitive. And as you push in it, you can feel some feedback in your hand. It's almost like your trackpad on your Mac. You can zoom all the way in there to your 5x. Cleo's clearly not having it right now, but It's really cool and it's nice how it integrates into the actual screen. The issue is, is that who takes pictures in landscape? I mean, honestly, everything is done in portrait. All social media is this way, not like that. So you're gonna sit here and you're gonna tickle your phone and try to get the picture? No. But go into the ultra wide, oh, that is beautiful. Hmm, I wonder why the lighting looks different. It's definitely a cooler temp on this compared to this being more of a warmer. All my settings are literally the same. Interesting, there's no ProRes on here. I feel like more people are just going to go back to this. You know that a lot of people did not know that you can scroll on here? When I take people's phones and I'll show them something and I'll go to set up recording for them, say I'm in the gym and I record and I do this, they're like, well, how did you do that? I'm like, oh, you just push on the buttons there and you could just zoom in like this. It's a wheel. What? I never noticed that. You know, most people do this. Still pinching in the zoom. Hmm, learned something new here. If you go ahead and you double tap on it, just a soft tap, it opens up a menu where you can change your zoom, your depth, your exposure. So you can really get into some deep details here in your camera settings. Zoom, the camera style, the tone. Oh, okay, well that's pretty cool. Oops. Okay, so don't push it in or she'll take the picture. So if you double tap again, I could change my style of it and your zoom. Oh, so you can do your extreme zoom in through that, but that's a lot of work. So you have to get through a lot of settings of double tapping, scrolling over— if it scrolls over because it feels kind of finicky. It's cool that they integrated this The whole function of it is really— it's pretty nice, it's pretty intuitive, but it's definitely not a necessity. But the biggest thing about iPhone 16 is that we're supposed to have AI, or I should say Apple Intelligence, which is not even included into the phone. The whole purpose of this phone is to have that integration with this, but it won't be here until later this fall. The biggest question comes down to Should you upgrade if you have a 15, 15 Pro Max, 15 Pro? Absolutely not. You do not need to upgrade. Now if you have a 14 below, I would say yes. And I only say yes because of this, the USB-C. This right here is just mwah. Now if you have the 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, and you're looking for a 16, 16 Pro Max, unless you are just crazy for photography and you record and take all your pictures like this and you love the thought of the camera action camera button, sure, that is for you. Um, but for majority of people, if you're just taking your pictures for basic social media, nah, that's good. I will say the 48 megapixel for the ultra wide, that is— that, that's— that could be kind of good if you utilize that. Oh yeah, you have 4K at 120 frames per second as well too. That's another reason to upgrade if you want to. But that's iPhone 16 Pro Max Desert Storm. Desert Storm. I already forgot the color. If you guys enjoyed watching, leave a like, comment down below things that I got wrong, probably, which kind of going off the top of the dome again. It's late, just got off work here. Um, but I appreciate you guys watching. Stay tuned, see you in the next one. Peace.