iPhone 12 Pro Max unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hey guys I'm Richard ne win, and it's finally here we've got the iPhone 12 Pro max to unbox today and so a couple of things about this phone um. It was delayed a little. I think it was delayed by what about two weeks uh, since the first ones came out. First apple did the 12 and the 12 pro, and now they did the 12 mini and the 12 pro max a couple of weeks later, and I'm not sure why that is, I'm not sure if it has anything to do with actual shortages. I think they actually want to spread out reviews because of the first time that apple has produced four phones um and on one launch right so um and I think apple is kind of in uncharted territory. There, like they're, trying to figure out how they can actually release four phones and still get that maximum media coverage that they're so used to right so um anyway um I buy my phones from apple, that's one of the reasons I get excited about these phones is because these are the ones that I actually buy.

Most companies just send me units and I review them and I send them back. You know a normal thing. I actually buy these um iPhones. I don't use them all year I'll. Furthermore, I will probably use as my primary phone for the next six months or so that's another reason I get excited because Apple only does flagships once a year, most android uh, most android phone manufacturers.

Do it twice a year so um, you know by the time like it's November now by next may, six months from now, I'm going to start feeling bored with this. I'm going to be a full-time, android user, again um and then, by the time September October, rolls around I'll, be back on. You know ready to check out iPhones again, so first you'll notice that the box is much, much smaller. So that's because there is no charging brick in the box, there's a cable but no brick. Now I'm not too mad about this.

A lot of people are very upset because apple charges, a lot of money for phones and to take pieces out by the way there are no um headphones in the box either, but to take pieces out feels like a slight to customers. Now um the thing is the thing about the headphones. I don't remember the last time that I've used headphones. That came in any box um, and you know those lightning headphones. Like I've moved, I moved to Bluetooth headphones years ago.

I've never used AirPods. I have them. Furthermore, I picked them up about a week ago they were 99 on Amazon, and so I was like you know what maybe now's the time, but I have Bluetooth headphones all kinds and I have Huawei's free buds, Samsung's Galaxy Buds you know like I have. Furthermore, I have tons of headphones, so I don't care about that. The charging brick is a little of a slide to customers and here's.

The thing apple has shipped 5 watt chargers with iPhones forever. Since, since the original iPhone, they started supporting fast charging with the iPhone 8 10 remember they came out the same year and none of those devices actually came with fast chargers. So if you wanted fast charging, you had to go out and spend about seventy-five dollars because remember that five watt charger was an USB type, a charger so to get fast charging you needed to buy an USB type-c to lightning cable, and you needed a lightning power, brick and at the time you had to get a 29 watt, one which was really, I guess for mac books. I don't even remember what that was built for when the 11 pro came out, or maybe it was the tenants- I don't remember, they actually started shipping with 18 watt charger, so you could get fast charging in the box, but the 11 still came with a 5 watt charger. So um, you know.

The idea that you have charges lying around is true, but you don't have the right charge of Iran, so you're still going to want to go out and buy a charger. It's not about e-waste with this one, maybe at some point like the thing is, and oh I love the way that apple packages, this stuff look at the way that comes off there's. So many companies in Apple is not guilty of this, because they're, they've been using 18 watt charging since fast charging, then before that was 5 watt, but so many companies with every generation of their product, they're jacking up the wattage in charging. You know um because remember fast, charging for everybody used to be like 15 watts. Now you have companies like OnePlus that are putting 65 watt chargers in smartphone boxes like at some point.

We got to ask if we really need this, but whatever that's a different topic, you know, but you know they're doing more and more every year, so obviously they have to stop. They have to keep shipping chargers because it's different from last year, but I digress. I bought a couple accessories for this device. I bought the uh the leather case, the uh California poppy color caught my eye and if we just pull this, it's called um the leather case with MagSafe. Furthermore, I'm not quite sure what that means, um.

So here's the case um. I assume that it means it supports MagSafe through the the case. So MagSafe is one of the new features that we're going to be checking out on this device. MagSafe was a very popular brand of MacBook chargers. The whole idea was that um, you know it magnetically attached to the side, and the whole idea was that if you go, and you trip over the wire, the wire is going to fall out of the laptop rather than having the laptop fall on the floor and break, so apple brought this and by the way, that's long gone from mac books ever since they switched to USB type c.

That is long gun, so apple entered reintroduced the idea uh with oh, they put the sticker because I picked these up from an Apple Store. They put the sticker over the tab to open the plastic, not cool. They should know better, but so apple brought this back for um for iPhones, and it's basically it's and I this is the MagSafe charger that I'm about to show you, and this just magnetically attaches to the back of the device and so and then you could just pull it off. You know it's. It's meant to be easy right.

I'm not sure that I'm actually sold on the idea. Welkin has one that I really wanted to buy, but it's not out, yet it's a car charger. It's a, and it's an it's a dashboard mount for your phone, but instead of a clip, it's just a MagSafe which is actually very cool because I mean you know I don't know if you drive with a clip, let's just get rid of some of this stuff, we'll pick that stuff up later um now. Is this going to attach? No all right, so this is MagSafe in the case means something different. So let's get the box open.

I went with gold, okay and um. You know I there's four colors um same as with the 11 pro, because remember they left apple. Has like three base colors, always one used to be called space gray. It's called graphite. Now then, there's silver, then there's gold and like with the 11 pro they added um the midnight green, but this with this year they killed the green.

They got pacific blue, and they love throwing out that kind of special color. You know something that that that you're going to want to have your eye on to make sure that everybody around you knows that you don't have last year's model right um, but then it's completely redesigned this year right. This is a redesigned iPhone. This is a new generation. Oh, damn! This is a nice product.

Oh, so we have flat sides. Now this is iPhone, 4 style. You know. If you remember, you know people watching. This might not even be old enough to remember the iPhone 4 these days.

Who knows the iPhone 4? Remember it, they haven't paired a glass back. It was, although it wasn't frosted glass like this one, it had a glass back, and then it had that stainless steel frame and uh. It was quite nice, and so is this, and I actually like how it feels in my hand. I haven't said that about a max size iPhone in a while by the way this is a max phone. I am coming from a non-max and there are some reasons for that: one.

They actually put a better camera in the max this year. Historically, they have not. The max was just a bigger version of the smaller version. That's it and that's still true for the 12 and 12 mini the mini is just a mini version of the 12. Right, so um.

You know they actually put it better, and I wanted to get the best, obviously so um also the battery. I believe it's not as big this year, and one of the reasons I went for the smaller one last year was because they made these promises around much better battery life than in the year before so and by the way they delivered. I did not regret that purchase at all. Let me just see how this goes. Oh, all right.

So this is what it looks like in the uh. California poppy leather case. I always get the leather case. It's ten dollars more than the silicon case. That apple sells.

Because, honestly, I hate those silicon cases. It's like they get caught on the fabric in my pocket, because it's so like just friction. Now, if we look, this is the MagSafe okay, so you see how it just uh it attaches there, and it just pulls up by the way. That's a pretty strong grip. I'm impressed, I don't know if all right, cool yeah, I don't know how I'm going to feel about this.

In my car like if it's just going to hit a bump and boom, the phone's just going to hit the ground, I'm on the iPhone upgrade program, so I do have Apple Care plus. If it comes to that so also in the box. What do we get? We have USB type-c to lightning cable, okay, and then we've got we got stickers, we usually have. We have one apple sticker, they've cut down on that as well, and there is a sim tool so, like I said, no charger, no charging brick in the box, and it is USB type-c to lightning. So unless you buy a phone, a new iPhone every year, which I do um or unless you bought a fast charger previously, which I did um you're gonna need to buy a charging brick to use this cable right.

If you upgrade every two years, you do not have an USB type-c power, brick that came with your phone right. It was always the five watt charger, so just throwing that out there, you probably do need to buy a charging brick. So I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to boot this guy up and um, we'll start with the iCloud backup process, and we'll be right back, but for you, it's just gonna, be like a split second all right. So we've got this restoring from iCloud. It's been about 20 to 25 minutes.

Since I walked away from you guys. I know it's just been a split second for you, like I apparently just said uh, but interestingly, this actually doesn't come with iOS 14.2 on it, and you know before that happened. You could have had me praise apple for how often their phones come fully updated. Uh. You know up to date, and that's not the case here.

This actually came with iOS 14.1, so it actually required that I restore from I mean that I update the phone before I go and restore from an iCloud backup. So, like I said, I got the gold one and man the gold it is really just like it, pops you know, um. It's got that frosted glass back which isn't so different from before. But man like look at it's already got a lot of fingerprints around the sides. Uh you can see it has that millimeter wave antenna right there, which is um.

You know necessary for millimeter wave. This is a 5g phone. That was a big feature um of the new phone like what you know. There are lots of new features here. Actually, like you know, it's got a bigger screen.

It's 6.7 inches. Instead of 6.5 inches, it's redesigned, it's got that better camera, but one of those features is 5g. So what is 5g right notice? We do need a millimeter wave. Antenna.5G is made up of different bands such as sub 6 and millimeter. Wave sub.6 is made up of low band and mid-band, so T-Mobile, which I'm on has low band, mid-band and millimeter wave, which not everybody has low band, is great the lowest of the lower the band, the better it is at penetrating buildings and walls, and getting to you wherever you are so that's T-Mobile's nationwide network is 600 megahertz, the lowest band, that there is um now the higher the frequency um, the worse, it is at penetrating buildings, so companies like Verizon are going to promote their millimeter waves that are getting multi-gigabit speeds. It's superfast, but you need to be in line of sight with the base station right.

It's like it can't even penetrate a window or a wall or a leaf or a piece of paper. These things will just bounce right off. So that's why you need millimeter wave antennas on all sides. Really I don't see one over here um, but really it has to be able to compensate for, however, you're holding your phone. So if you're holding it like this, and you're covering this antenna on the side um, you know there needs to be antennas on the front.

The back, the top the bottom, because it needs to be able to point at the base station that you see the uh millimeter wave does not work indoors. So you're gonna, hear companies say things like. Oh, you can download a whole season of Game of Thrones, while you're waiting online for your flight. Well guess what um there's no 5g indoors and if they do put a 5g base station indoors, remember not to put your phone back in your pocket while it's downloading those seasons of Game of Thrones, because it doesn't work in your pocket either so um. I don't really have to wait for this to restore before um.

You know for you to see it like. The home screen is the home screen that hasn't changed um! That's that's! One of the things about getting a new iPhone is that people often complain that it doesn't feel like a new iPhone, because once you get past the new hardware features. The experience really is just the same, and it's going to be the same and that's okay, you know I'm you know, we've come to expect that from years and years of iPhone upgrades, certain things are on different sides, though this time around, and you know if I, if I put these next to each other right, I don't know it is about the same right. The power button is over here. Uh, the NATO sim slot has moved uh.

You know we because we have that antenna over there. So we have the sim card slot over here traditional volume rocker traditional switch to control notifications, which I love it's one of my favorite iPhone features is that you could do that to silence your notifications. You know the only android manufacturer to mimic that is one plus and, and I love one plus for it so um, you know it's a beautiful, beautiful device. I, like the flat iPhone 4 style. Look, I think apple really did a great job here.

The camera housing not very different right, just that that glass, that square glass with rounded corners that you're not really sure why it exists and the lens is obviously go above it. You can see there so um yeah, that's the design of the iPhone, and it looks great. It feels great too. I'm surprised it feels so great because, typically flat phones, I feel like they don't feel so great. I feel like you do a little better with a curved back, but I really think apple did a great job here.

One thing that you will not find is a fingerprint sensor. Sadly enough, um yeah, there's no fingerprint sensor on the new iPhones. I I I think that's a huge mistake on apple's part. I think it's like you know I was debating, buying this phone because I actually tweeted it out like um how? Why would I buy this phone and then tell you not to buy it? You know. Maybe I should take my own advice, because I am obviously I can't tell you to buy this phone.

It's its um. How do I tell you to buy a phone that doesn't have a fingerprint sensor in 2020 when we're all wearing masks and face ID does not work? You know, yeah, I mean every other phone has a fingerprint sensor in the display. Uh google was the other company that went all in on facial recognition last year, and they stuck one on the back of their phone this year, a fingerprint sensor. So it's like how do I tell you to go out and buy a phone that does not have a fingerprint sensor on it when you're going to have to type a pin everywhere like when you leave your house, you put a mask on you're: going to have to type a pin all the time you know. Uh apple promotes itself as being very uh, covered minded and being health-centric, and I have to say they failed in this case, because I mean to put a phone out without a fingerprint sensor in 2020 is tone-deaf it's terrible.

They should be ashamed of themselves and, honestly, you should wait till next year's iPhone because of it um and hopefully or wait until you don't have to wear a mask in public anymore, because as long as you do it's a pain point. It's a major pain point that literally every other smartphone manufacturer solves okay, um. So yeah. What do we get? We got 5g. We got camera improvements.

Furthermore, we got the new design with the stainless steel frame, uh that camera improvement by the way like the optical zoom on this phone is 2.5 x and one thing I really have. I should say that the zoom lens is 2.5 x, and it kills me that um they say for a total of 5x zoom which, when they say for a total of 5x zoom they're measuring it against the ultra-wide lens, which is a shame you know, because you got other companies like Huawei they're, putting out 5x zoom, that's from the main lens. You know what I'm saying it's its um, a big difference and Apple is not taking lossless zoom seriously. They put out a phenomenal camera um, starting with the 11 pro that 11 pro. This camera was awesome, and it was the first time they put out a great camera since uh years, like the iPhone 10, the 10s, not impressive, um, but yeah, they really changed it around with this one and um.

Hopefully this one as well, I'm hearing great things about the camera so far, so um, that's gonna, be it for now. This thing looks like it's about ready, so I'm going to have to start digging into uh. It's almost ready. I should say because it's been a solid half hour since um, since I said I was going to start it up, but oh by the way we have the a14 bionic processor too. How can I miss that? That's obviously, every year apple has its own custom, processor and um they're great processors.

They are top of the line blow they blow any Qualcomm snapdragon or a Huawei curing processor out of the water they're awesome, but um. You know um they're, it's in the new iPad Air as well. That's why I truly believe: that's why the new iPad Air was delayed till October. They announced it in September. They released the new iPad, but not the iPad Air, and I truly believe that the only reason they delayed that iPad Air to October was because they didn't want people, benchmarking it and saying: okay, we already know the new iPhone performance.

You know, but yeah um, big performance gains again with the a14 you're gonna, see that year over year, Apple is putting its own custom chips in max. Now, if you followed along- and you know, we finally we're finally ready to go use this iPhone when sharing your location, use, alright, so we're starting to download apps. Now it's that's going to be gone for a while, um and so oh pair watch with new iPhone all right, stuff's starting to go off, use that okay. So that's going now um yeah, so this is finally starting to set it up. I it's its its kind of a shame because it activates the phone before it sets up so like when I was going through all that.

If I received any texts or phone calls I'll, never know, but um anyway guys, so I'm going to go play with this new phone, I'm going to edit this video so stay tuned guys. I'm going to have a review I'll, probably fast track this one to a couple of weeks. You know it's its not in the normal first in first out order, so stay tuned, I'm rich from Edwin have a great night. You.

Source : Neowin