I switched to iPhone 15 Pro Max as an Android fan 😱

I'm Alex Doby this is XDA TV and this is an iPhone 15 Pro Max so I've been an Android Fanboy for most of the past decade I've dabbled in last year's iPhones briefly but Android is my bread and butter and that ecosystem is still where I feel most at home which brings me once again to my yearly challenge where this Android person tries to move into the new iPhone and looks at all the challenges you'll face if you're also taking the plunge with the 15 Pro or Pro Max as always there's a lot to unpack here in my thoughts after around a month and a half daily driving this iPhone so stick around take a sec to subscribe if you want to see more like this and we'll get into [Music] it so first things first my iPhone of choice this year is the 15 Pro Max in white titanium I'm going pro Max despite my normal preference for the more manageable smaller Pro size just because the max is the only way to get the best camera Hardware this year that new five times telephoto is only available in the big boy iPhone and I'm choosing white Titanium because honestly this year's Pro iPhone colors are so painfully dull that the usually pedestrian white is probably the sharpest colorway out of the limited selection on offer here there's a good reason for the much more subdued color palette though the titanium frame is harder to colorize than the stainless steel or aluminium used in previous Pros but still compared to earlier years this is definitely one of the more boring iPhone Generations primarily just because of that lackluster color palette the other benefit of titanium though is that it's lighter than the stainless steel Apple was using before and combined with the trim down screen borders this Pro Max is physically just a little bit smaller than its predecessor both are subtle changes though compared to the 14 pro Max and it's still kind of a tank compared to a lot of Android flagships it remains a big chunky phone by any measure the pixel 8 Pro and many others in this 6.7 in ballpark are easy to one hand and reach across the width of the screen with your thumb while also being lighter but the slim down dimensions and ever so slightly lighter weight make me a little bit more confident about using this Pro Max without a case and hopefully it's a good starting point for things to get trimmed down even further in the 16 Pro Max the edges of this iPhone's display and side walls are also less sharp than the 14 series which is a nice quality of life Improvement for your palms though obviously the front and back are still very much flat sheets of glass even compared to nominally Flat Android phones that use a curvier sheet of glass around the back and I think the matte finish of those side rails also makes the 15 Pro Max one of the slipperier phones I've used recently the pixel Galaxy s23 Ultra and even previous iPhones use a glossy finish that I think is much easier to hold on to this time around it's kind of just a slippery matte texture all the way around with this iPhone's design though I appreciate the symmetry of those borders again just a little bit Slimmer than the 14 Pros along with the attention to to detail in areas like the camera module as it transitions from matte glass to glossy this is still a sharp iconic clean design that surely few in the Android world can [Music] match with the pro Max you're getting one of if not the best 6.7in smartphone displays with a seriously bright daylight mode that can push up to 2,000 knits to your eyeballs helped Along by ambient brightness sensors on the front and back of the phone for more accurate auto brightness that's useful because often the source of the light around you isn't necessarily facing the screen that display like I said is framed by smaller vessels though with the same-sized dynamic Island protruding through it we're on generation 2 now of Apple's hang a lantern on it approach to screen cutouts and so most of the apps that you use that are going to include some support for the island probably have done so by now aside from the usual media apps and timers Uber and Uber Eats are probably the most functional uses that I've seen for the Island but still it's not something that I particularly miss when I go back to using an Android phone and yes it has a USB Cort now which for almost everyone will be a much smaller deal than the online tech fan bubble was making it out to be in the runup to launch it's great for me personally because now the Chargers I use for literally everything else also charge my iPhone but honestly I'm wirelessly charging most of the time anyway and although the move to USB 3 data speeds is a big deal for some creators I'd already found airdrop mostly scratched that itch when I needed to offload large video files from an iPhone to a Mac so let's talk about my experience setting up this iPhone before switching my main physical Sim was in a pixel 7 Pro and because I'm in a country where the iPhone is actually sold with the SIM slot porting my number and data plan over to the 15 Pro Max involved the Arcane process of opening up the SIM tray the pixel scooping out the SIM and plopping it into the iPhone no need to deal with QR codes or calls to my carrier or performing a blood sacrifice to the gsma turns out when you take a physical Sim out of one phone and put it in another your line just magically moves across who knew I previously used eims on vone here in the UK and the experience has been just fine but I've also experienced issues with some carriers in other countries and I've also heard plenty of folks in the US having a nightmare transferring eims across from iPhone 14 to 15 even when Apple does everything it can to make that process as seamless as possible so yeah I'm sticking with the physical SIM for now it at least makes things easier if and when I do decide to stick it back in an Android phone the next part of the process though wasn't without a few Road bumps and the main reason for that is this guy WhatsApp so prior to this I had a 14 proax set up on a second Sim but there's a very specific process that you need to go through to bring your WhatsApp data across from an Android phone and that involves the switch to iOS Android app which in essence means redoing a lot of the initial setup up because in a lot of ways moving from Android to iOS means starting over with a fresh install of iOS the problem is moving WhatsApp between phones is well a pain in the ass at the best of times even more so when you're moving between platforms and even more so since WhatsApp switched from sending authorization codes Via SMS to sending via WhatsApp message to your old device now to cut a long and very annoying story short the processor moving WhatsApp from Android to iOS wipes the WhatApp data on the Android phone only sometimes when you're setting up WhatsApp on the new device it'll demand a code from your old device without the option to switch to SMS if you get stuck in this situation like I did the only option is to factory reset restore WhatsApp on the Android phone and start the whole process over pretty much the antithesis of the it just works experience you're looking for when you switch to a new Apple product other single device messaging apps well WeChat work just fine same as moving from Android to Android and line still complains at you and makes you junk Orit 2 weeks of recent message history which sucks but seriously just trashing your entire message history may be easier than the song and dance that WhatsApp put me through say what you like about the other forms of Apple ecosystem lockin and we've got a whole video on that topic but having to deal with BS like this when porting over WhatsApp and line messages is just as obnoxious a form of platform lock in once I was set up with my shiny new iPhone once again the thing I appreciate the most about iOS isn't really the way it looks or how it helps me get stuff done it's the ecosystem and how easily everything fits together using a Macbook once again I'm able to rely on things like airdrop and continuity to send files and clipboard text between my devices Apple pay whether on my Mac iPhone or Apple Watch Works flawlessly and on the iPhone actually links deeper into financial institutions data allowing you to see available balances and transactions made outside of Apple pay which is a Edition from there it's easy to be drawn into maybe picking up a couple of air tags for that upcoming trip or even pulling the trigger on an Apple Watch which is what I actually did for the first time and the gravitational pull of the ecosystem only becomes stronger once it also incorporates your daily health information and those all important streaks as for customization the general perception of iOS is that it's less customizable than Android and that's kind of true and also kind of not iOS opened up to much more customization around theming a couple of years back if you're into that kind of thing and I also continue to enjoy the lock screen customizations first brought about last year in iOS 16 especially where you can create color wash or duotone versions of your favorite photos what you do Miss from Android is the ability to go all out and replace things like your launcher or the default dialer although custom keyboards and browsers do work just fine on an iPhone and things are only likely to become more open within the next 6 months as side loading and third party app stores potentially enter The Fray joining the iOS world still means seing quite a bit of control over how your phone looks to the apple design team most of my personal data still lives in the Google world Google photos is my go-to app for keeping all my pictures in sync across the iPhone and other devices I'm still using Chrome because all my stuff lives there too and it makes syncing passwords across devices much easier because Chrome itself can act as a password manager on iOS and I'm still keeping Google fit around for similar reasons these days it's doing a much better job of keeping everything in sync between devices without any third party hackery that said I'm still signed up to a 50 gig iCloud package for things like photos on the Apple side and full device backup through iCloud speaking photos one thing I do notice that some minor annoyance likely to stick around as standards are worked out is that HDR photography across Android and iOS is a bit of a mess right now the pixel 8 Pro will quite happily display HDR shots from both my iPhone and the pixel camera itself but on the iPhone it's SDR only in Google photos you'll need to view your iPhone photos in the Apple photos app to see them in all that HDR Glory the exception is video which shows us hdr on both regardless of which device it was shot on I don't want to go too deep into a rabbit hole around HDR standards just yet but just now the whole area is kind of messy right now and hopefully future software updates will be able to straighten things out one addition in the 15 Pro Series that kind of spans both both hardware and software is the new programmable action button here the concept isn't anything new it's been a thing in the Android world for the better part of a decade I'm using it as a camera shortcut because I find it quicker and less clunky than the usual lock screen shortcut button but the real Hidden Gem here is the ability to tie it into ios's shortcuts an immensely powerful but little used feature that essentially gives you a custom button for thousands of programmable functions want a chat GPT button for example that's totally possible here it's often said that iOS is easier to use but less functional than Android but shortcuts in particular and by extension the new action key really test The credibility of that idea performance-wise I haven't noticed a whole lot of difference between the 15 Pro here and my previous 14 pro obviously benchmark scores are higher and if you're a big gamer you may notice improve frame rates that could be especially true once more games start to adopt the A7 Pro's Hardware rate racing capability I think we'll probably look back on this iPhone though as an important milestone in Apple's move to finally tackle console and desktop gaming in a big way this thing is already powerful enough to run titles like Resident Evil Village and as the Apple silicon in MacBooks becomes quicker and more graphically capable we could see some of those benefits starting to trickle down to iPhones running chips like the a77 pro as for regular everyday phone stuff though it still does all of that just as well as a 14 pro or even a 13 or 12 iOS still isn't Flawless and can still drop frames in places just like some Android devices and battery life is in a similar ballpark to my 14 pro Max 2 in my experience easily getting me through a full day even with heavy use with up to 7 or 8 hours of screen active [Music] time the big deal camera feature in this generation of iPhone is the new five time zoom camera enabled through a clever concoction of tiny mirrors between the camera glass and the sensor that's only available in the Pro Max this year the regular 15 Pro comes fitted with the same three times Zuma as the 14 pro so let's tackle that new zoom camera up front because I think it's a real mixed bag and for me probably the biggest letdown given all the pre-release hype around Apple finally adopting a folded telephon or camera can you take goodlooking five time shots with this camera absolutely yes but with a bunch of caveats attached this camera is best at five times shooting something like a portrait where you get a nice bit of extra depth separation in your shot because of that F over 2.8 aperture whether it's people pets or pumpkins that's how Apple expects you to be shooting with the five times camera and it's surprisingly tolerant of moving subjects to considering the relatively small sensor size where it falls down is in middling to low light and crucially zooming beyond that five times figure Venture into the territory of 10 times or above and apple is outclassed in still photos at least by Android flagships like the pixel8 pro and s23 Ultra take this shot at 20 times and you'll see a lot more software guesswork in the details here versus the Google and Samsung phones five time shots from the iPhone also exhibit more noise than those from the two Android Rivals even in daylight as you'll see here and that's a little weird because in low light the iPhone's night mode can clean up Zoom shots pretty well problem is you can't force night mode 100% of the time like you can on Android phones sometimes you have the option but if iOS decides it's too bright then no night mode for you that's an issue in shots with the wide and Ultra wide 2 occasionally I've had more than a few instances where I'd like night mode to fire but because some parts of the scene are brightly illuminated I just don't have that option and the result is a dimmer less pleasing shot than I get from a flagship Android camera as for those other two cameras the wide and the ultra wide it's largely a Repeat Performance with the 14 pro because it's the exact same camera Hardware in there both can take relable pleasing shots and the main sensor in particular is large enough to produce a good bit of natural buker which I appreciate in certain shots like this and the ultra wide while definitely nothing special in lower light can produce sharp looking macro shots like this with minimal effort the iPhone camera despite its hit and miss five times telephoto is still a mostly excellent point and two performer if you're used to the colors of Samsung's Android phones you may find the iPhone output just a little muted by default but there are additional modes like Rich contrast here that can Jazz things up a bit and finally on the subject of Stills I really appreciate the default 24 megapix mode that you get with the iPhone sucking in a canvas of pixels that's twice as large as the average Android camera and doing so in surprisingly small file sizes thanks to the hgif format video is once again where the iPhone really shines though prores log support is included now up to 4K with 30 frames per second a nice addition for creators and probably overkill for most other people unless you're doing a lot of color grading you're not going to get much use out of it but the iPhone's versatility in shooting moving pictures is still to be envied with some of the best stabilization around including the excellent action mode Now supported even at five time zoom thanks to that new telephoto and the Cinematic mode although quite situational does a great job adding extra depth to shots of people or any kind of moving scene where you've got a bit of separation between your subject and the background for me as a Creator the only camera that's come close most the iPhone's versatility in this manner is the Oppo findex 6 Pro which root forces its video capabilities by just having enormous sensors all around the iPhone's video strength I think is more a combination of just good Optics and really excellent processing and software so after a month and a half with the iPhone 15 Pro Max I'm pretty happy with this thing and at the time of talking my main Sim is still in this phone we'll see if that lasts in the months ahead that's said this really isn't a huge upgrade over the previous generation it's a bit Slimmer a bit lighter and comes with a new zoom camera that's far from an easy sell especially if you're taking a lot of longer telephoto shots in other words if you weren't already sold on the iPhone formula there's little here to sway you no 1-in camera sensor no giant battery capacity super fast charging or any of the other more exotic features that the competition relies on but the Polish of the iOS experience is what I really appreciate about the iPhone phone whenever I Venture into that world and a big part of what makes me a little reluctant to move back to Android when I have temporarily switched in the past call it the Hotel California effect if you like that said with this iPhone I can continue using 99% of the Google apps and Services I enjoy from the Android world and I still have the option of whichever Apple Alternatives I want as well the iPhone might not be a home run in terms of still photography I still think the pixel 8 Pro probably takes the crown there and I don't even think it's a particularly close contest if you look at some of the side-by-side shots but let's be honest here it's more than good enough and the iPhone makes up for its handful of photographic weaknesses with truly excellent video capabilities so let's see how I get on with this iPhone longterm I revisit in a few months and see if I'm still using it as a daily driver and if you've ever switched from Android to iOS or vice versa let me know why in the comments and how it went for you take a sec to subscribe so you don't miss all coverage of Android iOS and everything in between but for now thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: XDA

Views: 36,255

Keywords: XDA Developers (Website), Android (Operating System), Android (Software), Android Rooting (Software Genre), Technology, Smartphones

Id: mxhHJ5OJDQU

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2023