iPhone 17 Pro Max from an Android user's view, including camera comparison

As a committed Android user, I take a close look at the new iPhone and the new iOS version every year because I’m afraid of missing out on something cool. Here I write about what excites me about the iPhone 17 Pro Max and iOS 26 and what I’m missing compared with current Android smartphones.

What I like

Premium feel. Apple still releases high-quality devices, equally across iPhone, iPad, MacBook, AirPods, and Apple Watch. Hardly any other manufacturer pulls that off like this.

Ecosystem. All devices communicate seamlessly with each other. A few years ago, that was a unique selling point of Apple’s, and I had a hard time breaking out of this ecosystem. By now, Samsung and Xiaomi have caught up so much that they are no longer behind Apple in anything. The nice thing about Android: the ecosystem works 95% independently of the manufacturer. I can buy a smartphone from one manufacturer and a tablet or a smartwatch from another, and it all still works together.

iOS 26. The interface is modern and stylish. Despite reports of many bugs, I had no huge bugs on the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the iPhone Air, just occasional freezes. I couldn’t search in the Mail app, and on the iPhone Air with eSIM, a pop-up kept appearing asking whether I want to activate iMessage and FaceTime. I like the new Liquid Glass. However, everything was so transparent that icons and notifications were sometimes hard to read. With iOS 26.1, which has just been released, you can choose in the settings whether the icons are fully transparent or slightly tinted.

Improvements on the 17 Pro and Pro Max:

• A battery that is 138 mAh bigger. The battery life of the Max devices has always been really good, though.
• Three 48-megapixel cameras: main camera, ultra-wide, and now also the telephoto lens, previously at 12 megapixels.
• The front camera has 18 instead of 12 megapixels.
• Autofocus with Center Stage recognizes what you want to photograph and makes sure everything is in the frame. Unfortunately, that only works with the front camera.
• My highlight: on the front camera, I switch from portrait to landscape with a finger tap, without rotating the iPhone. I hope Samsung and Google copy that soon.
• New is a vapor chamber for cooling. But it only helps heavy users and gamers, for example when editing large video files. In normal everyday use, you won’t notice it.

What I’m missing

Design

The iPhones are high-quality, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max, against the trend toward slimmer, lighter devices, is 0.5 mm thicker and 4 g heavier than its predecessor. That is due to the full-width camera bar, the bigger battery, and the vapor chamber. Very few people need this cooling, but they have to carry it around and pay for it. That is why I’m more convinced than ever that the 17 Pro or Pro Max only makes sense for pro and heavy users. Everyone else will be just as happy with the iPhone 17 or a predecessor. After five years of little innovation, I would have expected Apple to find a way to make the devices more compact. The days when we want to carry bricks around with us are over in 2025.

I don’t like the duo back so much either: the separated glass panel has a different shade of orange than the aluminum body. That is a matter of taste, and I prefer a back in a uniform color.

Camera comparison

Many people buy an iPhone believing they are getting the best smartphone camera. Since I can test all current smartphones side by side, I want to clarify that this isn’t necessarily true. I compared the iPhone 17 Pro Max with the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and the Huawei Pura 80 Ultra.

• Main camera: Hardly any big differences, which shot you like is a matter of taste. The iPhone’s colors have less contrast.
• 2x zoom: Very similar, also thanks to the improved telephoto lens.
• Low light: The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra impresses with sharply rendered blades of grass. On the iPhone, the beige tint stands out, the classic iPhone style, which I don’t like. I shot with default settings, without filters and presets.
• Portraits and front camera: Skin tone and the color of my top are distorted toward beige. The iPhone also renders my face a bit too soft, even though no beauty filter is active. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra and Huawei Pura 80 Ultra look much more natural.
• Zoom: At 40x, the iPhone performs worst. It can’t go beyond 40x, the Pura 80 Ultra manages 100x, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra 120x. If you want good zoom shots, you’re better off looking at the competition.
• Video: All nearly equally good. On the iPhone, I like the slightly brighter image without loss of contrast.

The camera is undisputedly really good and more than enough for 99% of us. But it is no longer the best on the market, and Android has many good alternatives.

iOS in everyday life

I understand less and less how anyone can say iOS is more user-friendly and intuitive than Android. A few examples:

• I can’t change an app’s settings in the app itself but first have to go to the Settings app and look for the app there. On Android, I go to Settings in the app. That is lost lifetime.
• For every question mark, every comma, and every number, you switch the keyboard view. On Android, I set up the keyboard the way I can type fastest.
• Apps can only be collected on the home screen, which thankfully can now finally be freely arranged, or in the App Library, where they are displayed completely randomly. I don’t understand the sort order. That leads to multi-page, messy home screens. Android additionally has the app drawer, where I see apps alphabetically.
• On Android, I see in the notification bar at the top at a glance which app has unread items. I use that as a to-do list. On iOS, I only see open notifications in the Notification Center or on the app itself. If it is in a folder or on the second or third page, it is out of sight. While testing, I feel like I’m losing half of my notifications.

AI

In recent years, Apple has lost sight of AI and innovation, and with the iPhone 17 Pro Max, that wasn’t made up for. There are AI features in photo editing, writing text, and translation, but compared with Samsung, Google, and Xiaomi, they are rudimentary. On Samsung, for example, I can enter commands in the search field of the Settings app and get the matching settings shown. Image and video editing are much more extensive on Android and partly work by voice command. Google does it smarter and keeps offering small wow effects, for example Gemini with Circle to Search, which I use several times a day, and Gemini Live. Gemini can be installed on the iPhone too, but with the iPhone 17 Pro and iOS 26, Apple continues to lag behind the competition.

Ad: YubiKey from Yubico

In the middle of the video, there is an ad block for the YubiKey from Yubico, a security key for two-factor authentication.

Verdict

The iPhone 17 Pro or Pro Max is a modest upgrade over its predecessor and, with its few improvements, is aimed mainly at heavy users. iOS 26 brings two nice gimmicks with Liquid Glass and Center Stage. But in 2025, too, I’m quite happy to be at home in the Android world, because more innovation is happening here and AI is already a useful, practical part of my everyday life.