Late adopter... Purchased iPhone 14 Pro Max in April 2023... Currently showing 99% battery health on Settings... Have not counter-checked with Coconut Battery on macOS...
I used to purchase old models when new ones get introduced... Purchased iPhone 7 Plus brand new, a 2016 model in November 2020... Prior to that I have purchased multiple pre-owned/second hand units to experience older iOS versions and to experience owning the unit as if I got it on the release period/year...
When I had enough money to purchase a new model outright/full payment and not installment, I was deciding between iPhone 13 Pro Max vs iPhone 14 Pro Max, older model with bigger storage compared to newer model with smaller storage for nearly the same price... I decided to go with the newer model...
Several months later after iPhone 15 series was announced and available for purchase, I keep going back to the iPhone comparison page and for me, the changes introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro Max are not that compelling to me...
USB Type C and USB 3.2 speeds are nice to have but I can get by with AirDrop, although it seems to get more unreliable by the day, enough free space on the receiving device but transfer fails, and other data transfer issues...
5x optical zoom leaves anything between 1x and 5x to be digital zoom/crop which I don't like... Another reason that I went with iPhone 14 Pro Max than iPhone 13 Pro Max, even though both uses 2x digital zoom, because the newer one has 48MP sensor, to me it is still the better choicce... Will Apple go the Samsung way with more cameras? We'll see...
Ability to save directly to an external storage is nice to have but the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro both max out to 4K 30fps ProRes when relying on the internal storage and I don't shoot in ProRes or Cinematic mode...
I have seen videos about Smart HDR 4 and Smart HDR 5 but it seems to me that even if you upgrade iPhone 14 Pro Max to iOS 17.x it would still be using Smart HDR 4 so I kept it at iOS 16.7 since even though iPhone 14 Pro can handle iOS 17.x fine, iOS 16 was designed with iPhone 14 Pro in mind...
iPhone 13 Pro Max has bigger aperture compared to iPhone 14 Pro Max when it comes to the wide and ultra wide cameras but it seems to have been negated or at least as close to due to the 48MP sensor on the iPhone 14 Pro Max...
The notch on the iPhone 13 series is narrower yet taller but seeing a uniform bezel and a punch hole/Dynamic Island made me go with iPhone 14 Pro Max...
I was also debating between the iPhone 13 mini and a bigger newer model to either relive the iPhone 4/4s/5/5c/5s/SE 2016 days or get a bigger longer lasting battery... I may do that since I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max which I purchased pre-owned after getting the iPhone 14 Pro Max although I will lose the ability to shoot ProRAW and HDR video with Dolby Vision and I am not counting the iPhone 12 series since it introduced 5G but with smaller battery compared to the iPhone 11 series...