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Intro
Hey, it’s Adrian and the brand new iPhone 17 Pro Max is finally here. But does it actually live up to the hype? Well, I’m going to share my first impressions of the iPhone 17 Pro Max as a long-term Android user who’s only been using Samsung Ultras and Folds for the last 5 years. Now, Apple did not send me the iPhone 17 Pro Max. I generally don’t like Apple products. I think they’re overpriced and don’t provide good value. But maybe the iPhone 17 Pro Max is going to be the first iPhone to have me change that outlook because there’s some things that I see on here that I immediately like. So, let’s get into it. In the box,
Unboxing
you get the iPhone 17 Pro Max, a USB type-C to type-C charging cable, SIMJ tool, and quick start guide.
Design4
The design of the iPhone 17 Pro Max looks premium, and it feels very premium in the hand. No surprises there. Now, this comes in at around 231 grams compared to around 228 grams on the S25 Ultra. So, about three grams heavier. Now, I’m someone who actually does not mind if my phone is a little bit heavy and has heft to it. It just has a better hand feel. So, I’m really liking the look and feel of the phone so far. The phone has a good hand feel, feels pretty well balanced in the hand. I can easily just manipulate it without any type of issues. One thing I don’t really like is these super rounded and curved corners. And by extension, the same goes for the screen as well. I much prefer the look of the S25 Ultra. It has kind of rounded corners, but a little bit more squared off.
So, this just feels a little bit better in the hand for me. One of the things I immediately like and prefer about the iPhone 17 Pro Max or the S25 Ultra is the amount of buttons going on. So, we have a dedicated volume down and volume up button, and they’re separate buttons. So it’s not one unibody button like a volume rocker which is obviously much better and superior because you have separate tactility. Now we also have a button at the top here which iPhones usually have which is if I press and hold this down it’s going to put it into silent mode. So right away you have just very quick access to everything. Now on the other side of course we have the power button to just close the screen or you know unlock it. And then most importantly we have a dedicated shutter button.
So, I could just go ahead double click that. Of course, it’s going to launch the camera app. And then I can additionally press this to go ahead and take photos. But not just that. If I was to go ahead and kind of rotate the phone this way, I can actually use the volume rocker. So, I can actually press up or down and that is going to take the photos as well. So, basically, this is just a better design system with all of the quick access buttons that we have. And you can see this one is kind of flush on the frame, so you don’t accidentally press it. Then you do have to click it in twice to launch a camera app. Samsung should definitely consider adding a dedicated camera button. Like how can you call this an ultra phone and we have such limited buttons.
Even my older Sony Xperia XZ phone had a dedicated camera button and if you kind of half press it would focus and a full press would take the photo. Still one of the most beautifully made phones ever designed in my opinion. What do you guys think? You can see that I have a physical SIM card slot on my Pro Max. So, that means I have slightly smaller battery capacity than on the Pro Max versions that have eSIM only. There’s also fairly large speaker grill cutouts at the bottom along with a USB type-C charging port. And we also have a slim speaker cutout for front firing speakers. Let’s take a look at the redesigned camera bumper camera module. And I’ve seen people say that they don’t really like how this looks. I think this is the perfect implementation of a camera module.
And what I mean by that is if I go ahead and I put the phone flat down on this table and you know I’m just kind of navigating around. You can see there’s really no rocking or wobbling. It’s only if I start going like in the corner here and even now there’s no rocking or wobbling. I have to like press hard to get it to rock or wobble. So this is very stable and planted because of the arrangement on here. And this is without me adding a phone case. This is just you know stock. the phone is that planted and stable. So, I have to commend Apple for their design choice here. By comparison, when we take a look at the S25 Ultra, their camera lens arrangement is all on one side. It’s an asymmetrical design. I don’t think it looks that great. So, when you put the phone down, look at this.
Just regularly using the phone, there’s significant rocking and wobbling. It’s just lazy design. The other thing is, take a look at the camera module on the S25 Ultra. You can see there’s a little bit of a gap or lip under the camera lens where dust and lint can get trapped. However, on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, that’s nice and sealed. There’s no type of gap at all. So, yeah, just in general, this is a
Screen
better designed phone. The screen on the iPhone 17 Pro Max is a 6.9 in OLED screen with a resolution of 2868×320 pixels and this is running at 120 Hz. Now, the PPI on here is 460 PPI. Now, when you look at the S25 Ultra, this has 498 PPI. So, the text on the S25 Ultra is noticeably sharper for me compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but it’s not like a make or break. Both are still very sharp screens, and both are running at 120 Hz. But, I still do prefer the look of the S25 Ultra screen. It’s just more vibrant, more vivid than on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. and I prefer the color temperature and, you know, customization that the S25 Ultra gives me over the display on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. However, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has a higher peak brightness up to 3,000 nits.
So, this is really good for daytime use. I did use it out in the sun and it performed wonderfully, whereas on the S25 Ultra, this caps out at 2600 nits. It’s still good for daylight use, but it’s definitely better um on the iPhone 17 Pro Max for daytime viewing outside. The iPhone 17 Pro Max also has a decent amount of reflections going on, whereas on the S25 Ultra, they have an anti-reflective coating that significantly minimizes reflections.
Camera
Let’s talk about the camera performance on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. And in the short time I’ve had this, I’ve actually enjoyed the picture taking experience. So, we have a triple camera setup and we have an ultra wide, wide, and 4x optical telephoto or zoom lens. And each of these lens is at 48 megapixels. Now, by comparison, on the S25 Ultra, just the main lens on here is already 200 megapixels. So, it already dwarfs the combined megapixel count of the three lens on the back here. But in terms of realworld use, it’s not that apparent. The other thing is the S25 Ultra has an additional lens that the iPhone 17 Pro Max doesn’t. So, on the S25 Ultra, we have a 3x optical and a 5x optical lens, whereas on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, it’s a 4x optical lens only.
You can see from these photos that both phones give you great focal versatility all the way from ultra wide to 8x zoom on the iPhone 17 Pro Max and 10x zoom on the S25 Ultra. Both phones can do 4K video at 120 frames per second, but only the S25 Ultra allows us to do 8K at 30 frames per second. There is no 8K option on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. in terms of selfie performance. So, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has an 18 megapixel front selfie cam and the S25 Ultra has a 12 megapixel front selfie cam. Now, if I compare the selfie camera on the S25 Ultra on the right side here. So, this is that kind of, you know, full view and you could see it’s just more viewable area on the iPhone 17 Pro Max when you’re zoomed out.
Now, if I zoom in on both of the phones, you can see kind of the iPhone 17 Pro Max has a better focal range than on the S25 Ultra. And again, like I showed, we could jump into this horizontal view, which is not present on the S25 Ultra. I would actually have to rotate the phone, you know, physically. And let me know down below which phone you think takes the better selfies. Both phones also allow you to take 4K video at 60 frames per second with the front selfie camera. In terms of image quality, I’m really liking the photos coming out of the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The colors are very true to life. There’s no excessive, you know, oversaturation or oversharpening. All of the photos are pretty sharp, detailed, and actually notice it has pretty close minimum focus distance.
Here’s a demo of how quick it is to take photos with both phones. So, iPhone 17 Pro Max and S25 Ultra. So, you can see both of them seem to be taking photos just as quick. Video also seemed to be nicely stabilized with a lot of detail and good color on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. When it
Charging
comes to charging speeds, the iPhone 17 Pro Max can do 40 watts of fast wired charging, which is pretty pathetic in my book. There’s a lot of Chinese brands out there. You’re getting like 80 to 120 watts of fast wired charging. Now, the S25 Ultra is not much better. It’s only 45 watts of fast wired charging. So, both of these brands can do much better, but you know, they don’t really have much real competition in North America. Now, the iPhone 17 Pro Max does have faster wireless charging than the S25 Ultra. So, we have up to 25 watts when you’re using Macsafe accessories or CH2 accessories. And on the S25 Ultra, you only have a max of 15 watts of wireless charging, which is pretty abysmal in 2025.
The S25 Ultra also lets you do reverse wireless charging, so you could charge like a smartwatch, a pair of earbuds, and the 17 Pro Max doesn’t have reverse wireless charging. However, I don’t think that’s that big of a deal because unlike the S25 Ultra, this pad here is where we can attach MagSafe accessories. So, that’s native to this phone. If I want the ability to do that on my S25 Ultra, I have to use a case like this MacBack case, which will allow me to, you know, magnetically attach Mac Safe accessories. So, it’s a huge win just having that natively on the iPhone
New CPU
17 Pro Max. The iPhone 17 Pro Max also has the brand new A19 Pro chipset. Now, from what I’ve seen online, this is supposedly faster than singlethreaded benchmarks compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite on the S25 Ultra. But, I’m going to wait till I do my own kind of benchmarks and till I, you know, kind of use this in-game taking photos and videos. Overall though, when I’m not taking photos and things like that, it’s very fast, fluid, and responsive. But in my full review, I’ll touch on that more.
More Coming Soon!
So, those are my first impressions so far of the iPhone 17 Pro Max as a long-term Android and Samsung user. And I’m actually surprised at how many things I like on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. So, definitely consider liking and subscribing if you want to see my upcoming review of the iPhone 17 Pro Max. I really would appreciate that. I also have a ton of premium case reviews coming up for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, so stay tuned for that as well. And maybe consider checking out some of my other tech reviews. I review a ton of tech outside of phones. You know, phone accessories, cases, monitors, laptops, earbuds, mechanical keyboards. Pretty much something for everyone. And I really hope you’ll join me in my next video
Please note that some of the links in my video descriptions are affiliate links where I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
