The 16 Pro Max is what the 15 Pro Max should have been. The chip is meaningfully faster, the screen grew without the body growing much, and Apple Intelligence is genuinely useful (some of the time).
Apple Intelligence
The Notification Summaries feature is the daily killer. Group chats with 40 messages summarised into one line works well. Email summaries work less well; the model leans heavy on first-line content.
Genmoji is fun for a week. Image Playground is okay. Writing tools are useful for matching tone but I never let it rewrite for me.
On-device LLM
Source: Llama-3.2 1B on-device, my bench
Llama-3.2 1B running locally on the 16 Pro Max hits 22 tokens/sec[2]. The 15 Pro Max was 14. The 14 Pro Max was 9. The trajectory is clear: by iPhone 18 Pro Max we will be running 7B-parameter models locally at speed.
What is new
| Spec | 15 Pro Max | 16 Pro Max |
|---|---|---|
| Chip | A17 Pro | A18 Pro |
| Geekbench 6 single | 2890 | 3402 |
| RAM | 8 GB | 8 GB |
| Display size | 6.7" | 6.9" |
| Camera Control | No | Yes |
| Telephoto | 5x periscope | 5x improved |
| Battery (Wh) | 17.32 | 17.46 |
| Apple Intelligence | Yes (later) | Yes (day 1) |
| UK starting | £1199 | £1199 |
The Camera Control button is the most divisive change. It is a capacitive shutter button on the side. I use it. I would not have asked for it. Apple positioned it slightly too low for landscape photography ergonomics.
Battery
15.1 hours of PCMark Work 3.0[1]. Best of any iPhone. AI features running cut this by ~1.5 hours on heavy AI days.
Buying advice
From a 14 Pro Max or older: yes. From a 15 Pro Max: skip unless you specifically want Apple Intelligence and the larger screen.
Where it falls short
Storage tiers still start at 256GB which is right but the jumps are still expensive. The 1TB tier is £1,599. Photo and ProRes shooters will need it.
The mmWave 5G is gone in international models including UK. You get sub-6 only. Sub-6 covers what you need but 5G download speeds are unimpressive.
About the data
A note on what the numbers in this post represent so you can read them with the right confidence:
- "My own bench" rows are personal measurements on my own hardware. They are honest about my setup and reproducible there, but they should not be treated as universal benchmark scores.
- Benchmark numbers attributed to public sources (Geekbench Browser, DXOMARK, NotebookCheck, FIA timing) are illustrative, the trend is what matters, not the third decimal place. Cross-check against the source for anything you would act on financially.
- Client outcomes and ROI percentages in business-focused posts are anonymised composites drawn from my own consulting work. Real numbers, real direction, sanitised so individual clients are not identifiable.
- Foldable crease-depth and similar engineering measurements are estimates pulled from teardown reports and reviewer claims; manufacturers do not publish these directly.
- Forecasts and "what I bet" lines are exactly that, opinions, not predictions with a track record yet.
If you spot a number that contradicts a source you trust, tell me, I would rather correct it than be the chart that was off by 6 percent and pretended otherwise.