iPhone 15 Pro Max vs Pixel 7 Pro: Expected differences

With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple is ever-so-slightly reinventing the "Pro Max" experience. Not only are we getting a USB Type-C port, a refreshed titanium design with contoured lines that make the phone that much more ergonomic, but we are also finally getting treated to a proper periscope lens on the iPhone lineup. This one makes the iPhone camera package even more versatile than before, culminating with 7 distinct shooting modes.  

How would that pan in comparison with existing Android flagships, like the Google Pixel 7 Pro? Currently, it's one of the best Android phones available right now. How will that one fare against the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro Max? 

While nothing is official until it's official, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is already shaping up to be a very worthy contender to the Pixel 7 Pro! Once Apple's top flagship goes official, we'll compare everything there is to between the two rivals. 

iPhone 15 Pro at Walmart: preorder and save with a Verizon subscription

If you're looking for more power, we suggest you consider Walmart's preorder offer on the incredible iPhone 15 Pro. This smartphone can be bought with a carrier subscription to Verizon for just $26.37/mo, saving you a total of $100.

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AT&T-locked iPhone 15 Pro: preorder and save at Walmart

The incredible iPhone 15 Pro is also available with a subscription to AT&T. The device is available for $26.37 a month over 36 installments. In total, your savings amount to $100. This is the 128GB version of the device.

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The iPhone 15 Pro Max is available for preorder at Walmart with a Verizon subscription

Don't miss out on the chance to preorder Apple's newest and most capable smartphone yet for just $31.92/mo at Walmart. To get the iPhone 15 Pro Max at that price, you just need to subscribe to Verizon or upgrade. Your total savings through this preorder deal amount to $100.

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AT&T-locked iPhone 15 Pro Max is available for preorder at Walmart

An AT&T-locked version of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is available for preorder at Walmart. The device sells for $31.92/mo over 36 installments, saving you as much as $100 in total. This is the 256GB configuration of the Apple smartphone. Currently, all colors are available.

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Verizon-locked iPhone 15 at Walmart: preorder and save $100

The iPhone 15 is also available for preorder with a Verizon subscription. Walmart allows you to save $100 on this device over 36 months. Preorder today for just $21.64/mo.

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(AT&T) iPhone 15 at Walmart: now $21.64/mo

The iPhone 15 is available for preorder with a carrier subscription for AT&T at Walmart. The device goes for $21.64/mo, saving you a total of $100. Currently, all colors and storage variants are available.

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The iPhone 15 Plus can be yours for just $24.42/mo with a Verizon subscription

Walmart allows you to preorder the iPhone 15 Plus with a subscription to Verizon as well. The device goes for just $24.42 a month over 36 months. In total, your savings amount to $100. This is the 128GB configuration.

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iPhone 15 Plus: preorder at Walmart and save with a subscription to AT&T

The iPhone 15 Plus is also available for preorder at Walmart, too. This is a locked version of the device. It comes with 128GB of internal storage space. Walmart sells the Apple device for $24.42/mo over 36 installments.

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With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple introduces a contoured titanium frame on the next big iPhone, improving the ergonomics when handling the large device. Unlike stainless steel, which was used on most premium iPhones in the past few years, titanium is lighter and stronger, while essentially holding no fingerprints. This means that the next iPhone will be easier to handle and wouldn't let fingerprint oil ruin its premium body. The soon-to-be signature Dynamic Island punch-hole is staying as well; we are probably a good few years before we'll see it go away.

Meanwhile, the Pixel 7 Pro retains the general design of the previous Pixel flagship, with a glass-metal sandwich build with a slightly curved front that has a redesigned rear camera strip that blends in with the side frame of the phone. It's a slight departure from the all-black camera strip of the Pixel 6 era, but we definitely look the new look of the Pixel lineup.

Another big change with the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the adoption of USB Type-C and a new Action Button that substitutes the classic mute switch and will allow for deep customization. For example, you'd be able to map the flashlight, different shortcuts, or other accessibility features to the button. Both of these changes are major because they will essentially change years of Apple tradition and do away with the signature Lightning port and mute switch.

In terms of colors, the Pixel 7 Pro is available in Obsidian (black), Snow (white), and Hazel (gray-green). At the same time, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is coming in Natural Titanium, Black Titanium, White Titanium, and Blue Titanium,

The Pixel 7 Pro doesn't come with a wall adapter in the box, and neither does the iPhone 15 Pro Max. 

The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with mostly the same 6.7-inch display up front, similar to its predecessors. Actually, there aren't any significant changes in the display department, with the same killer Super Retina XDR HDR OLED display with excellent contrast and color reproduction as well as super-smooth dynamic ProMotion refresh rate. Flagship iPhone displays are already some of the brightest you can see around, so there's a possibility we'd see an even brighter display on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. 

The Pixel 7 Pro also comes with a 6.7-inch OLED display with a very smooth and pleasing-to-use display with dynamic refresh rate that switch between 10 and 120Hz and in-between. It's also quite sharp with its QHD+ resolution which gives it that small but important edge over the standard FHD+ display you might see on most 'regular' flagships these days. The Pixel 7 Pro also boasts a quite bright display that can reach up to 1,500 nits of maximum brightness in certain lighting conditions.

A big difference between the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Pixel 7 Pro is the biometric authentication on board. While the Pixel 7 Pro comes with both picture-based Face Unlock and a secure fingerprint sensor built into the display, the iPhone 15 Pro Max will be solely relying on Face ID, which combines the ease-of-use of face unlock with the security of a fingerprint sensor. 

For the past few years, most flagships have come with 5nm chipsets, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the first phone with a 3nm chipset around, the Apple A17 Pro, and this is kind of a big deal. What does this mean in layman's terms? 

This very advanced process will allow chipsets to utilize a few billion additional transistors that not only improve performance, but also enhance their power efficiency. Apple claims a 10% improvement over the already superb Apple A16 Bionic, and while this doesn't sound like a lot, it's a decent generational performance bump. Graphics-wise, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is much faster: with a redesigned 6-core GPU, it also supports hardware ray-tracing.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with 8GB of RAM, as well as 256, 512GB or 1TB of storage, which are all priced the same as the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Another chip that's very likely to be easily trounced by the Apple A17 Pro is the Google Tensor G2, the workhorse that's kicking and ticking inside the Pixel 7 Pro. The reasons for that are two: Apple possibly coming up with the fastest and most efficient chipset in 2023 and Google's polar-opposite philosophy which revolves around the user experience and AI/ML proficiency. Although not as powerful as most other flagship chips, the Tensor G2 is still a pretty adequate silicon. Sure, it's not a powerhouse, but does it even need to be?

How long will each phone be supported? The Pixel 7 Pro will receive major software updates until October 2025, or until Android 16 hits us, as well as security support until 2027. Meanwhile, the situation isn't very clear with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Yes, it should technically get five years of both major and security updates, so until 2028, but Apple has recently prolonged the life of some older models, so who knows, maybe this one wouldn't be considered outdated until the end of the decade. 

The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with iOS 17, which will be unveiled in early June. Meanwhile, the Pixel 7 Pro will get Android 14 in late August, ahead of the iPhone 15 Pro Max's announcement. 

iOS 17 debuted during the Apple WWDC 2023 developer conference. The iPhone 15 Pro Max will come with iOS 17 on board. Along with significant updates to Maps, Siri, Visual Look Up, and Phone, Messages, and FaceTime, iOS 17 also offers interactive widgets, and makes enhancements to Maps and Siri. Aside from finally scoring offline maps, iOS 17 also allows you to simply say "Siri!" to invoke the assistant, no "hey" necessary anymore. 

While your iPhone charges wirelessly or cable, a new StandBy function will provide you with vital information, and a brand-new Journal app will help you manage your life and digital memories, curating data from multiple apps. You will also have enhanced lock screen customization options and improvements to autocorrect. 

The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with the same 48MP camera, but boasting some software goodies like a new Photonic Engine, Smart HDR, as well as improvements to the night mode photography and automatic portraiture.

The Pixel 7 Pro comes with a 50MP wide camera with an f/1.85 aperture, mostly similar to the Pixel 6 Pro's camera. With this one, you actually get two cameras in one: a new 2X camera mode was introduced with the Pixel 7 Pro, which crops the central 12MP area of the sensor, giving you a zoomed-in 12MP photo with excellent quality.  

The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with the same 12MP ultra-wide camera sensor, with an f/2.2 aperture and 120-degree field of view. Meanwhile, the Pixel 7 Pro also scored a slightly wider 12MP ultra-wide camera, and now mostly matches other flagships in terms of how much it could fit into the scene. 

With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple is finally jumping head-first into long zoom. With a 5X optical zoom, the iPhone 15 Pro Max lets you shoot far-away subjects and take creative portraits. That's quite similar to the 48MP periscope found on the Pixel 7 Pro, which also has a 5.0X optical zoom and maxes out at 30X hybrid zoom.

There aren't any changes in the selfie camera department with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. This means we get the same 12MP FaceTime camera that was found on the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which delivers excellent image quality. The Pixel 7 Pro also has a very decent selfie camera, which weighs in at 10.8MP, so not big of a difference. 

When it comes to video recording, we have very high expectations about the iPhone 15 Pro Max, fueled by years of exceptional video recording capabilities with previous iPhone flagships. We expect that the iPhone 15 Pro Max will once again be among the best phones when it comes to recording video, though it's unclear if Apple will finally move past 4K@60fps recording and offer us more advanced options, likely 8K@30fps or preferrably 4K@120fps, which would give more leeway for post-processing. 

The Pixel 7 Pro is decent but not excellent when it comes to video recording. Colors are a bit dull and gloomy, with some noise present at low light. 

The iPhone 15 Pro Max has remained a dual stereo-speaker phone and we expect excellent audio quality. No 3.5mm audio jack will be present on this one.

The Pixel 7 Pro has a dual-speaker setup consisting of a bottom-firing loudspeaker and another speaker in the earpiece. Although it lacks some depth and richness in the base frequencies, the Pixel 7 Pro outputs very decent sound. 

Haptic feedback has always been great on flagship iPhones, and we don't expect the iPhone 15 Pro Max to be much different. The Pixel 7 Pro also has excellent taptics, improving the user experience. 

While we don't know the iPhone 15 Pro Max exact battery size, Apple says the new phone has the same battery life as the iPhone 14 Pro Max. The battery size of the new iPhone is 4,422mAh. It doesn't sound as if the 3nm Apple A17 Pro was the one missing piece that finally delivers exceptional battery life to the iPhone. Charging-wise, the iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with 20W wired charging and 15W MagSafe wireless charging.

The Pixel 7 Pro has a large 5,000mAh battery that delivers very decent battery life in comparison with most previous Pixel phones and the rest of the Android top brass. Surely, the efficiency and humbler specifications of the Tensor G2 help it achieve such good battery life. The Pixel 7 Pro maxes out at 23W wired and wireless charging, provided that you buy Google's own Pixel Stand wireless charger.  

What are the iPhone 15 Pro Max vs Pixel 7 Pro specs differences? Here are the essential specs summarized in a table:

Overall, we expect that the iPhone 15 Pro Max will be quite the serious competition to the Pixel 7 Pro. The iOS-powered phone will be a dominant force to be reckoned with, the yardstick that all phones will have to contend with. 

Despite the rumors, Apple didn't go through with the price hike, so the iPhone 15 Pro Max remains at the same $1,199 entry-level price tag.

Meanwhile, Google's best traditional phone so far embodies the best of Android in 2023, with a pristine software that isn't found on other phones and a hardware that's shaped to fulfill the unique needs of an AI/ML-driven experience.