iPhone XS and XS Max: hands-on with Apple’s giant new phone

Apple just announced the iPhone XS and XS Max. They’re iterations on last year’s iPhone X, but the XS Max at least stands out in one very notable way: it’s so much larger. The Max has a 6.5-inch screen, making it a bigger phone than even the latest model in Samsung’s famously large Galaxy Note line.

The event just wrapped up, and Apple has let us out into a demo area with phones to check out. Our initial impression: they feel like iPhone Xs (or however you pluralize iPhone X). Build quality is of course up to Apple’s standards. Neither the new more durable glass nor the steel rails feel any more slippery than before, and a quick snap of a photo shows that it is fast — though we need to do more testing to really know anything definitive.

The iPhone XS Max is bigger, yes, but as you can see in the below photos it is almost hard to distinguish the two when you’re looking at photos. It feels much better than any “Plus” iPhone ever has.

Both phones have identical specs aside from their screens. They use Apple’s new A12 Bionic processor, which is supposed to be 15 percent faster than the A11, have improved water resistance that’s supposed to let them stay submerged in two meters of water for up to 30 minutes, and have support for two SIMs and gigabit LTE. The rear cameras have each seen improvements to make them faster (larger pixels on the wide angle, a wider aperture on the telephoto), and the selfie cameras is supposed to be faster as well (though not for any immediate spec-related reason).