My job revolves around working with cutting-edge technology, so I like keeping my gadgets up to date. Owing to this, I headed to the nearest Apple Store and picked up the brand new iPhone 16 Pro Max on the day of release. I was excited about the improvements in the camera department, along with the all-new Apple Intelligence features to enhance the iPhone experience. Unfortunately, the excitement was short-lived due to a mismatch between my expectations and reality. Eventually, I ended up selling my iPhone 16 Pro Max less than three months after I bought it. Here’s why.
iOS 18 Is a Bugs Galore
When Apple announced iOS 18 at WWDC, I was excited to see some extremely simple yet vital features finally making their way to the iPhone. You could finally place icons anywhere on the home screen, hide and lock apps so others can’t see them, and record calls with transcription – things that were available on Android for more than a decade. While these features delivered and lived up to their expectations, iOS 18 as a whole was severely unstable during my usage.
I would face random crashes and slowdowns from time to time, something you don’t expect from a phone that costs $1,200. The music widget would randomly disappear from the lock screen while playing media, or the control center icons would get rearranged in a haphazard manner when the iPhone was rotated in the horizontal orientation.
In spite of receiving multiple updates in the course of three months, these issues persisted. A lot of them were small and could be ignored. After all, every operating system has its own share of bugs. However, my breaking point was when my iPhone didn’t allow me to save a photo after editing it in the stock Photos app. Let me explain the situation.
It couldn’t perform a basic task
For context, I love the new Photographic Styles feature on the iPhone 16 series. It’s one of the best things to happen to the iPhone camera in recent times. So naturally, I use it quite often. The other day, I clicked a picture and realized it wasn’t looking good in the default Style. So, I went to the Edit option in the Photos app and picked the right Photographic Style from the list. I made some changes to the Tone levels and hit the Save button to modify the image.
To my surprise, the iPhone wouldn’t let me save the image. It kept throwing an error that said: “There was an error saving this photo.”
I thought there must be a temporary issue. So, like any sane person, I restarted my iPhone and made the same edits. Shockingly, I saw the same error yet again. I then had to switch to Snapseed to edit the photo which meant I couldn’t change the Photographic Style of that image. That can only be done via the default Photos app.
Didn’t get fixed even after updating
Since the error asked me to wait for a while, I got on with my work and decided to edit the photo later. Once I finished the day’s work, I picked up my iPhone again. This was eight hours after the initial error popped up. Alas, I saw the same dreaded error yet again when trying to edit a photo. At this point, I was genuinely frustrated. My iPhone wasn’t able to perform an extremely basic task that most people do on their phones. Did I pay $1,200 for this?
Funnily, the bug exists even after updating to iOS 18.2, which tells me that Apple is probably not even aware of this issue. For someone like me who is an avid photographer, the inability to edit photos is a massive deal-breaker.
The Hardware Is Getting Stale
Apart from the addition of Camera Control and the new Desert Titanium colorway, the iPhone 16 Pro Max looks like a replica of the iPhone 15 Pro Max. While I don’t really care about cosmetic changes much, Apple hasn’t done much with the internals either. Sure, the chipset gets a spec bump so the iPhone 16 is faster than the iPhone 15. But, aspects like the cameras remain largely unchanged.
For instance, there are several phones out there that have massive 1-inch camera sensors and 200MP telephoto lenses that click stunning photos. On the other hand, Apple is still relying on its image processing to carry smaller and older sensors. This shows in the quality of photos shot using the phone. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has an excellent camera system. It would definitely make it to the list of the top five camera smartphones out there. But when you compare the output to phones like the Vivo X200 Pro, Oppo Find X8 Pro, or even the Xiaomi 14 Ultra from last year, you can clearly see how these phones are way ahead in several parameters.
For a camera enthusiast like me, there are several more enticing smartphones out there – most of which perform better while also being more affordable compared to the iPhone.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I like getting my hands on any new piece of tech that gets announced. The iPhone just doesn’t feel like a new gadget simply because it looks and feels so similar to the previous one.
Late Introduction of Apple Intelligence
Despite announcing Apple Intelligence and speaking about it constantly during the iPhone keynote, the feature was only made available a couple of weeks back to all iPhone users. Essentially, anyone who bought the iPhone 16 for the AI features had to wait for close to three months to get them. Moreover, most of the Apple Intelligence features are extremely basic and add very little value.
For instance, Writing Tools messes up basic grammar, and the Image Playground can only generate animated images. Both of these were a massive letdown. Moreover, the supposedly new and improved Siri is as bad as it used to be. It looks up the web for most queries, I might as well use a search engine for that.
Apple is heavily lagging in terms of AI features. Several OEMs selling Android phones have already introduced useful AI features like Circle to Search, Magic Editor, etc. much before Apple. They’re also a lot more useful in everyday life compared to Apple’s offering.
I’ve Happily Switched to the Other Side
Well, as the title said, I had enough of the sub-par iPhone experience and decided to move back to good ‘ol Android. I sold my iPhone 16 Pro Max last week. Although I incurred a loss, I’m now using a phone with stellar cameras, cutting-edge hardware, and a Photos app that lets me edit my pictures whenever I want. Even if I ignored everything else, the photo editing bug on the iPhone was the final nail in the coffin for me. I’m glad I’m getting a lot more worth for my money with the Vivo X200 Pro I picked up the day I sold the iPhone. This phone is what real innovation looks like. Apple, take notes.
