00:05So I've probably waited my entire tech career to get an orange iPhone and it was also the launch
00:09of my new kid which means this is even more special kind of getting them both in the same
00:14year. So many of you have messaged me about the launch of this color saying this is the official
00:18Carl Conrad edition. I wanted to take some time to get used to the phone to set it up in
00:23my orange
00:24theme to give it all of its glory. So this is my review of the 17 Pro Max Carl Conrad
00:30edition.
00:44So we'll obviously start off with the design and the colorways first. You can grab them in three this
00:49year which I know a lot of people have said that they're not really pro colors. They're not
00:54neutral. You can get it obviously cosmic orange which is the launch spec my favorite one the silver
00:59slash white as well as the deep blue. I actually like that Apple is introducing some funky colors
01:04but it is the two-tone effect which kind of really throws me off especially when the light hits this
01:10glass panel. It looks more like light pastel. I love the aluminum. I love the shade of this
01:15if Apple needs like a designer for figuring out the proper spec of like orange. Hire me. That's all
01:22I'll say on that. The two-tone finish is needed because now they've switched back to aluminum
01:26from titanium. That's mostly to do with a thermal management. The phone has gotten quite chunkier
01:32for a pro model. The battery has gotten better which I'll get to in a second. If we bring up
01:36my
01:37older 16 Pro Max you can actually see a big difference in the height. It's thicker. It's slightly
01:43wider and of course heavier and it also has a new design in the fact that it is quite rounded
01:48now
01:49on the edges for that aluminum unibody design because of this glass back. So we need that for
01:54obviously MagSafe for wireless charging. It gives it I don't want to say like a cheap look but it
02:00would it be nicer if it was a bit more color matched in my opinion and to kind of address
02:04all the like
02:05scratch gate rumors or I guess I've seen so many things on Reddit. All the phones and like the Apple
02:09stores they're completely mashed up. People are very rough on their phones for demo models. I was on the
02:14fence about that but after using it for a while I can say that the anodization especially around
02:19this little camera plateau we can actually zoom up here. There is a bit of orange that has chipped
02:24off. Aluminum is naturally a lot softer than glass and you can see right on that really sharp edge there
02:30a bit of wear and tear. I even have a little nick on a corner and I can only imagine
02:34as this phone
02:35gets older than a month if I use it for a year especially without a case how this will get
02:39really
02:40really damaged and really dinged up. So I typically say if you'd like to rock a phone like naked at
02:45least grab some like minimal protection. That's actually where this full like color matched case
02:50comes in. This is from ESR. It's actually great because it's all completely uniform. It actually
02:56protects the little plateau there. It's one solid color of orange which once again orange expert
03:01you're talking to. It's a very nice shade. It also has this nice little camera guard which once again
03:05protects those three sensors and it has this little flip up. So if you are watching content
03:10neither landscape or portrait it serves that purpose to prop up the phone which is really
03:14nice. And the second thing that I will say I have installed a little screen protector on it. Once
03:19again 10-15 bucks. Protect your expensive phone. I know that it has ceramic shield too which is
03:24three times better scratch resistance but because these phones have gotten more expensive especially
03:28the base pro model like not the pro max that's a hundred dollars more and the fact that you can
03:33now get
03:34these in two terabytes which will run you over 2,000 or if you're paying like Canadian pesos
03:38three thousand dollars which is absolutely mental. Just protect your device. The last thing that you
03:44want is to scratch your phone after getting it for a couple weeks. Kind of breaks your soul on the
03:49inside. So that is the overall design. Like I mentioned another reason for the aluminum is to help with
03:54heat management. We also have gotten thicker to now finally have a vapor chamber in the pro model.
03:59So that really helps with a lot of heat dissipation. I've seen some other great content using like thermal
04:03cameras to actually see that heat dissipation at work. I will say after using this you know for the past
04:08month it does not feel hot to the hand or it doesn't feel like warm. The heat really seems to
04:13dissipate
04:14which obviously helps with performance. You can keep up frame rates whether you're gaming whether you're
04:18doing hardcore like video editing which this phone can obviously do. When I initially set this up in my like
04:23first week of using it I noticed it did get hot but after a quick little software update I noticed
04:29that kind of went away.
04:30There have also been a couple glitches more so with iOS 26. Some have been fixed. Some have not been.
04:37There are some things that I love about liquid glass like the clear icons the uniformity but sometimes
04:41I find when even when I'm scrolling especially with really colorful backgrounds and if they're
04:46multi-color it gets really distracting but that's just once again personal opinion. Maybe I need to get
04:51used to it more but you know I am a fan of things like updating for example the photos into
04:56the main
04:56library. That has been a welcome change but it's kind of like a hit or miss for me. Let me
05:00know your
05:00thoughts down below. The screen which I won't even mention or talk about too much because it's pretty
05:05much the same as the 16 Pro Max. It's still 6.9 inches. It has gotten slightly brighter so the
05:10peak
05:10nip brightness is now up to 3000. It's great. Bezels are skinny. It is slightly more anti-reflective so I
05:17think Apple said that it has seven layers of anti-reflective coating. Still not as good as the Samsung
05:22like S25 Ultra as an example. It's gotten better at cutting them down but I think it once again can
05:28improve more for next year. For the actual performance though like I said this is the best
05:32iPhone actually that they've made. It has the new chip the A19 Pro coupled with that heat management
05:37I think this will be the best experience that you're gonna get but once again the performance
05:43on my 16 Pro Max was also really really good if I didn't have them side by side if I
05:48didn't compare
05:49benchmarks. I honestly for what I do and I consider myself like a pro user I'm on my device a
05:55lot
05:55very very similar but honestly like the biggest improvement for me this year has been the battery
06:01life so typically I mentioned I'm a pro user so say for example on the weekend I was on my
06:05phone for
06:05eight hours and 45 minutes I'm typically over that seven hour mark for screen on time I'm on my device
06:12a
06:12lot I use it to make content. I found that on my 16 Pro Max the phone would die by
06:16the end of the day I
06:17could never last the full one obviously I used it for a full year the battery health wasn't the
06:21greatest this has 20% more battery than the 16 Pro Max which I think is a huge huge upgrade
06:28that
06:29comes in two parts the phone being slightly thicker as well as having the sim slot removed so this is
06:33fully eSIM it's fine but that improvement for me has been a game changer it's also one of the big
06:38reasons why I can't recommend the iPhone Air for a lot of people I'll leave my full judgment I made
06:43a
06:44separate video but at the end I'll kind of compare models which I think is best but for that reason
06:47alone the Air for me doesn't work and the second big upgrade I would say for me is the camera
06:52once
06:52again used a lot as a creator the telephoto now has been improved so now we have 48 megapixel fusion
06:58cameras across all three so that's the main the ultra wide as well as the telephoto now you can
07:03theoretically get eight different focal ranges so that ranges from you know 0.5 the macro all the way up
07:08to 8x the zoom has gotten a lot more impressive as I kind of took this out of being taking
07:12photos
07:13you know naturally in my day-to-day use obviously color reproduction is really good iPhone video is
07:18still completely unmatched their codecs are really good their color science is really good for most of
07:23the social stuff just uploading straight from camera that's what most people do anyway it looks really
07:28really good we now have the benefit of being able to shoot in raw as an example we've switched to
07:33it
07:34right now you have to create a bit of a rig on it you do need to connect it to
07:37an ssd
07:38but we have the option when you bring that footage into final cut you can change things like iso white
07:42balance so if you are like a pro video user really great feature once again so many clips now are
07:48just
07:48being recorded on iphone movies are shot on iphone it's really great to have that extra flexibility
07:54another welcome upgrade surprisingly for me has actually been the 18 megapixel center stage camera
07:59which is across the entire iphone 17 lineup so i'm just not on the pros but the fact that you
08:04can now
08:04change the orientation because the sensor is now like square you can choose to shoot between portrait
08:09landscape ultra wide without having to change the orientation on your phone welcome upgrade like that
08:14is super cool it also seems to be a lot more stable but if you're already coming from say like
08:19the 16 pro
08:19which has the same sensors for the main and the ultra wide you know what camera you're going to get
08:24you know the dynamic range is going to be great you know that the performance is going to be good
08:28like i said the big change to the 17 pro is that telephoto and the battery especially for like
08:35daily use those are the two things that you'll notice the most if you don't care about those things
08:40and say you want like a slimmer phone you don't care about the thickness i think that's the reason
08:45why the iphone air came out when i initially held this i was super impressed obviously you have
08:50those sacrifices it's super thin the battery definitely is not anywhere near as good that's why they
08:54sell their own little battery pack separately the fact that you only have one camera but if you are
08:59the person that just uses your phone i guess like a regular person not a pro user you just use
09:04it kind
09:04of you know normally you just point and shoot for your camera you only need that one focal range i
09:08think
09:08the iphone air is great like as a real techie i would love to see pro features like great battery
09:15life
09:15one day maybe we might get that in an iphone air body as battery tech gets better if apple finally
09:21decides to adapt like a silicon carbon battery and just makes it a lot better but honestly most
09:27people the iphone 17 like the base model this is still the best option to get the fact that we
09:31have
09:32promotion so that's obviously 120 hertz that's in the other two models the fact that you have still the
09:37two cameras for extra versatility and the fact that this still hasn't got a price bump i would still
09:43say that iphone 17 best recommended one across the board if you really want something new shiny to use
09:49it's a very different lovely experience you don't care about those sacrifices the iphone air and truly
09:55if you are a pro pro user if you need that versatility for the cameras if you care about
10:00that thick chunky battery if you really want this to last all day if you can really benefit from pro
10:06res raw if you really want those 12 gigs of ram if you want that base storage option which this
10:11now
10:11comes at 256 gigs if you want that two terabyte version which this offers you obviously have to pay for
10:17it that's who the pro is for and obviously if you are a big sucker for the color of orange
10:22you got
10:23stuck with one of the pro models this year so i hope you enjoyed my review i hope you enjoyed
10:28my actual
10:28time with it for most people if you just grab the 256 gig option and then if you are shooting
10:33say like
10:33pro res you can attach like an external ssd so that is 1199 or 1749 canadian and before we finish
10:40i mentioned obviously about the battery lot but it also has an increased battery charging speeds now so up to
10:4640 watts wired so you can go from zero to 50 and around like 20 minutes that's another big thing
10:51that i've noticed but if you already own the 16 pro max and can live without those little additions
10:56those little upgrades honestly i still think this is a great device these will honestly be cheaper
11:01you can get them on discount even i think most of you can skip the upgrade this year and i
11:06think
11:06this is just me projecting apple is kind of teasing us with the iphone air this form factor i do
11:12believe
11:12i've seen some like leaks and rumors already that we will be getting some sort of folding device so
11:17you can imagine the iphone air like two of these stacked together and that will be folding don't
11:22blame me if it doesn't happen but yeah that has been my iphone 17 pro max review thanks again to
11:28everyone that has messaged me about this colorway honestly means a lot in the end i am super stoked we
11:32got an orange iphone this will live on my orange tech wall uh till that no longer exists so hope
11:38you
11:38enjoyed it as much as i did and i'll catch you in one of my next ones peace
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