It's not surprising that the largest smartphones by the likes of Apple and Samsung have the longest battery lives, because they have the biggest batteries — but new testing shows that the iPhone 16 Pro Max beats them all.

As for dimensions, compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is slightly taller (163mm vs. 160.8 mm) and thicker (8.3mm vs 7.7mm), but Apple's shaved down the weight significantly (to 227g from 240g).

This may sound bad… and certainly isn’t reassuring to hear. But as MacRumors points out in its coverage of the story, this is just a really hard test. The iPhone 16 Pro Max has glass on both front and back, and no glass-based smartphone has ever survived Allstate’s DropBot test.

I now crown the iPhone 16 Pro Max as our new smartphone battery life king, kicking the Google Pixel 9 out of its short-lived throne. You won't believe how long the top-tier iPhone 16 lasted on a charge.

The $999 iPhone 16 Pro and $1,199 iPhone 16 Pro Max have everything we've come to expect in a year-over-year upgrade. They lack Apple Intelligence at launch but make up for it in other ways.

Processor: After a generation gap on the iPhone 15 and 14 models, the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro models each have an A18 chip. The main difference is an extra GPU core on the A18 Pro, but most users are very unlikely to notice.

My iPhone 13 Pro Max was working just fine when I decided to upgrade to the latest model. The 13 Pro Max still feels fast, takes excellent photos, and easily lasts all day on a full charge even at 88% battery health.

As new as the iPhone 16 models may be, details have started emerging about next year's phones. Here's an early look at how an iPhone 17 vs. iPhone 16 comparison is shaping up.