iPhone 13 Pro Max The iPhone is not worth the price (anymore)

[257Loner]

Apple overcharges for storage on all their computers, handheld or otherwise. But you can Optimize iPhone Storage and iCloud will hold the full quality of your photos & videos while your phone will hold on to thumbnails of rarely-accessed photos & videos. Taking advantage of Optimize iPhone Storage should reduce your local storage requirements so you don’t need to pay for more storage from Apple.

 

[Warped9]

Yeah, not my experience.

The iPhone has gotten expensive. So, I buy older models new. Right now I have the 11 Pro Max on iOS 17 and my older 6s Plus on iOS 15. Both do exactly what I need with no problems.

But I sit in front of multiple computers and large monitors for 16+ hours a day. I'm not using my phones for anything other than calls, emails and text messaging.

Yep. If you go for the latest models you’ll pay a premium for something with incremental upgrades over the previous generation or two. And, like, you my phone is largely for calls, email and text.

Worth is subjective. The iPhone is expensive indeed. However there is no real competition for the iPhones. One may suggest brands like Samsung and to be honest, they are not priced significantly lower than their Apple counterparts either. Smartphones have gotten smarter over the last few years and they’re more than just devices - some see them as a ‘cool factor’ or a Veblen goods that gives them some form of social status. I don’t care about all that. I do value the consistency and outlook of Apple and the iPhones embodies their vision of what a daily tech product should be. I’ve come to terms to pay the premium for this. And if I choose not to, I know my iPhone will get at least 4-5 years of software support.

I had the 13 Pro Max on iOS 17 few months back and I ever had any lag issues at all. Are there milliseconds worth of lag? Maybe but my eyes aren’t sensitive to notice that. I believe those who complain that their iPhones of 2-3 years ago are laggy in 2024 are just exaggerating.

Yep.

Android phones are available for substantially less than base iPhones, even older generations still available from Apple. But if you want Android phones comparable to iPhones you’ll be paying similar prices.

I see lots of people buy cheap Android devices I think of as rent-a-phones because they’re basically disposable. After a few months use the phones crap out or the buyers get frustrated with it.

The one (debatable) advantage of Android phones is that many of them have expandable storage with Micro SD slots. Thats meaningless to me because personally I can’t imagine what people are storing on their phones that needs so much storage. My 8+ had 64GB and I never used half of it. My current 14 has 128GB and I might use maybe a quarter of that, maybe.

 

[coachgq]

I bought a 3rd gen SE for $100 and traded it in for a 15, 256gb that will cost me $4/month as I don’t hop carriers so bill credits are fine with me. I just passed down my 14 to my kid and sold their 13 for $400. ~$250 in my pocket and I’ll do the same thing next year.

 

[Zorori]

When I see Android phones for 300,- it does make the iPhone look terribly expensive. The Androids might not be as fast, and the camera might not be as good, but they have 8GB or 12GB of RAM, huge storage, huge displays, and they get all the basics like navigation, web browsing, email and messaging done just as well. An iPhone that costs 4x or 5x as much does not give you a proportionally better experience. Better yes, but not 4x or 5x better.

I wonder if this is true, so off to Amazon (dot com, I presume that's US dollars) I go and yep, possible for $200. Funny the top results for "android 8GB phone" are of iPhone 14 / 15 Max look-a-likes with Dynamic Island 🤣

The CPU is probably be crummy, but if you aren't pushing it then that's not a problem

 

[freeagent]

A lot of people act like they are rich, new iPhone every year. Always has a nice case and screen protector.. gotta keep that phone mint for when the lease is up and its time to send it back. If you genuinely have more money than sense, and then come here to complain well.. life is tough

I just turned 46, and the absolute only reason why I have a cell phone is because I have kids. If I didn't have kids, this guy would still be using a landline lol.

Maybe.. they are convenient when you need one..

 

[I7guy]

I couldn’t disagree more with the premise of the thread. However, I’ll give the OP there may be battery degradation in their phones causing performance issues.

Starting with my xs max (which was traded in for a 15PM and had a new battery replacement last year), performance was totally acceptable on iOS 17.2.1.

My sons iPhone 12 Pro on iOS 17.2.1 is also more than acceptable.

Now if the battery is going south there may be some throttling happening, but a healthy phone with an a12 or later should be a good performer on iOS 17.

 

[eyoungren]

Apple overcharges for storage on all their computers, handheld or otherwise. But you can Optimize iPhone Storage and iCloud will hold the full quality of your photos & videos while your phone will hold on to thumbnails of rarely-accessed photos & videos. Taking advantage of Optimize iPhone Storage should reduce your local storage requirements so you don’t need to pay for more storage from Apple.

I have a 512GB iPhone, but only because Apple wasn't offering 1TB for the 11PM. Otherwise, I'd have gotten that.

I upgrade every 2.5 to 4.5 years so I live with these phones and I want the maximum capacity Apple offers for the model I am getting for the entire time I am living with that phone. Because I want it.

I do agree that Apple overcharges, but I bear the price because it's what I want. I have unlimited data on my carrier plan and have had it since Christmas 2009. Because I never want to be in a spot where I need data and don't have it. Likewise, I never want to be in a spot where I need storage on the device itself and I don't have the room. I've never needed either of these things, but the security of having it is worth the cost to me.

Of course, I could use Apple services such as iCloud and optimize storage as well. But that isn't what I want to do. I don't want to depend on a service when I can just have the storage with me on the device itself.

That said, I do have a 2TB subscription to iCloud. That is solely for convenience (not backup). Everything currently on my phone is available to me in some other manner (backup, Dropbox, etc), except for iMessage. And the thing about messages is that personal or intimate things are never handled via message, always in person. So nothing of any importance is in my messages.

 

[Al Rukh]

A lot of people act like they are rich, new iPhone every year. Always has a nice case and screen protector.. gotta keep that phone mint for when the lease is up and its time to send it back. If you genuinely have more money than sense, and then come here to complain well.. life is tough

I just turned 46, and the absolute only reason why I have a cell phone is because I have kids. If I didn't have kids, this guy would still be using a landline lol.

Maybe.. they are convenient when you need one..

I used to get a new iPhone every year. It’s not about being rich - some of us just want to hold something different after every September. It’s silly but it brings a smile to my face.

 

[eyoungren]

I used to get a new iPhone every year. It’s not about being rich - some of us just want to hold something different after every September. It’s silly but it brings a smile to my face.

And some people work it via trade in/promo/resale so that the new device either costs them nothing or they make money off it.

 

[Jackbequickly]

No doubt the iPhones are expensive but I consider it well spent when I look at how much I depend on my phone.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I mean it is, but too expensive lol. $1800 for 1TB and a case, I already have my 512 at around 40 gigs left.

Idk. I think if you take advantage of deals and promotions they are more affordable now than ever while still being the most expensive ever.

When I see Android phones for 300,- it does make the iPhone look terribly expensive. The Androids might not be as fast, and the camera might not be as good, but they have 8GB or 12GB of RAM, huge storage, huge displays, and they get all the basics like navigation, web browsing, email and messaging done just as well. An iPhone that costs 4x or 5x as much does not give you a proportionally better experience. Better yes, but not 4x or 5x better.

Why do all of these price complaints pretend like the only iPhone that exists is the very latest Pro Max?
The majority of iPhones sold are under $1000, and of those the majority of them are sold on carrier promotions, at least here in the US.
All of this hyperbole about how iPhones are overall the most expensive they’ve ever been and are thousands of dollars is very disingenuous.
It would be like saying that a Mac isn’t worth it because the Mac Pro starts at $7000, totally ignoring the existence of the $500 Mac Mini or the MacBook Air, or the MacBook Pro, or the iMac, or all of the options that are several thousands of dollars cheaper.
Even putting aside the SE, you can get a brand new iPhone 13 from Apple for $600 and it’ll easily last you five years.
Start going through carriers and you can find old 12 Pro and Pro Max, 13 Pro and Pro Max, and 14 Pro and Pro Max options for several hundreds of dollars cheaper than they were at initial launch.

Even if you want a 15 pro Max, now that you can record external video directly to an SSD and the Files app has decent support for USB storage peripherals, is there really that many reasons to go for a full terabyte on the phone?

There are ways to get the price down, not everything has to be all the way maxed out at all times.

 

[Ameer_1]

For me, I always get the 128 GB Pro model because it's the most common. Most people who have an iPhone choose 128 GB each year. I sell my phone each year on eBay and not many people will choose the higher storage also if you were to trade it in at Apple each year or two they don't care about how much storage you have. If you take lots of photos and videos on vacation always carry an external hard drive.

 

[Andain]

Multiple fair points but let me rephrase that.

It's about the iPhone performance you get (over a longer period of time) that makes it not worth (anymore). The point of Apple (in general) is paying a premium to get something you do not get with that $300 Android mentioned earlier.
I do not mind the price because I know what I am getting myself into, but I expect to get what I paid for.

Yes, worth is 'subjctive' (to a point dare I say).

I am tired of pages reloading/running out of ram. YouTube videos turning black screen while playing (especially in the last 4 months), Music (native app) lagging/buffering (local storage) when doing basic multitasking. That is what makes it not worth it for me.

Again, Android is irrelevant for me (and will always be) since be it $300 or $1200 it's still a laggy mess with very poor updates and **** app quality. Do not care the camera is (maybe) sometimes 15% better than the iPhone.
Whoever got the chance to play with the "PDA" 2000s era of smartphones, Windows Mobile on HTCs with stylus etc would laugh at Android today. Android will always be a physical keyboard OS patched overnight for touchscreen (which is exactly how the history was)

This past black friday I helped a friend set up their S23 Ultra bought at $1000 down from $1200 sale. Feels exactly like a $200 Android, just lipstick on a pig. I played with it for a couple of days.

I stopped doing streaming/iCloud (even on the mac), I do pay the monthly $0.99 I believe just to have those 50 gigs for iPhone Backup when I upgrade to the new iPhone for a seamless experience. THAT is worth.
I got tired of buffering, lag, all streaming music apps have terrible UI and, "this song is not available in your region" and the list goes on.
Music streaming (besides pretty much destroying the scene) is a modernized replacement for the 8GB iPod Nano buyer from the late 2000s. Extremely casual formulaic non-sense and musicians don't make any money so it's basically just legal torrenting. Anyhow, that's a different discussion.

While good for people who have their phones have pretty much same performance for 5 years (which I strongly doubt, but hey), for me it has been a different experience for the last 8 years.

Maybe having a pretty much loaded phone 460/512 gbs is one of the reasons. But again, hey, that is why I am paying, that is the discussion of the thread.

Also, to whom was asking, yes, after tax and with an apple case, it is $1800.

 

[Andain]

Also, absolutely unacceptable is the very poor camera performance when you zoom in ever since they moved to multiple camera set-ups, I do not how the 15 PM is, but mine and the 14PM have terrible zoom, 2004 Motorola potato photo quality. That's one of the biggest things I liked about the iPhone, it was always the best all-rounder/overall photo camera (they've been video kings since the iPhone 4).

 

[A1423]

Multiple fair points but let me rephrase that.

It's about the iPhone performance you get (over a longer period of time) that makes it not worth (anymore). The point of Apple (in general) is paying a premium to get something you do not get with that $300 Android mentioned earlier.
I do not mind the price because I know what I am getting myself into, but I expect to get what I paid for.

Yes, worth is 'subjctive' (to a point dare I say).

I am tired of pages reloading/running out of ram. YouTube videos turning black screen while playing (especially in the last 4 months), Music (native app) lagging/buffering (local storage) when doing basic multitasking. That is what makes it not worth it for me.

Again, Android is irrelevant for me (and will always be) since be it $300 or $1200 it's still a laggy mess with very poor updates and **** app quality. Do not care the camera is (maybe) sometimes 15% better than the iPhone.
Whoever got the chance to play with the "PDA" 2000s era of smartphones, Windows Mobile on HTCs with stylus etc would laugh at Android today. Android will always be a physical keyboard OS patched overnight for touchscreen (which is exactly how the history was)

This past black friday I helped a friend set up their S23 Ultra bought at $1000 down from $1200 sale. Feels exactly like a $200 Android, just lipstick on a pig. I played with it for a couple of days.

I stopped doing streaming/iCloud (even on the mac), I do pay the monthly $0.99 I believe just to have those 50 gigs for iPhone Backup when I upgrade to the new iPhone for a seamless experience. THAT is worth.
I got tired of buffering, lag, all streaming music apps have terrible UI and, "this song is not available in your region" and the list goes on.
Music streaming (besides pretty much destroying the scene) is a modernized replacement for the 8GB iPod Nano buyer from the late 2000s. Extremely casual formulaic non-sense and musicians don't make any money so it's basically just legal torrenting. Anyhow, that's a different discussion.

While good for people who have their phones have pretty much same performance for 5 years (which I strongly doubt, but hey), for me it has been a different experience for the last 8 years.

Maybe having a pretty much loaded phone 460/512 gbs is one of the reasons. But again, hey, that is why I am paying, that is the discussion of the thread.

Also, to whom was asking, yes, after tax and with an apple case, it is $1800.

I’m guessing it’s a storage thing. I haven’t experienced any of your issues other than the multitasking issues and general performance issues, when I was away for a while and the internet was so slow the photos and videos never uploaded. It caused me to get a 512gb iPhone. But I don’t see the difference between filling a phone, and a computer. Neither device particularly likes it in my experience.

 

[redheeler]

It's not worth it if you upgrade every 1, 2, even 3 years. I don't upgrade that often. My 13 Pro Max replaced a 6s Plus that was over 5 years old (it had a battery replacement and cracked screen from a drop but was still functional). It was a massive leap to get that many generations of iterative improvements at once so I felt like I got my money's worth.

 

[A1423]

Also, absolutely unacceptable is the very poor camera performance when you zoom in ever since they moved to multiple camera set-ups, I do not how the 15 PM is, but mine and the 14PM have terrible zoom, 2004 Motorola potato photo quality. That's one of the biggest things I liked about the iPhone, it was always the best all-rounder/overall photo camera (they've been video kings since the iPhone 4).

Is it worthy of an upgrade from the 14pm. I don’t know, but it’s definitely a lot better than my 13pm. It’s also way better at autofocusing with flashing lights.

 

[Andain]

^ Yes and no. Similar experience I had like I said with my previous max storage for their generation phones. 128 6S Plus, 512 XS Max and the 13PM. It's after the 2.5 mark year that it's going downhill steadily. Now that I think of it, I even changed the 6S Plus battery directly from Apple and nothing changed. For the XS, my storage never went about 300.

 

[sw1tcher]

No, it's a real and noticeable issue when using the keyboard mostly. You can tell the letters are playing catch-up after selecting them

I have this lag issue too

 

[Andain]

I just looked it right now, even waking phone from sleep when you turn the phone, a delay is felt there.
I don't mind the yearly "8-10%" loss in performance, just being overall slower as they have to sell somehow the new models. It's the random lags or "cut-offs" that simply shouldn't be there or sometimes apps crashing and so on.

YouTube Music (the only reason why I have it is because of YouTube Premium and I am paying only $5.60 for it) is extremely messy but I am just going to pretend and blame it on Google.

At the end of the day, I just do not enjoy using my phone, and that's what really matters. It makes me feel I want to pull up my macbook instead to even search for things than the phone.

 

[saudor]

My launch day 8+ is running just fine. I also avoid installing apps if i'm not using it regularly/there is a web version so it's pretty slim since many apps are love to gather analytics. I also run adguard to kill all the ads in safari and re-route some of my traffic through my server to kill ads in apps. Running a simple adblock alone brings an astronomical boost in performance.

Of course, YMMV.

No issues with reloads, which makes sense since RAM isn't wasted on loading ads.

 

[Warped9]

Many people do convince themselves they need the top-of-the-line and are willing to pay for it, but if you knew their real world usage they could well have been just as satisfied with a lower tier model.

Upgrading every year I very much doubt anyone sees any drastic performance improvement—at best it’ll be incremental. Upgrading every 4-5 or so years and I would expect to see a distinct performance improvement.

That said I don’t see a huge performance difference from my previous 14 over my previous 8plus, but thats based on just normal day-to-day usage of phone calls, email and texting. Same with internet browsing or AirDrop. The battery seems to be better, but thats comparing it to my previous device with 84% battery life when I stopped using it.

I must say I really like the seamless integration between iPhone, iPad and my Mac—no fuss, it just works.

Keeping your device organized also helps immeasurably. I see so many people who don’t know how to even delete emails let alone move them to another folder like Save or Archive, and then they end up with hundreds to thousands of emails they don’t know what to do with even as they gripe about running out of storage. Ditto with collecting hundreds of pointless photos they can’t even remember why they took. A lot of people are digital hoarders—digital pack rats.

Apple supporting their devices with multiple OS updates over a 5-6 year period is also really nice in helping their devices enjoy a longer service life.

 

[jz0309]

a 13 Pro Max with 17.2.1 is simply too laggy (feel like the "not athorized underclocking" fiasco all over again).

disagree. my 13PM is not "laggy" at all, does everything for me and battery is typically ~40% at end of day. and it'll serve me at least til Sep this year when I might (or not) to get a new one

 

[GuruZac]

I mean it is, but too expensive lol. $1800 for 1TB and a case, I already have my 512 at around 40 gigs left.

a 13 Pro Max with 17.2.1 is simply too laggy (feel like the "not athorized underclocking" fiasco all over again).

I think the last time you could hold an iphone for 3 years and still feel "like in day one" was the 5/5S era.

I experienced the very same story with 6S Plus, too lagy after the 2.5 year mark, XS Max even a bit worse. Then the 13 exactly the same. It's always funny how "amazingly fast" the new model feels when you buy it.

Battery health 88%.

Don't get me wrong, still the best phone in the world since 2007. I would tinker with Symbian S60 just to install an mp3 player on a 6600 so kids these days have absolutely no clue how much they take the iPhone quality for granted.

Yet, even so. If it was 10 times worse than Android, the app quality alone makes it a better purchase than a Samsung.

Bottom line, I am going to keep this phone until it does not support the latest software, like a 6S in 2023 sort of experience.

That money can be better spent on a Studio Display or even a macbook than thrown at a phone and boy we're not even discussing the EU prices.

My wife’s 13 Pro Max still screams, on 17.2.1. She actually felt no reason to upgrade, even with the camera upgrades. My only ask of Apple is to add additional multitasking capability to at least the Max. Have split screen apps (could also work on really any size iPhone) seems such an easy software implementation since it’s already and has been in the iPad models for years.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I mean it is, but too expensive lol. $1800 for 1TB and a case, I already have my 512 at around 40 gigs left.

a 13 Pro Max with 17.2.1 is simply too laggy (feel like the "not athorized underclocking" fiasco all over again).

I think the last time you could hold an iphone for 3 years and still feel "like in day one" was the 5/5S era.

I experienced the very same story with 6S Plus, too lagy after the 2.5 year mark, XS Max even a bit worse. Then the 13 exactly the same. It's always funny how "amazingly fast" the new model feels when you buy it.

Battery health 88%.

Don't get me wrong, still the best phone in the world since 2007. I would tinker with Symbian S60 just to install an mp3 player on a 6600 so kids these days have absolutely no clue how much they take the iPhone quality for granted.

Yet, even so. If it was 10 times worse than Android, the app quality alone makes it a better purchase than a Samsung.

Bottom line, I am going to keep this phone until it does not support the latest software, like a 6S in 2023 sort of experience.

That money can be better spent on a Studio Display or even a macbook than thrown at a phone and boy we're not even discussing the EU prices.

We disagree. Obviously everyone's MMV. Duh.