iPhone 17 Pro Max Details

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has had to work hard this year, but it also arrived with upgrades that cemented its lead. or at least made people willing to pay for it, including a new aluminum frame designed to dissipate heat much more efficiently, combined with an internal vapor chamber. A new, incredibly good camera system. Improved battery life.

 

iPhone 17 Pro Max Specifications

Here's a quick look at the iPhone 17 Pro Max specs:

1. Dimensions : 163.4 x 78.0 x 8.75 mm (~9.9 mm including the camera bump)
2. Weight : 233.0 g
3. Back version : Glass (Ceramic Shield)
4. Frame : Aluminum
5. Water and dust resistant : IP68
6. Screen size : 6.9 inches, screen-to-body ratio 91.60%
7. Screen : OLED, 1-120Hz refresh rate, HDR, 3000 nit
8. Resolution : 2868 x 1320px, Ratio 19.5:9, Pixel density 458 PPI
9. Features : Super Retina XDR, HDR support, Oleophobic coating, Scratch-resistant glass, Ambient light sensor, Proximity sensor
10. Biometric 3D Face Unlock
11. Keys : Left: Volume adjustment; Right: Lock/unlock key
12. System chip : Apple A19 Pro (3 nm)
13. Processor : Hexa-core
14. GPU : Apple 6 cores
15. Memory : 12GB/256GB, 12GB/512GB, 12GB/1TB, 12GB/2TB
16. Operating system : iOS (26.x)
17. Color : Silver, Cosmic Orange, Dark Blue

 

iPhone 17 Pro Max design and display

 

The proportions of the new iPhone 17 Pro Max have been tweaked accordingly. In other words, the Pro Max's camera bump hasn't expanded to the point where it's ridiculously large.

This bold new look may be popular with some, but the iPhone's camera cluster still has protruding lens rings that make the back of the phone uneven.

Ignoring the large camera bump, the rest of the phone feels very familiar. The thin bezels around the screen are more beautiful than ever, the slightly tapered edges feel soft in the hand, and the matte aluminum finish also contributes a lot to the attractive design of the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

 

With a 6.9-inch ProMotion display, the 17 Pro Max's screen size remains unchanged from the previous model. But there's a big upgrade lurking underneath - a new peak brightness of up to 3,000 nits. Plus, the aforementioned vapor chamber and cooling seem to be working well, as the iPhone 17 series doesn't get as dark as quickly when used in direct sunlight either.

The color chart shows that the display is quite accurate, with a slight green and yellow bias - which is typical of pentile OLED panels. However, Apple has kept it consistent here. There are barely any differences that can be observed with the naked eye, and with True Tone and Night Shift - users always have an algorithm that adjusts those colors to match the current environment. So what matters more is the user experience - and the experience with the iPhone 17 Pro Max display is excellent and almost perfectly accurate.

Apple also talked about a new anti-reflective coating on the display. Apple's new solution isn't as powerful as its Samsung rival, but it's definitely a bit of an improvement:

 

In terms of biometrics, Face ID is tried and true. It's fast, reliable, and has improved significantly over the years since its introduction (from the iPhone X, in 2017).

Camera

 

Now, all three rear cameras are 48MP 'Fusion' cameras. This means that with each camera, Apple uses a trick called cropping the sensor to simulate 'optical' zoom. Technically, it's not the same as digital cropping. On the other hand, it definitely gives sharper results than zooming in after the fact.

Apple advertises that these three lenses can act as eight lenses, which is a bit of a stretch. We'll call them 'Fusion' cameras rather than digital zoom, but they're not quite as powerful as eight lenses.

The zoom camera also has a new 4X quad-prism lens, which is just average—it's usable, but a little too powerful in some situations. Luckily, you can compromise and use the main camera's 2X or 3X 'Fusion' zoom to take photos.

Despite a step down in optical zoom, the new iPhone 17 Pro Max can now reach 40X digital zoom - a significant upgrade from the 25X of the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

According to PhoneArena, the iPhone 17 Pro Max scored 162 points, higher than the 16 Pro Max's 154 points. 8 points is not too big of a difference - the small difference comes from slightly better detail and noise handling, as well as improved zoom quality.

Performance & benchmarks

 

The iPhone 17 Pro Max features a new A19 Pro chipset, built on a 3nm process. Unlike previous generations, the new model has an efficient cooling solution that will finally solve the minor clock throttling issue that users have been experiencing for the past 2 years.

The A19 Pro is a huge step up in both CPU and GPU performance. The manufacturing process is upgraded to TSMC's new N3P. N3P is smaller than the previous N3E - not small enough to be called 2nm, but it offers a 5% performance boost and a 5-10% improvement in power efficiency. Then there's the RAM, too. The iPhone 17 Pro Max now uses faster LPDDR5X 9600 RAM, reaching 76.8GB/s (up from 60GB/s on the previous Pro model) and comes in 12GB instead of 8GB.

While the performance cores are noticeably improved, Apple has also upgraded the efficiency cores this year, from 2.4 GHz to 2.6 GHz. Overall, we have significant improvements in single-core and multi-core performance.

But the real upgrade seems to be in the GPU results. In 3D Mark's Solar Bay Extreme test, which focuses heavily on ray tracing, the A19 Pro GPU in the iPhone 17 Pro Max beat the GPU in the M3 iMac!

In the next test, the new vapor chamber on the iPhone 17 Pro Max delivered amazing performance, maintaining a higher score while the S25 Ultra suffered a significant performance drop.

With titles like Death Stranding, Resident Evil 4, Assassin's Creed now available on the App Store, these numbers will matter even more. Last year's iPhone 16 Pro struggled to hit 30 FPS. This year's iPhone 17 Pro Max surpasses that and can hit around 50 FPS. A great upgrade!

iPhone 17 Pro Max battery life

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has broken the 5,000 mAh barrier! All iPhone 17 Pro Max units sold in the US will have a 5,088 mAh battery. The rest of the world will have a 4,832 mAh battery, which is still decent, but not that impressive.

More than 8 hours of gaming time is a great achievement! In practice, the iPhone 17 Pro Max feels durable, but the battery percentage drops a little faster than the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

The new 40W wired charging makes a big difference. Apple says the iPhone 17 Pro Max can charge from 0 to 50% in just 20 minutes. Meanwhile, wireless charging remains at 25W MagSafe—same as last year, no surprises.

Reference price

Product	Selling price
iPhone 17 Pro Max 256GB	32,499,000 VND
iPhone 17 Pro Max 512GB	39,099,000 VND
iPhone 17 Pro Max 1TB	44,099,000 VND
iPhone 17 Pro Max 2TB	56,099,000 VND