In the next few weeks, my 16 Pro Max will be put to one side, so let’s look back at what it’s been like to use

The iPhone 16 Pro Max has been a great daily for me – but as good an experience as it’s been, it may very well be my last Pro Max that I ever buy.

More on that later, but first, let’s start with the battery, as it’s always one of the hot topics when it comes to any long-term review of an iPhone.

iPhone 16 Pro Max battery

Again, at the risk of sounding boring, it’s been good, and even better than the 15 Pro Max that I was running the year before. I’ve been away from the studio more this year on location shoots or out at events, meaning the iPhone 16 Pro Max has had more real-world living to deal with.

I’ve never suffered from any battery anxiety, and I can only recall one time that I was left close to running out of juice – and to be fair, that was after a long 15-hour day in London. I’d been streaming videos on the train, using maps and using the camera, so I can’t come down too hard on it for struggling at the end of that day.

Looking at my battery health, the stats bear out what I’ve been telling you. My battery capacity is still at a perfect 100% with 243 cycle counts. The 16 Pro Max has been charged exclusively using MagSafe charging, and I’ve had the limit set to 95%.

Chatting to other iPhone 16 Pro Max users, I’ve heard stories of them saying their phones have got hot, very hot during day-to-day use, but mine’s been fine – even when the display brightness has been cranked up when I’ve been out for the day.

I know there’s talk of a vapour chamber coming to this year’s 17 Pro Max – so based on my experience this year, that should take a good battery and make it even better.

It’s been the best battery of any of my three Pro iPhones, although no match for the mighty 16e, and we’ll be chatting about that a bit more later on.

Durability

I’m a case and screen protector-free kinda guy, so in some way, it’s a brutally honest take on what the build quality of my iPhone 16 Pro Max has been like.

Apart from a very minor ring mark from the MagSafe charging, which can only be seen in certain light, and from certain angles anyway, the back glass is in perfect condition.

The gold titanium rail is also unmarked. The fact that they’re moving away from titanium on this year’s Pro Max (if the rumours are true) is baffling, as the durability and weight saving of the titanium has been a big win as far as I’m concerned. It looks and feels good, too.

The front glass, though, continues to be an issue for iPhones in general.

While I understand that there has to be a balance between how scratch-resistant they make it and not being too brittle, nearly every iPhone user I know complains about scratches on the front glass.

I always put my phone in a pocket by itself – it’s never up against keys, for example, and I always place it camera side down on tables, yet still I have several scratches on my screen. How they’ve got there is a mystery to me. They’re not bad enough for me to want to get a replacement screen, but they are visible.

I have Apple Care on this phone – more for theft than anything else, but as I use the phone case-free, I’ve always felt it was good peace of mind to have insurance on this phone.

By comparison, a few years ago, when I used the Pixel Pro, its screen lasted much better than the iPhone’s, so the ability to improve the scratch resistance is there, and Apple needs to up their game.

There are rumours that some sort of anti-reflective coating might be coming to this year’s Pro Max, and whilst I welcome that, I hope it doesn’t compound the situation.

Camera & the Action Button

I’ve written before about the cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

They are exactly what we’ve come to expect from iPhone cameras. The cameras have proven to be so good that I’ve started to leave the Pro Max at home and take an actual camera with me now. This year, I’ve fallen in love with photography and have been pushing myself to learn more.

Ironically, I have the iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhones in general to thank for that.

I love the three focal lengths that the main camera on here gives you, and my go-to is to shoot in a 4:3 ratio using the 35mm lens. It’s given me a camera-like experience and some fantastic results. Being a camera and photo snob, I rarely use the selfie camera, but on the odd times I have, it’s passable.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the macro feature, and I rarely shoot in the ultra-wide either – well, until recently, that is. Over the past month or two, I’ve played around with both the .5 and 2x options, and the results have been better than I had expected. But as a rule, I stick to the main wide-angle camera.

I use the ProRes video feature every week as a throwaway angle on my videos, and the results are ever so good. The colour match I’m able to get from the iPhone 16 Pro Max video and my main camera are ever so close. The biggest giveaway that I’m shooting on the iPhone is the lack of any fall-off, depth of field or bokeh.

Again, there are rumours of 8K video coming to this year’s iPhone Pro models, but I do wonder how much, if any noticeable improvements, there will honestly be visually.

It took me a good few months to get used to the Action Button. Initially, I forgot all about it, but after a few months, muscle memory kicked in and I started to use it. I say use it – I use it for one thing only, and that is to launch the camera – that’s it. For all the other features, such as exposure, styles, zoom and depth, it’s just too fiddly. For those, I stick to the on-screen menus.

The button is in the wrong position, too. If you shoot in portrait, it needs to be higher up, and if you shoot landscape, it needs to be nearer the bottom corner for better balance. I can see what they are trying to achieve with the Action Button, and hopefully it may iterate into the finished product, but as it stands, it’s overcomplicated and badly executed.

iOS 26 and the future

I said earlier that this may very well be the last Pro Max I buy, and that’s for a few reasons.

For reviewing purposes, this year I’ll be getting the iPhone Air. It’s a new category, and there’s plenty I want to try out on it. But I now realise that the iPhone 16 Pro Max is more phone than I need!

As I said, generally, if I know I’m going to be shooting that day, then I’ll take my Canon out with me. That means the extra weight and bulk that the Pro Max iPhone carries because of the cameras is a waste on me.

The other game changer has been the iPhone 16e. Initially, I bought that merely out of curiosity, but it has been a game-changer for me and the phone I tend to carry around most with me now.

It’s small, light and compact. You almost forget you have it with you – it’s that light. It’s proven to be perfect for long-day use as well. The call quality, possibly because of Apple’s C1 Modem, is the best I’ve had on any iPhone, and the battery life is simply another level. It’s almost impossible to drain the battery on the 16e. Until you try it, you won’t get quite how impressive it is.

Also, with phone theft still a real issue in any city, the 16e is less of a target. That said, I still tend to keep the phone in my pocket most of the time and use AirPods.

I’m going to mention the new iOS 26 in a moment, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the 16e’s battery has been this good whilst running the public beta on here! I mean, if it’s this good now, it’s hard to imagine how much better it’ll be when it’s running the full release on it.

Let’s hope that whatever magic they’ve pulled on the 16e that it filters through to the other phones in the range this year.

The 16e gives me all I want from an iPhone and still keeps me in the ecosystem. I’ve fallen in love with the simplicity of it! What started as simply being a phone I was going to review has instead changed my mind on what I want from a phone.

I’ve been running the public beta of iOS 26 on the iPhone 16e too – and boy, is that something special.

Having come through a terrible eighteen months, Apple has bounced back with a vengeance! Liquid Glass, although the headline feature, is actually the part that impresses me the least!

As a UI experience, it’s clever and opens up the screen real estate because of its transparency, but there is so much more to iOS 26 than just Liquid Glass. There are so many small, thoughtful and carefully executed details and elements to iOS 26 that matter so much more.

If you haven’t experienced iOS 26 yet, trust me, when it goes on full release, you are going to want to install it straight away.

Final thoughts

The iPhone 16 Pro Max has been the best Pro iPhone that I’ve used.

It’s left me wanting for nothing and has performed well day after day, and most of the things we’ve historically complained about have been sorted.

It’s ironic then, isn’t it, that when I finally get an iPhone Pro Max that is pretty much perfect, it may well be the last one I buy!

Thank you, iPhone 16 Pro Max – it’s been a fun year.