iPhone 17 Pro Max vs. iPhone 16 Pro Max Spec Compared: Big Apple Battle

The iPhone 17 Pro Max is here, packing a variety of upgrades from the cameras to the design. But how does it compare with its predecessor, the iPhone 16 Pro Max? Let’s take a close look at the specs and find out. Keep in mind that specs don’t tell the whole story so make sure to check out CNET’s ongoing coverage of the iPhone 17 Pro Max — as well everything else from Apple’s “awe-dropping” event — for more information. 

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iPhone 17 Pro Max: Design and display

Both phones are huge, with 6.9-inch displays that will be equally difficult to wrap your hands around and will stretch out your jeans pockets in just the same way. The two phones have largely the same dimensions. They both use Apple’s Super Retina XDR panels, so we don’t really expect to see any noticeable differences in overall quality here, and both phones have the Dynamic Island cutout at the top. 

The 17 Pro Max’s design has had some big changes, though, with a new camera bar that stretches across the width of the back, and the phone is made from aluminum instead of titanium. Apple says this design dissipates heat 20 times better than the titanium design of the previous model, helped too by the new vapor chamber, which uses de-ionized water to actively cool the phone while in use. Despite that, the 17 Pro Max is only 4 grams heavier than the 16 Pro Max. Will you ever notice 4 grams more? Almost certainly not. 

I guess it’s not a spec, but I do think it’s worth calling out the 17 Pro Max’s new cosmic orange colour — love it or hate it, it’s certainly a vibrant option, and I personally love seeing a bit of fun being injected back into our phones. I’d personally pick it over another shade of boring gray.

The 17 Pro Max has Ceramic Shield 2 on the front and back, which Apple says is three times more scratch-resistant than before. Both phones are IP68 water-resistant.  

iPhone 17 Pro Max: Processor and storage

The 17 Pro Max uses Apple’s latest A19 Pro chip, which the company reckons is significantly faster, especially for graphically intense tasks like gaming, while its new neural accelerators are designed to help it handle AI tasks with better efficiency. The A18 Pro chip in the 16 Pro Max was already something of a beast, so it’ll be exciting to see how these two perform both on benchmarks and in real-world use. 

While both phones have a base capacity of 256GB, the new 17 Pro Max can now be specced up with a whopping 2TB of storage. You’ll pay handsomely for the privilege at $1,999 for that configuration, but if you plan to film a lot of ProRes Raw video with the phone, then it might be worth it. There’s also the option to attach an external SSD when filming at that quality.

iPhone 17 Pro Max: Cameras

Both phones pack the usual trio of standard zoom, ultrawide and telephoto cameras, but the 17 Pro Max makes some key upgrades. Most notably in the telephoto camera, which now has an optical zoom range up to 8x, which is a big step up over the fixed 5x zoom of the 16 Pro Max. Its sensor is physically bigger too, and its resolution has gone from a meager 12 megapixels on the 16 Pro Max to a much more generous 48 megapixels on the 17 Pro Max. Nice. 

All three rear cameras are now 48 megapixels, although there are fewer hardware differences on the other cameras. 

The 17 Pro does have some upgraded video skills, however. This includes its ability to shoot in ProRes Raw, which captures unprocessed footage without any software adjustments like sharpening in order to give much greater flexibility in post-production. ProRes Raw isn’t on the 16 Pro Max, so it’s presumably demanding enough that it requires the extra power from the new A19 chip to manage it.

The 17 Pro Max also supports dual capture, which allows you to film with the front and rear cameras at the same time if that’s something you think you’d particularly want to do. Both phones can shoot 4K video at up to 120 frames per second, and if you want to slow things down even more, they will shoot 240 frames per second in 1,080p. 

The front selfie camera — or the Centre Stage camera, as Apple now calls it — has seen a boost up to 18 megapixels on the 17 Pro Max, along with a new sensor design that allows for vertical or horizontal cropping and better digital stabilization in video. 

iPhone 17 Pro Max: Battery and charging

Apple doesn’t give specific battery specs, but it has said that the iPhone 17 Pro Max has the biggest battery ever seen inside an iPhone. That must mean it’s bigger than the battery in the 16 Pro Max, even though we don’t know its actual capacity. And that makes sense as Apple reckons you’ll get an additional four hours of video playback from the new model. How they actually fare in everyday use remains to be seen. 

Apple also says that the 17 Pro Max will charge faster. Its 40-watt wired charging speed takes it from empty to 50% full in 20 minutes, a significant boost over the 35 minutes the 16 Pro Max would take to do the same. 

So those are some of the key differences — and similarities — between the new iPhone 17 Pro Max and last year’s iPhone 16 Pro Max. The upgrades won’t feel huge if you’re already using an iPhone 16 Pro, so those of you already rocking last year’s model almost certainly won’t need to upgrade here, but if you’re on much older handsets then you’ll definitely notice the difference in the cameras and power — and, yeah, you can also have a bright orange Pro iPhone now, so that’s something.