5 takeaways after upgrading from iPhone 13 Pro Max to iPhone 17 Pro Max

Over the holiday break, I finally decided to take the plunge and get a new iPhone after four years holding on to my iPhone 13 Pro Max. Here are the main differences I’ve been noticing so far.

Between being the stingy one in my group and living in a country with some of the world’s highest iPhone prices, it’s easy to see why I held onto my iPhone 13 Pro Max for so long.

But over the holidays, during a quick trip to New York, I finally made the jump and upgraded. I blame the idle time I spent waiting for the Apple Vision Pro demo.

Here’s what has been standing out so far:

Infinite battery life

As someone who tries to avoid anxiety triggers as much as possible, I never check the battery health percentage on my devices. But I didn’t need to go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health to know that something was seriously wrong.

Since I work from home, this wasn’t really a problem during weekdays. But on weekends, it was impossible to spend a Saturday or a Sunday out without having to top it up at least once.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that the biggest improvement I’ve been noticing with the iPhone 17 Pro Max is its seemingly infinite battery life. Even during the NY trip, where I used it heavily to take pictures and navigate the city, I couldn’t get it to drop below 85% after unplugging in the morning.

Obviously, battery health will degrade, and iOS apps (and even iOS itself) will demand more from it as time goes on. But if I had to rely more on battery life throughout the day, this improvement alone would have been more than enough to justify the jump.

Look and feel

As a fierce member of Team Caseless, I have to unexpectedly admit that I’m not crazy about how the iPhone 17 Pro Max feels in my hand.

Its finish is way too slippery, the rounded edges feel bloated, and although the iPhone 17 Pro Max is only about a millimeter thicker than my old device, it feels much bulkier by comparison.

Even the fact that the iPhone 17 Pro Max is about 10 grams lighter than the iPhone 13 Pro Max feels uncomfortable to me, as if it were trying to appear robust, while the iPhone 13 Pro Max feels like an actual heavy-duty piece of technology.

This is almost certainly a temporary issue after four years with the same iPhone. Still, every time I pick up the iPhone 13 Pro Max to prep it for sale and then switch back to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, the contrast feels a bit… disappointing.

That camera

Here’s another obvious point: it’s no surprise that photos taken on devices that are 4 years apart will have stark differences in quality.

But yes: while over-year camera gains might not be immediately apparent, they do add up over longer periods of time. Who’d have thunk it?

The only problem with the new cameras is that they made me regret not getting the iPhone 17 Pro Max as soon as I landed in NY. Scrolling through my photo library, the switch from the old iPhone to the new one is immediately obvious, particularly in low-light shots.

That Camera Control

Second unexpected admission: I like the camera button. While I’m still training myself to actually use it, I prefer it to left-swiping the Home Screen or activating it through Control Center.

I’m not a fan of the confusing gestures to actually control the camera, though, so I’ll keep them turned off (and I can absolutely see they now come off by default). But quickly pressing the Camera Button to invoke the Camera app, or pressing and holding it to invoke Visual Intelligence, feels more natural and useful than I spent the last year giving it credit for.

Always-on display? Nope

Here’s the very first thing I did as soon as I set up the new iPhone: I turned off the always-on display. Then, I turned it back on to give it a shot. It didn’t take.

I might change my mind someday and give it another try, but right now, for my workflow (and my ever-enduring quest to avoid any sort of unnecessary cognitive load), it just feels like a bug to leave the screen on all the time, even with its current implementation.

A few extra tidbits

Any workflow involving Apple Intelligence still feels clunkier than it should be. I have been trying to train myself to rely more on both on-screen and on-camera Visual Intelligence features, as well as on ChatGPT as a fallback to Siri, and the actual results have been better than I expected. Still, it feels faster to do most of these tasks on the Mac, which is perhaps just me showing my age.

The gains in screen real estate feel less noticeable than I thought they would, particularly the smaller bezels around the screen. Putting both iPhones side by side makes for a starker contrast, but in everyday use, I can’t really say that extra space makes that much of a difference.

Finally, I don’t really think there’s anything original or very insightful I can add about the Dynamic Island that hasn’t already been said or written. In my experience, it is a huge gain over the Face ID notch, and the interface for quickly checking things like a food delivery or controlling playback looks great. That said, I still can’t wait for it to go away, at least in situations where a pill-shaped dead zone takes away from an actual full-screen experience.

All in all, I couldn’t be happier with my new device. If my track record holds, I’ll be riding this one out until at least the iPhone 21, seemingly on a single charge.

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