iPhone 15 Pro Max: One Year Later Review

Intro we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the iPhone 15 lineup which means I've been using this iPhone 15 Pro Max for almost 365 days straight and yes I know I'm doing this a little bit early but that's simply because next month we have new iPhones to consider purchasing and so all of my time will be spent reviewing those phones and I don't think my opinions are going to change much in the next few weeks but in this video we're going to go over how my iPhone 15 Pro Max is holding up over the last year it's wear and tear and all of that and if it's worth hanging on to for maybe another year or two or upgrade to the next iPhone so let's start with Battery Life battery life CU I think that's probably one of the biggest differences after a year of use my battery is obviously degrading it happens but how much well I hate to even look at this section of battery health and settings because I don't know that it's like a clear one to one oh hey your battery dropped this x amount so this is how bad it is or whatever but uh in this section my battery maximum capacity is is now at 89% feel free to drop what yours is in the comments down below and how long you've had your phone would love to hear from you uh obviously I had 100% when I got it and when it was new it's not always that easy to decipher what that means for me in real world use but I can say that battery life has become noticeably worse over the last few months some of that might be in part due to the new iOS 18 beta that I'm running and some of it is due to the change in my usage habits I mean I recently got a new car that has carplay for the very first time I've never had a personal vehicle that has had carplay or at least one that I drive on a daily basis and that will eat up your battery I never really realized that because again I never had it it obviously uses your phone for all of the info Maps streaming Spotify or whatever and if you don't keep it constantly Plugged In which I do not you're going to be draining your battery so my phone is getting used quite a bit more than normal throughout the day just for that specific use case the new beta features like apple intelligence that's probably eating up a little bit of battery and yeah I mean it's been used for almost a year straight so obviously natural wear and tear to the battery I expect it to get worse over time I'm not sure if this is any faster than it normally should to me it feels like it has been but you know who knows now I can still make it through an entire day if need be if I'm a little conservative as well but I often find myself now just for Peace of Mind charging around 3 or 4 p.m. so that I have enough battery for the rest of the evening especially if I'm going to be doing something out and about usually I'm at about 40% around that 2 to 400 p.m. window so I toss it on a fast charger and get it back all the way up to like 80% pretty quickly and I have enough for the rest of the night other than that I exclusively charge my phone wirelessly every single night at bed not sure if Wireless versus wired would show any actual real world differences again let me know in the comments what you do what your maximum capacity is at but I just wanted to point out what I do the Build Quality: Life Without a Case build quality of the iPhone 15 Pro Max has been spectacular I've been a huge fan of the new titanium medum frame did not love stainless steel and all of the fingerprints that it shows I think this looks a lot classier and I think it's holding up really really well I had a ton of scratches on the stainless steel and I barely can notice any like major scratches on the titanium obviously there are some Nicks and dents from when I've dropped it but all things considered and for not using a case for the entire year I think it looks pretty good there could be far more damage to this phone but it's just built really well and it definitely can withstand some minor drops and scrapes the screen on the other hand eh not so much I mean I feel like there could be more here obviously it's really excellent at not breaking when you drop it but scratches can happen without even trying I mean I usually use a tempered glass screen protector I'd say over the last year 90% of that has had a screen protector on this phone right now I don't and I've noticed so many larger deep scratches and micro scratches and I just have no idea where that comes from but hey at least it's better than cracking iPhone screens have kind of always been like this over the last few years and it's just not something out of the ordinary but for me what bothers me the most is seeing those scratches on the screen I can live with a few Nicks on the side but the screen for some reason always gets me USBC is still something that I USB-C love having but I still hate that we are at least a few years away from the majority of other iPhone users getting it on their phones I still run into that issue on a daily basis someone asks me for a charger and I don't have lightning available for them or vice versa they may not have a USBC cable because they use lightning for everything we'll get there slowly but surely but it can get frustrating the action button is Action Button honestly something that I do use every single day I never thought I'd actually say this because after a while I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do with it but it's probably one of the more boring use cases there's so much that you can do with this button truly especially if you use shortcuts or in the future with iOS 18 developers can add their own control center quick toggles and those quick toggles can actually be used for the action button so it will get even more expansive but I use it to launch the camera app I use it constantly I love doing it this way it's so much faster for me and uh I hate that I'm wasting its powers on something so simple but I honestly need a button to launch the camera app I'm just programmed that way now and I love it and I don't want to go back now there are rumors of a capture button on the iPhone 16 lineup and honestly if it can launch and control your camera functions then I definitely will need some suggestions on what I should do with my action button since now it'll be officially free the A7 Pro chip that has A17 Pro Chip been great but I can't pinpoint any specific aspect of my daily use where I am noticing that chip is doing more to make any one experience better I'm sure it's out there and I'm sure there are things I just can't think of anything iPhone's performance have always been fantastic for me I'm not noticing anything dramatically better or worse this year that's not due to some beta bug it's been consistently good which is all that you can hope and ask for so if you're worried about performance please don't be it's amazing the cameras on the Cameras back those are still excellent almost nothing's changed here I wouldn't have expected it I have done countless videos on the camera and the photos in much detail so if you want to see that I'll hopefully leave some Linked In the description down below uh where you can check that out but I think it's been a rock solid camera system and I'm looking forward to the rumored camera improvements to the ultrawide camera this year as well as even further zoom capabilities with the telephoto camera Final Thoughts other than that it's pretty much been a fantastic phone it's been Rock Solid over the last 340 is to 65 days and uh if you're subsidizing this phone you'll understand that the difference between the regular iPhone 15 and the 15 Pro it's probably not that much more to where I would say hey don't do it it's definitely worth it in my opinion to pay that for the premium build and materials and some of those premium features but do I think it's worth going up to the new iPhone 16 Pro Max after one year kind of depends on everybody's use case uh and you know what you think about the Next Generation that's a musthave for you but personally for me I'm not seeing anything in the rumor mill that is warning a new phone after one year I think this could make it another two three years we'll see what the iPhone 17 is like but if you got an iPhone 14 or older and you're thinking about upgrading 15 is going to be rock solid as I mentioned it's a great phone I'm not sure if that's worth it for you maybe if you've got like a 12 or 13 take a look at that iPhone 16 kind of weigh your opinions and see what you might want but I'm happy with the iPhone 15 if you can get it at a good price I think you'll love it uh and yeah it's been so good so far but I'd love to hear from you in the comments down below if you have one how's your experience been if you don't have one but you're looking at getting it have I helped you make a decision go ahead and let me know down in those comments this been with Mac rers thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you around in the next video