Transcript
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Coming up on Hands On Tech. I've got the iPhone in hand and we will be talking about it today. Stay tuned.
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Hello and welcome to Hands On Tech. I am Micah Sargent, and today we're doing what the name says. We going hands on with the technology. Yes, that's right. I on Friday got very excited as I heard the doorbell ring and I ran to the door and then I had to tell someone that I did not want to add solar panels to my roof. But then later that same day, I heard the doorbell ring and I was very excited, so I ran to the door and. And it turned out to just be a package from Amazon. However, at the very end of the day, no doorbell rang this time. But I happened to be in the living room and I heard that subtle hum of a UPS truck. And I look outside and sitting on my porch again without any doorbell ring or any, you know, needing to sign or anything like that is a couple of packages. And I said, oh, that's it, that's the phone. So I ran outside, waved at the people, grabbed my packages, brought them inside, and I have it in my hands, the iPhone 17 Pro Max. I've got in this beautiful deep blue color, which I think looks very good with this shot. I did not go with the orange for a couple of reasons. It orange is just not my favorite color in general. But also I knew that Leo would be picking up the orange one, so you'll be able to see that from him. But the first thing I want to talk about, of course, is kind of a comparison. So I'll switch over here. And you can see here on the left, I have the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and this, of course, is the 17 Pro Max. So Henry the boy Chihuahua is on the older phone. Mizzy the girl Chihuahua fox terrier is on the newer phone. As we kind of go through this, and honestly, let me pop this out of the case. This is the cactus leather case that I've talked about quite a bit on different shows. They are very similar in feel, in look. They are not so similar because as you can tell here on the 16 Pro Max, the older phone, you've got this glass back and you've got the titanium sides. Now, with the newer phone, we're rocking what they call the unibody enclosure aluminum all the way. It does have this glass portion for having all of the necessary components and also to make battery replacements easier. But overall, I would say that these phones feel pretty similar. The weight is very similar in hand as opposed to, you know comparing their actual weight differences. The weight is very similar in hand and you're not going to sense much of a difference if you're coming from the last model of phone. Now the screen is slightly, slightly improved with bezels that they say are not as thick. But honestly when I'm looking at it and when you look at it, let me see if I can get very close here, you probably can't notice that much of a difference there on the bezel. And I thought, okay, yeah, sure, we've got a bezel change. But ultimately again there's not this kind of moment where you're looking and you go, wow, that is so much different from the phone we had already. One thing you'll notice though, up at the top of the phone is this little spot that we have not seen on the top of the phone before. Because of the full glass back that we're used to, there's a lot of ability for the phones, antennas and different chips to be able to communicate through that. Because we don't have as much glass now, they had to make that spot on the top for some of the signal to be able to pass through. Now let's talk about something that is unique to these new phones which is that along with that heat forged aluminum unibody, we also have this liquid cooled or vapor cooled interior and that is meant to help when it comes to the heat dissipation of these pro models. I will say I have at times using my older 16 Pro Max, had some issues with heat and this new one in playing some of the same games to kind of test it out and check the performance quality, have been impressed with how cool it stays. You'll still get warmth but I'm used to when I set up a new phone having this incredible warmth that you kind of have to, ooh, let me put that down or let me maybe run a fan because I'm a little worried that it's going to be a problem. I have not had that experience when it comes to this new phone, which I think is really quite, quite exciting and makes me think that Apple's probably going to stick with this aluminum. It is really, it feels premium. Even though some would argue this is like a stepped back, a step back. Right. We had titanium before and the iPhone Air has titanium. Why are we going to aluminum? Well it is this premium feel that's actually on the edges a little bit smoother and rounded as opposed to these kind of sharp edges that you get from the titanium. So that has been really kind of striking. And I thought that I was gonna have a bit of an issue with it, but I have not. I've not felt like it's a step back at all. Now the phone is quite the behemoth on the back due to that new plateau. Right. We've got this kind of raised portion here that houses the three cameras. You'll notice that the sensor that houses all of the components for kind of depth and some of the other kind of figuring out how far away something is, not just for depth purposes but also for firing, you know, taking the photo has been moved over to the other side of the phone along with the flash. So it's a little bit different from this area that we're used to where everything kind of gets shuffled over to the side. Now I did buy a case for this and this is Apple's new tech woven case. Remember before I was rocking this third party auto otterbox, beautiful cactus leather. But I decided let's try what Apple's got this year. And so this is also another reason why I got the blue. I think the green and the blue look really good together. So here you can see fits very well as you would expect. But for whoops. For the purpose of this review, I went ahead and got the strap. Now let me tell you a little bit about it. So this is Apple's crossbody strap which is meant to be used to let you carry your phone. Let's see if I can get that exposure to change a little bit to let you kind of carry your phone at your side like a sling. And it was nearly impossible for me to install. So at the bottom of the case, when you get the tech woven case and probably many third party, they will have these little holes that you can use to slide in your little lanyard. Now with Apple's case, you simply take the strap and it's got these snaps on the end that easily slide off. So what you'll end up being left with, and I'll show you here, is just these two little dangly bits and those can stay there and you know, not not be too much of a problem whenever you're not using the crossbody strap. But here's the it says all you got to do is slide the this, the little holder into those holes and then loop it around just like you would if you were putting on any lanyard, right? Well, try as I might because I wanted to do it just following Apple's instructions to see if it would work that way. Try as I might, I could not get this in. So I ended up having to use a SIM removal tool to push through and get it to hold. And that was finally able for me to kind of wrap it around and get it on there. Now I was already kind of. You know, we've seen people laugh about this crossbody strap idea, but I have kind of changed my opinion about it over time as I have gotten used to this and getting used to in, you know, a couple of days is really quite an overstatement. But the idea of using the crossbody strap, and there's one thing that I want to point out about it that made me go, that's so Apple. And that is that all along the adjustable strap here you actually have built into the fabric. And you almost wouldn't be able to tell because it's still very bendy along the strap, sort of, what am I trying to say? Like, vertically it's bendy horizontally, not as much. And that's because Apple put magnets all throughout this strap so that when you adjust, doesn't separate. It's separating right now because I have made an adjustment to it, but it very easily snaps together and it doesn't kind of separate between the two, but because of the magnets that they built into it. So I have been very impressed with this crossbody strap, and what I think it's going to do for me is I'm a person who forgets to pull out the fantastic camera that I have in my pocket a lot. And if my phone is just there at my side and kind of swinging around, I'm already somebody who wears a crossbody bag. And so this just makes sense. So I wanted to talk about that. By the way, love that we are going to go through. After I'm kind of done talking about the phone, we're going to go through and do questions that are asked in the Discord. So if you are tuning in live to this and you are a member of the club, then you are in the discord. And if you'd like to ask me specific questions about the new iPhone 17 Pro Max, then you will be able to do so there. Now, going on to the camera this year We've got the 48 megapixel fusion main camera, the ultra wide and the telephoto. And they are honestly, the hard part is coming from a 16 Pro Max right to the 17 Pro Max. The hard part there is you're not seeing a huge difference between those two cameras. We do have some more optical zoom options this year at 0.5 for the ultra wide, 1, 2, 4, and 8. And the 8 times optical zoom for the Fusion camera system is pretty nice being able to get a little bit closer. And I think what it's especially good for is getting that nice bouquet that you might want. When you're taking a photo of someone kind of in the foreground with a lot of background behind them, you step back aways. What do I end up doing? Taking photos of my dogs walking around outside. And it's delight for that. Now um, I wanted to mention that there's one reviewer who shoots a lot of videos names Tyler Stallman. And Tyler used the 17 Pro Max to record video of someone with action mode on at that 8x zoom. And I'll include a link in the show notes. I'll make sure John gets that. It is incredible to see what the camera is able to do. Action mode is that technology that sort of crops in the video in order to add motion tracking to it and make it seem as smooth as possible. And at 8x zoom you're getting a lot of motion and yet it's able to pull off this really cool sweeping effect that you wouldn't expect from a phone. We also have that improved front camera. So whereas we're used to sensors that are not taking advantage of being square, we have a camera that is specifically making use of that square sensor and gives you the ability to take a front facing photo in landscape or portrait without actually having to move the phone to the side. And in practice that experience has been what you would expect. But it's nice but because I don't have to change how I'm holding the phone. So I think that that was a feature that was great to add particularly when it comes to the camera control on the side. Being able to just hold the phone up and click that button is really delightful. On top of that we do see improvements with the A19 Pro chip that's built in. As I mentioned, most of the time what that means for me is, is better performance in kind of moving around just on the screen. I've noticed that the animations and the, the transitions that take place on these phones just seem a little bit smoother. Looks like the, the exposure might be a little bit too much, but the transitions and everything seem a lot smoother than what I was getting when it came to using it on my. My 16 Pro Max. Just if you're moving from an older phone, yes, you're absolutely going to get quite the difference when it comes to this phone.