Considering the camera is not a periscope style that sends light down the body of the device, I see little reason why this (minor bump in zoom) is not also on the regular 15 Pro as well.
They could have shifted some boards and such to allow for it in both phones, now we again have a feature mismatch between their flagship which is nonsensical.
Despite wanting it, likely not forking the cash as I want a smaller phone more than I want 2x more zoom.
Yep, no one is buying a Pro vs Pro Max based on features, they buy it 100% on size. Then they choose either Pro or non-Pro based on features.
As a non-Max user, who DOES NOT want the bigger form factor, it annoys me that features are different. If it was due to physical size limitations, then why do those same features always end up in the non-Max the year after?
And as a MacBook user who DOES want the biggest screen I can get, it also annoys me to tears that the bigger the laptop, the more upgraded parts are foisted onto me, resulting in an overpowered and overpriced machine for my use case, simply because I want a bigger screen. Case in point, this 16" M1 Pro MBP that I am writing this on. I just need the 16" screen. I'd be fine with the base M1 chip and many other base features (although, I do want the 32 GB RAM that I chose, and that is another gripe, see below). The advent of the 15" MBP (and 24 GB RAM) is nice, but it is still not 16". And even with the 14" vs 16" MBP, the 14" has a lower performance, and thus cheaper, base M1 Pro chip than the 16". My 16" also has a super thick body with the cooling ability to handle intense graphics processing, of which I do zero, and thus it is merely extra weight, size, and cost that I don't need, simply so I can get a 16" screen.
Regarding the need for more RAM, I am a software dev, and need 2/3 of sweet FA GPU power, and thus DO NOT need, nor want, a Pro/Max/Ultra chip, as all they give me is a ton more GPU and very little to none extra CPU. And simply adding CPU cores won't help unless your use case can effectively multi-thread to actually use the extra CPUs. Extra GPUs massively help video/graphics processing, due to the nature of the vector/matrix maths involved. Extra CPUs quickly loses its benefits with compiling code, and speed gains are minor. So nope, throwing either extra GPU or CPU cores at me makes almost nil difference. However, I can definitely make use of the extra RAM.
So please just give me a 16" MBA with a base M chip, and as much RAM and SSD options as the MBPs. That would be many software dev's dream machine. A LOT of software devs use MacBooks.