Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max review: terrific camera, battery life, and performance, but it's close to being too big and 60Hz display lags behind the competition
Apple's biggest iPhone brings along an impressive camera — The iPhone 12 Pro Max is a big phone. The biggest iPhone ever made, in fact.
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPhone 12 Pro review three weeks earlier flagged inferior battery life relative to the iPhone 11 Pro, so the Pro Max verdict lands as the corrective in the lineup: the biggest iPhone gets the best battery. It also inherits the triple-camera system Engadget praised on the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max, now extended rather than rebuilt.
First-order effects
- Buyers deciding between the two 2020 Pros face a clean trade: the Pro Max trades the 12 Pro's size problem ('close to being too big') for superior battery life and camera output.
- Apple's own review scorecard names the 60Hz panel as the gap versus the competition — the one spec where the most expensive iPhone trails rivals outright.
Second-order effects
- High-refresh displays become the differentiator Apple has to answer at the top of the line, pressure the following year's iPhone 13 Pro review shows answered directly with a 'high refresh display' among its wins.
- Within Apple's own lineup, the Max cannibalizes the smaller Pro's appeal on battery alone, sharpening the size-versus-endurance split between the two tiers.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — each year's review criticisms becoming the next model's headline upgrades — annual reviews function as the spec checklist driving the premium-phone roadmap, and 60Hz-class panels stop being viable at flagship prices.
The trend: Flagship smartphone competition is converging on display refresh rate and camera capability as the deciding specs, with each generation's review critiques feeding directly into the next year's hardware.