Five Days With the iPhone XS Max: Mainly, It's Big

Another small-screen-to-Plus upgrade — except this time it's called Max

Has anything changed? That is probably your first reaction when you pick up the iPhone XS.

Every year, Apple's "S" upgrades work on the inside: more performance, new features, the same exterior.

In the past, even with the exterior unchanged, functions and interactions still changed a lot — Siri on the iPhone 4S, Touch ID on the 5s, 3D Touch on the 6s, water resistance on the 7.

But the iPhone XS and the iPhone X are twins, especially now that the iPhone X has been sped up by iOS 12. In everyday use — walking, sitting, lying down — you feel no difference at all. There is not much to say.

The larger iPhone XS Max is the real lead. Like the iPhone 6 Plus in its day, it makes you sure you are holding a new iPhone. On the 14th, the first day both phones went up for preorder, the small one was far less popular than the big screen.

This is the biggest screen Apple has ever put on an iPhone, 6.5 inches on the diagonal. We used an iPhone XS Max as our main phone for five days. Beyond the bigger screen and the tongue-twisting name, what else is different about the new iPhone?

The new iPhones, XS included, did change a few details on the outside

The iPhone XS Max is a full size up from the iPhone XS; the materials and the industrial design differ only in scale. But hold both next to an X and look closely, and you find a few changes almost too small to notice.

Take the speaker holes on the bottom. On the iPhone X they are symmetrical; on the new generation one side has only three, so the two sides no longer match. Apple has not explained why, but two things are related: better water resistance, and the upgraded stereo sound.

There is also a new antenna line at the top and the bottom of the new iPhone, probably to do with dual SIM — you will never spot it unless you hold the phone up to your eyes.

The bigger change is on the back. The iPhone 8, the 8 Plus and the iPhone X also had glass with a metal frame; the new generation keeps that design and improves the process. Apple's marketing materials call the new material treatment "atomic-level, surgical-grade."

The back glass on the iPhone XS and the XS Max comes closer to a mirror — it works as one. Put a reflection in it next to a reflection in an iPhone 8 and the difference is obvious.

The new iPhones add a gold version. The iPhone 8 had one too, but the two golds look nothing alike. That comes down to materials: the iPhone 8's metal frame is aluminum, with a matte finish, while the XS and the XS Max use stainless steel, closer to what gold usually looks like. With the glass back on, this gold reads deeper, close to ochre.

One more thing if you plan to buy the iPhone XS: the camera area is slightly bigger than on the X, so Apple's own iPhone X cases no longer fit.

That is the whole list of exterior differences, and since most people keep a case on anyway, the changes matter even less.

The biggest iPhone screen yet: better to look at, and a bit of a nuisance

Like it or not, iPhones for the next three to five years will keep the basic shape of the iPhone X. Sizes will vary, but the notch at the top will be the mainstream form.

The iPhone XS Max is an enlarged iPhone X. For the first time since the 6 Plus, Apple has made the phone bigger, and whether the screen is off or on, "wide" is the strongest impression it leaves — even though the aspect ratio has not changed.

If you have ever moved from a 6, 7 or 8 to its Plus, the XS in your hand will bring the feeling straight back. The iPhone XS Max really does resemble the 5.5-inch Plus line. We compared it with the iPhone 8 Plus: the overall dimensions are nearly the same, the 8 Plus taller by less than a millimeter.

But with no Home button, the iPhone XS Max's screen covers the entire front, and there the gap is huge. The XS Max screen runs from top to bottom; it is like holding a single sheet of display. The 8 Plus? It looks like something left over from the last century.

Anyone who likes big screens will like the XS Max; if you could not live with the size of a Plus, the XS Max is not for you either. It is a little too big. Over the five days I used it, I rarely put it in a pocket, and even when it fit, sitting down or riding a bike was awkward. It slid out of my pocket, too; a few times I nearly left it on the back seat of a taxi.

The XS Max also weighs 6 grams more than the 8 Plus and 34 grams more than the X — about 3.6 one-yuan coins. Coming from the X, that extra weight is very easy to feel.

The bigger screen also creates a reach problem. My finger covers the bottom two-thirds of an iPhone 8 Plus; on the XS Max it only gets halfway. It really is that big.

So most of the time the XS Max is a two-handed device: two hands to hold it, two hands to type, the second hand to open the apps one hand cannot reach. There is also iOS's Reachability, which pulls the screen down.

A bigger screen ought to show more, but third-party apps have not been adapted yet, so most of them simply scale everything up. The amount of content on one screen does not increase, whether you are reading news or articles or looking through photos.

WeChat is the same. At the default setting its type is enlarged too, and the phone starts to feel like one of those handsets made for the elderly. Only when you set WeChat's font to the smallest size does it look about like the second-smallest setting on an iPhone X.

Do not expect the XS Max to turn into an iPad, though. For now it just enlarges everything from the X. The home screen still holds six rows of icons, it does not support a landscape home screen (the lock screen does), and it certainly will not let you split the screen. The earlier rumors about Apple Pencil support look less believable than ever.

Curiously, the screen grew but the notch at the top did not: its length and width match the iPhone X exactly. So the notch now takes up proportionally less room. Whether any developer will use the space it frees up is doubtful — after a year of adapting to the iPhone X, most apps still ignore those two cramped strips.

Water resistance has improved a lot. The new iPhones are rated IP68, meaning they can sit 2 meters underwater for as long as 30 minutes. We ran no extreme tests, but we did splash water on the phone and drop it into a water bottle. In both cases, with the front of the phone wet, a finger could still tap the right thing on screen without misfiring — an iPhone X would have been unusable. Screen Time may be new, but the new iPhone also makes it possible to stay buried in a small screen in the shower.

The big screen leaves an impression, but what screen size is actually right? Steve Jobs once said 4 inches, a "truth" Tim Cook broke long ago.

Is the 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max right? Over those five days, every time I picked the 5.8-inch iPhone X back up I felt how light and easy it was. In a pocket or in the hand it seemed just about perfect, and one hand could just about reach the top of the screen.

Then again, you used to think the iPhone 4 was just about perfect too. Who knows whether we will get used to the Max?

A clear jump in camera performance, especially in Portrait mode

That covers the outside. The important improvements to the new iPhone are inside.

Start with the camera. Still two lenses on the back, the same megapixels and the same aperture, but the new iPhone has a bigger, deeper sensor: "the sensor is twice as fast."

The camera algorithms have improved too. Apple built a feature called Smart HDR, which is said to widen the dynamic range and produce better images.

What does that mean? In practice, the iPhone can now pull the highlights down and lift the shadows, so the whole photo is clearer and the transition from light to dark is more natural.

We shot by day and by night, and in the results the difference from the iPhone X is unusually clear.

In full daylight, the XS Max's images are whiter and brighter overall — not the effect of more exposure, but the whole frame turning clearer. Detail in the shadows sharpens up while the highlights do not blow out, so the two ends are better balanced.

At night and against the light, the effect is stronger still.

In the photos above you can make out the buildings, windows and wall texture around the light source, and at the same time the dark areas never go completely black. In the backlit bulb, you can even see the shape of the filament.

Portrait mode is finally getting refined, step by step. On the iPhone 7 Plus it was still crude, and terrible in low light. Two generations of hardware and several rounds of algorithms later, the iPhone XS Max still cannot match a DSLR, but it has come a long way.

Outdoors in daylight, Portrait mode gives softer, more natural results, and the inaccurate or abrupt edges around the subject have been cleaned up somewhat. Add the overall change to dynamic range (HDR) and the picture looks brighter, which makes the X's photos look a little dull. Even so, the overall difference is not that obvious.

Portrait mode also frames from slightly farther back: for the same subject, the viewfinder now holds a wider field.

Portrait mode uses the second camera, which has a small aperture and takes in less light, so it depends heavily on how bright the scene is. In the dark, Portrait mode on the XS Max has not really changed.

There is one more interesting feature, exclusive to the XS, the XS Max and the XR: any Portrait mode photo can have its depth of field edited afterwards — that is, how blurred everything outside the subject is — to imitate shooting at different apertures.

As for the front camera, the iPhone has never had a built-in beauty filter and the new one does not either, yet photos from the front camera come out looking as if it did. That again comes from the dynamic range: the whole picture is brighter and the contrast between light and dark is gentler, which leaves skin soft and natural. It stops well short of smoothing skin and slimming faces, but it is a step up from the iPhone X's front camera, which shot everyone at Shrek grade.

Processing speed and Face ID: the everyday things are faster too

The camera also owes its improvement to the algorithms. The A12 chip took up most of the iPhone segment of the keynote; Apple calls it the most powerful chip in any smartphone.

Chip specifications mean little to an ordinary user, so we timed how fast Lightroom renders a photo on the iPhone. That takes a lot of computing, so it shows CPU performance directly.

The result was clear enough: from importing to processing to rendering the finished file, the iPhone XS Max was faster at every stage.

Face ID has improved this time too. In fact its algorithm on iOS has been quietly improving all along. The new generation of iPhones did not change the hardware; the algorithm is still where the work is. After a year with the iPhone X, raising the phone to look at it and swiping up has become muscle memory, and it is deflating when it fails to recognize you.

The most obvious gain in the latest Face ID is unlocking speed. I registered a second face under iOS 12, and accuracy has improved when I am lying on my side, or glancing at the phone flat on a desk. Sometimes it reads my face even when I did not mean to unlock it.

Some problems remain. With a mask on, or too close to the screen, Face ID cannot see the whole face and will not unlock.

Finally, how does dual SIM work?

Android users got used to dual SIM long ago, and all three new iPhones this year support two SIM cards.

Because of China's particular rules, the iPhone can only use a physical tray, and the XS does not have the internal room, so the mainland China version of the XS does not support dual SIM.

Dual SIM on the iPhone XS Max is a bit of a surprise: there is actually only one tray, and the two SIM cards are stacked on top of each other rather than sitting side by side, the way Android makers usually do it.

So installing them is slightly strange. You pinch the two cards together between your fingers and slide them gingerly into the tray.

Once the SIMs are in, iOS prompts you to set a primary and a secondary number, or to name them whatever you like.

Setup takes a few minutes. Both numbers can stay on standby for calls and texts, with one designated primary. Only one of them can use cellular data, and you switch in Settings — it would be much handier if the switch were in Control Center.

The two cards share one contact list and one list of messages and calls. Calls and texts go out on the primary card by default; to use the secondary one you tap a button in the interface.

On the whole, dual SIM is not hard to figure out: follow the system's prompts to set it up and use it. There is still some awkwardness — the message list, for instance, cannot be filtered by which card received a text.

How much use dual SIM is depends on the person. I put my everyday number in the XS Max, with a Tencent King Card as the second SIM, which gives free data on Tencent's apps. The plan was to use the second one as a data card with cellular data on and keep the primary card for calls. But the primary card had plenty of data, so over those five days I rarely turned the second one on.

For people with one number for work and one for life, though, or anyone away from home who needs a local number, the point of dual SIM is obvious.

The iPhone XS Max and the iPhone XR sold in mainland China and Hong Kong will both come with a physical dual-SIM tray. The Hong Kong iPhone XS has a built-in eSIM, which does not work in mainland China.

Have to own the best, biggest iPhone? The XS Max is waiting

A bigger screen shows more, and Apple has proved its big-screen strategy right across more than one generation of products.

The camera makes this year's new iPhones genuinely better, but unlike a change in design, a camera is not something people can see and register at a glance.

Add that the iPhone XS looks exactly like the X, and that the iPhone XR is not out yet, and this year's two high-end iPhones may struggle to pull a crowd.

Analysts expect the same. Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at the securities firm TF International, wrote in a note that iPhone XS preorders over the first weekend fell short of expectations, and cut his forecast of its share of second-half shipments from 15-20% to 10-15%, mainly because consumers want the XS Max and the XR. He raised the XR's share of shipments from 55% to 60%.

Analysts may be underestimating the people who buy the best iPhone every year to show they are different.

On features and experience, neither high-end phone holds much appeal for anyone already using an iPhone X. After five days we found no strong reason to trade up. But if you are on an older iPhone, the XS and the big-screen XS Max will make everyday use noticeably better.

Pros:

• A bigger screen and a wider view
• Works even with water on the screen, and better water resistance
• A clear improvement in the camera
• Dual SIM

Cons:

• The bigger size can make it inconvenient
• Expensive