Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max

Scratchgate: what was real and what was overblown

This is the question most prospective buyers search for, and the answer requires separating two things that got conflated in the coverage.

The viral story — Apple Store demo units appearing scratched within days of launch — was largely a false alarm. Apple said the marks were material transferred from the demo stands, and they cleaned off. That part was genuinely overblown.

The underlying flaw is real, though. iFixit's microscope teardown found that the anodisation layer on the aluminium unibody is thin, and anodised aluminium bonds poorly to sharp edges — there simply isn't enough substrate at a hard corner to hold the aluminium oxide layer. The sharp edges of the camera plateau are exactly such a corner, and they genuinely chip against keys and coins. GSMArena's independent durability testing confirmed the vulnerability.

So: a real engineering trade-off, not a hoax, and not recall-level either. It is a geometry problem rather than a materials problem, it affects appearance rather than function, and Apple never issued a fix or service programme. If you buy one, a case over the camera plateau edges solves it entirely — and be aware that visible plateau chipping does reduce trade-in and resale value.

The vapour chamber: why the aluminium switch was worth it

Apple moved the Pro Max from titanium to an aluminium unibody this generation, which reads as a downgrade — titanium is stiffer and holds a finish better. The reason is thermal, and the engineering is more serious than the spec sheet suggests.

Aluminium conducts heat roughly four times better than titanium. Apple paired that with a genuine vapour chamber: deionised water sealed inside a chamber that is laser-welded into the forged aluminium unibody, replacing the graphite films of previous generations and offering roughly 300% better thermal conductivity.

The measured results back the claim. Apple states up to 40% better sustained CPU and GPU performance, and independent testing found the phone runs about 6°C cooler than the 16 Pro Max under load — surface temperatures of roughly 33°C versus 42°C during 4K60 recording. In practice that means benchmark scores hold up across repeated runs instead of collapsing, and long recording sessions no longer trigger thermal warnings.

One irony worth flagging: despite the best cooling hardware Apple has shipped, a significant number of owners report the 17 Pro Max running hot on iOS 26. That appears to be a software problem rather than a hardware one — see below.

The iOS 26 problem

A recurring complaint across the iPhone 17 Pro line, and one that spec sheets never capture: iOS 26 has been widely reported to cause rapid battery drain, overheating while idle, sluggish animations that worsen in Low Power Mode, delayed Face ID, and intermittent Wi-Fi drops.

The reporting suggests the Pro models are disproportionately affected — the 16 Pro and 17 Pro specifically — with the Liquid Glass interface raising baseline GPU load even on static screens, compounded by background Focus Filter syncing.

This matters for buying advice because it partially offsets the vapour chamber's gains. The hardware is excellent; the software has been undermining it. Apple has shipped incremental fixes through the iOS 26.x cycle, and if you buy one now you will be on a much later build than the launch reviews tested, but it's worth knowing the complaint is real and widespread rather than isolated.

Battery: the longest-lasting iPhone yet

GSMArena's testing recorded 17 hours 58 minutes of active use — the highest figure the outlet has measured on any iPhone. That comes from a larger 4823mAh cell (5088mAh on eSIM-only international units), the same A19 Pro efficiency gains found across the 17 lineup, and iOS 26's more aggressive background throttling.

Charging improved alongside capacity: 50% in 20 minutes wired, up from 30 minutes on the 16 Pro Max, using a new PD3.2/AVS profile that requires a compatible charger to hit peak speed. Wireless charging is 25W via MagSafe/Qi2 (15W in China).

Camera: the telephoto finally catches up

All three rear sensors are now 48MP, and the periscope telephoto's headline change is reaching 4x optical zoom at f/2.8 with 3D sensor-shift OIS — a genuine hardware upgrade over the 16 Pro Max's setup, not just a software crop. The main 48MP wide gets sensor-shift OIS and a slightly wider aperture at f/1.8.

Video capabilities are the deepest on any phone: ProRes RAW, Apple Log 2, Dolby Vision HDR up to 120fps, and 3D spatial video/audio capture, aimed squarely at users doing serious mobile filmmaking rather than casual shooting.