Let me start by saying that I am not a tech expert. I’m a dog mum, a business owner and an interior photographer who spends an unhealthy amount of time on her phone. In my defence, between running a business, creating content and taking an obscene number of photos of my dogs, my phone is essentially my office.
I need something that can keep up with me – a battery that lasts, plenty of storage and a camera I can rely on. Having used the iPhone 15 Pro Max for the past three years, I wanted to know whether upgrading to the iPhone 18 Pro Max would actually make a noticeable difference to the way I use my phone every day.
So, rather than getting too caught up in technical specs, I wanted to look at the things that actually matter to me.
Is it worth upgrading from iPhone 15 Pro Max to iPhone 18 Pro Max?
There wasn’t anything dramatically wrong with my iPhone 15 Pro Max. In fact, if I’m being sensible, I absolutely could have carried on using it. But after three years of heavy use, I was starting to notice its age.
Battery life was probably the biggest everyday frustration. On busier days, particularly when I was travelling or creating lots of content, I was finding myself reaching for a charger long before the day was over.
Storage was becoming another issue. My 15 Pro Max was already the 1TB model and, technically, I hadn’t filled it. But I was getting close enough to the limit that I was constantly conscious of how much space I had left… and it seemed to be slowing the phone down too.
To add, I currently have more than 25,000 photos of dogs on my phone, which probably isn’t helping.
Do I really need 2TB of storage?
This time, I’ve gone for 2TB of storage. For context, 2TB is 2,000GB. That’s twice the capacity of my previous phone and an enormous amount of storage to have sitting in your pocket.
Do I need all of that right now? Absolutely not. But that’s actually what I wanted.
Towards the end of my time with the 15 Pro Max, it felt as though the phone was beginning to slow down as it became fuller. I can’t definitively say that was because I was getting close to the storage limit, but I didn’t particularly want to spend the next few years hovering around maximum capacity.
Now I have a ridiculous amount of room to play with. I can shoot video, take photos, download files and edit content without thinking about what I might need to delete first. And, importantly, nobody is going to make me choose between 47 almost-identical photographs of my pugs.
There is obviously a significant price attached to choosing 2TB. Storage and memory prices have been under pressure recently, with AI almost certainly bumping up the cost of storage (thanks AI). The 2TB iPhone 18 Pro Max costs an eye-watering £2,499 in the UK. However, Apple does offer the option to spread the cost over three years at 0% interest, which makes it a little easier to swallow.
iPhone 18 Pro Max battery life
Battery life was one of the biggest reasons I actually felt ready for an upgrade. My phone gets hammered on a daily basis, if we’re being honest. Between work, social media, emails, editing, taking photos and videos and generally having it in my hand far more than I probably should, my battery rarely gets an easy day.
It’s still too early for me to make any grand claims, but having a fresh battery makes a huge difference when you use your phone as much as I do. It is coming up to the end of my first full day of use and I’m sitting at 26%… Not quite in the red yet, which is actually a significant improvement on where we’d normally be by now.
I’m also very aware that this is day one. Ask me again in a year’s time and we might be having a very different conversation, but for now, not having to think about finding a charger before the day is over feels like a pretty big win. So far, so good!
Testing the iPhone 18 Pro Max camera
This was the fun part. I’m an interior photographer, so while I’m not going to pretend to understand every technical detail inside an iPhone, photography is something I care a lot about.
Most of my favourite everyday photographs of my dogs aren’t planned. They’re taken on walks, sitting in coffee shops, travelling or because one of them happens to be doing something particularly ridiculous.
So I took the iPhone 18 Pro Max out with my dog, Oscar, along with my 15 Pro Max, to see whether I could actually notice a difference.
One of the first things I wanted to try was the zoom. My iPhone 15 Pro Max has a dedicated 5x telephoto camera, whereas the 18 Pro Max gives you an 8x option from its newer telephoto system.
This is one of those features that makes much more sense when you stop looking at specifications and actually use it. Dogs rarely stand where you’d ideally like them to stand. They’re running ahead, sniffing something in the distance or generally ignoring whatever photograph you had planned, so being able to get closer without physically getting closer is something I’m genuinely going to use.
I was also particularly interested in the variable aperture, especially because this isn’t the same as simply taking a photograph in Portrait mode.
The blur you see in Portrait mode is computational. In comparison, variable aperture uses actual blades inside the camera that physically open and close, creating the effect optically rather than computationally. As a photographer, I find this much more interesting because you’re changing how the image is actually captured rather than asking the phone to simulate the effect afterwards. You can see the different apertures below.
But is the camera actually better?
I think it’s important to put that question into context. I’m comparing the 18 Pro Max with a 15 Pro Max, which was already a very capable phone camera.
And although the difference isn’t huge, there is a difference. Looking at images from the two phones side by side, shots from the 18 Pro Max look sharper, portrait mode seems to handle the edges of the subject better and overall, I’ve noticed the images tend to look a little richer.
But for me, the bigger difference isn’t necessarily in the finished image straight out of the camera. It’s in the amount of control you have over how that image looks. There are more options to tailor the image to your own taste before you even press the shutter… There’s also much more flexibility to change the look afterwards. As someone who is used to having control over how my photographs look, that’s the camera upgrade I appreciate most. Rather than simply relying on whatever the iPhone decides looks best, I can make the image feel much more like mine.
So no, I don’t think you’re going to put a 15 Pro Max photo next to an 18 Pro Max photo and be completely blown away by the difference. But the images are better, and the experience of actually taking and editing them feels much more flexible.
So, is the iPhone 18 Pro Max worth the upgrade?
I think this depends on how you use your phone and also what you’re upgrading from. If you’ve already got a recent iPhone and mainly use it for messaging, browsing and taking the occasional photograph, you might not notice enough of a difference to justify upgrading.
My situation is slightly different.
My phone is effectively an extension of my business. It’s my camera when I don’t have my mirrorless with me, my editing suite, inbox, navigation, notebook, social media tool and quite often, my office. I was also coming from a three-year-old phone with a battery that was beginning to frustrate me and storage that was getting increasingly tight.
So far, it’s not necessarily one huge feature that’s made the upgrade feel worthwhile. It’s having more breathing room across all the things I use constantly – a fresh battery, an almost ridiculous amount of storage and a camera that gives me more options.
Do you need to upgrade from the 15 Pro Max to the 18 Pro Max? Probably not. Am I glad I did? Absolutely.
Comments