I took my sweet time upgrading. Jason Snell’s yearly reviews feature an invaluable section: what do you get if you’re coming from an older phone than just one year. His list goes back now to the 11, the phone that came out one year after my XR, which came out in 2018.
Coming from the XR, the 15 Pro Max doesn’t feel much larger. I’m just getting much more screen in the same width. In retrospect, the XR’s display margins were huge.
You maybe don’t notice year-over-year speed increases, but a 2023 phone is much faster than a 2018 phone. I no longer have to wait for the keyboard to load for five seconds before typing.
I’m using the battery setting that only charges the phone to 80%. I’m hoping it’ll make the battery have a longer life, but the tradeoff is that day-to-day battery life feels more like a brand new old phone, not a brand new new phone.
Some of that has to be habit. I’m still so used to plugging in my phone at all opportunities, and I have to relearn that I don’t have to do that. It opens up a habit question. If you don’t have to charge your phone all the time, where does it go?
The answer of course is, in my pocket.
Though, a pocket still feels like an odd place to put a computer with a display that no longer has to turn off.
This is the nicest screen I own.
Why can’t I use Apple Pencil with this, again?
I love the Action Button. It’s so odd for Apple of all companie to curse us with choice. What do you do with this button? The obvious thing seems to be to use it as a camera launcher. But the iPhone already has a camera button on its lock screen. I’ve chosen, as of this writing, to open the app that has for years lived in the lower-left corner of my dock: Drafts.
I will likely fiddle with the Action Button’s operation for years to come, just like how I often fiddle with my home screen.
It’s nice to have the same cord charge my iPhone and iPad.
Camera Thoughts
The camera is a lot better than my old XR.
No, it isn’t as good as the Canon M50 Mark II. So if that’s the case, it’s likely not as good as any relatively modern full-frame camera, either.
What I mean by that is that, to my eyes, my Canon camera takes a more realistic picture, even when zoomed in. Light, colour, etc.
Still. The best camera is the one you have with you. It’s always been why phones win as cameras. And these photos are good. They just have a noticeably-different view of the world than the eyes I have.
iPhone 15 Pro Max takes a totally different kind of photo (what is a photo?), and sometimes it can take photos in the dark that it shouldn’t be able to. iPhone is the camera for bars.
I used to leave Apple Photos empty, but I’d like to try using it more with iPhone 15. That means reversing my normal photo backup process, but two Siri Shortcuts are helping me keep it organized.
I haven’t yet decided which lens I like best. Here’s the same shot taken with each:
Video Game Thoughts
It’s unbelievable that my most powerful gaming console is my phone now. Maybe that was always inevitable, but I didn’t think it would be 2023.
I was planning on buying Resident Evil 4 Remake for Steam sometime soon. Do I buy it for iPhone instead? I did not realize I was living a multi-console life, but here I am.
Apple Arcade remains the best deal in video games if you like cute little indie games that only take a few hours to beat. And I do.
iPhone is also home to a ton of unique style games that are either never-ending or enormous ( and one might say, predatory), like Genshin Impact, Final Fantasy Ever Crisis, and Pokémon Go. I hadn’t played Go in years because my XR’s dying battery, but I’ve been dipping my toe back in lately. It’s still the most unique game on the market, the one true walking simulator.
K Sawyer Paul 
[…] Thoughts on iPhone 15 Pro Max – K Sawyer Paul […]
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