The 17 Pro Max is the no-compromise iPhone we’ve been waiting for

As the clear frontrunner for the object de desire in the iPhone lineup this year, the iPhone Air seems to have freed up the folks at Apple to go all-out with the 17 Pros, to make the Pro phones somehow ever more pro than ever. Along the way, the 17 Pro Max makes several choices that champion function and performance over pure form, and as a long-time Pro Max user, I’m here for what promises to be the first truly unleashed Pro Max experience. 

The iPhone 17 Pro Max may be one of most redeeming outings

Visually distinct from its predecessors, the iPhone 17 Pro Max assumes a rather bold, industrial design that screams business, what with the elongated camera module - the Camera Plateau if you will - that stretches across its width and gives the dual-toned rear a more balanced look. Sporting a unibody chassis milled from a single block of aluminium, the silver variant on hand perfectly twins with the MacBook Pro sitting beside it, although the more adventurous or trend-inclined could pick up the bright Cosmic Orange colour that you could almost see from space. But my word, could this be the first time in forever that the Pro colors are more exciting than the regular lineup?

What hasn’t changed is the fact that the 17 Pro Max is still a chunky handful (at 233g) yet reassuringly rigid, and the Ceramic Shield 2 screen protection does double duty in providing better scratch resistance and an anti-reflection coating to reduce glare on the brighter 3000 nits peak brightness display. The choice of aluminum goes beyond the ease with which the anodised layer goes on – with thermal conductivity several times better than the titanium frame, the whole chassis behaves like a heat sink.

This, along with the vapor chamber cooling, a first for any iPhone, makes for a potent set of changes – not only does it allows the more powerful A19 Pro chip inside to go harder in demanding situations like playing Assassin’s Creed Mirage at max settings or editing 4K chips directly on the phone, but it also lets the phone do so over longer durations without throttling down performance to curb overheating. Across Grid Legends and Resident Evil 4, the story continued, and if you’re a non-pro buying the 17 Pro Max for gaming or generating AI brain rot, it will not disappoint. 

Tech pro figures

And for all those asking for thicker phones to accommodate bigger batteries, Apple did just that, packing in a 4832mAh cell into the slightly thicker 17 Pro Max. In all my weeks of use, save for the odd day where I just gamed for hours on end, I could not kill the phone’s batteries even with over seven hours of screen-time. Battery anxiety wasn’t something one worried about on the 16 Pro Max, but the 17 Pro Max does even better.

And while wireless charging speeds remain the same (Qi2-based wireless charging at 25W), the phone is rated to fast charge to 50% in 20 minutes with Apple’s new 40W charger. The rest of the hardware is expectedly without compromise – the bright displays are viewable in sunny conditions, iOS26 is slick as it gets, and you can go all the way to 2TB of internal storage (Rs. 2,29,900).

But let’s talk cameras, particularly the third telephoto camera, which is often the reason for many to consider the Pros. The 17 Pro Max enjoys the same selfie camera (Center Stage) upgrade as the other iPhones, which zooms in and out and changes the orientation based on the number of people in the frame.

On the rear, all three cameras now have a 48MP sensor, and the 4x optical zoom benefits the most from the bumped-up sensor with added reach and better low-light performance. But a big part of what makes iPhone cameras pull ahead is their exceptional video performance, whether it is switching between lenses while recording or superior stabilization – this truly is the professional creator’s Swiss Army knife. I haven’t even scratched the surface with the advanced ProRes RAW and genlock features, but I fully expect video professionals out there will.

With the 17 Pro Max, it’s absolutely clear – this is a pro-grade tool for those who want the absolute best on an iPhone – the best battery, the biggest screen and the best performance…and yes, that striking orange color. It will remain an overkill for most, and with the spec gap that always separated the Pros and the base iPhones the smallest it has ever been, at least on a lot of the stuff that matters, the base iPhone 17 will be the one to watch out for this season.

Rating: 9/10

Price: ₹1,49,900 onwards 

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