Before the iPhone 13 came out, I already knew I was going to get the iPhone 13 Pro model. Just a week ago I opened a box of iPhone 13 Pro Max that I thought I would never get. So what happened?

As I wrote before the launch of the iPhone 13 series, I had hoped that Apple would not separate the iPhone 13 Pro from the iPhone 13 Pro Max in terms of camera quality, and they did. However, in the time between writing that and placing the order, my life, and to some extent my world, has changed in ways that convinced me to reassess my priorities.

It starts with my previous phone. I got an iPhone 12 Pro during lockdown in the UK, so most of the time I used it at home via Wi-Fi. Even though I use the 12 Pro heavily for streaming video and music, I found that the phone lasted a day on a charge. i was a little jealous of the iPhone 12 Pro Max's larger screen and improved rear camera, but I did not miss them and felt satisfied with my phone choice.

But when everything resumed and I started commuting again, I found that the iPhone 12 Pro's battery would not last a day without low power mode enabled. And that was after a year of use and after the battery's health had dropped to only 89%.

In our review of the entire iPhone 12 series, we commented that all but the iPhone 12 Pro Max were significantly short on battery life compared to their Android rivals. I knew this, but didn't fully appreciate it until I was listening to podcasts and watching videos during my commute using 4G and 5G data. As a tech journalist, I am swamped with chargers and cables I can use to power up my iPhone again, but I didn't want to be tethered at work or at home in the evening. So when my new iPhone arrived, I started thinking it was time to go Max.

I usually use an Android phone that is the same size or larger than the 6.7" iPhone 12 Pro Max or iPhone 13 Pro Max, but Apple's recent phones have flat edges that don't really fit in my hands. This is one of the reasons I chose the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 Pro in the first place. However, since the iPhone 13 Pro Max was said to have a much larger battery than before, I waited to order it until the reviews were out. Since battery life is more important to me than comfort, I wanted to see how long both Pro iPhones would last before making a decision.

Sure enough, the iPhone 13 battery life test showed that the iPhone 13 Pro has significantly better battery life than the iPhone 12 Pro. However, the iPhone 13 Pro Max still lasted 30 minutes longer. That performance puts the iPhone 13 Pro Max in the top 10 of our best smartphone battery life list. (As of this writing, the iPhone 13 Pro is in 13th place.) The results convinced me that this is the model I want, even though the iPhone 13 Pro Max's design is not very comfortable.

I've only been using the iPhone 13 Pro Max for a week, but it has met my expectations in both good and bad ways. It has the brightest display of any phone this year, and the battery life is incredible, despite playing a lot of YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, and podcasts over the past seven days. However, it took a bit of a learning curve to adapt to having to hold the phone in both hands to type messages or move the phone around in my hand to access the buttons in the corner.

Buying a cell phone often involves compromises, whether in budget or features. But every time I end the day with more than half of the battery still left in my iPhone 13 Pro Max, I know I made the right choice.