iPhone XS Max
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iPhone XS Max
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The iPhone XS Max is a smartphone designed and marketed by Apple, announced on September 12, 2018, and released on September 21, 2018, as the large companion to the iPhone XS. It brought the all-screen iPhone X design to the size class the iPhone 8 Plus had left behind — and beyond it: a 6.5-inch Super Retina OLED, the largest iPhone display to date, in a body physically smaller than the old 5.5-inch Plus phones because the screen had swallowed the bezels.
"Max" replaced "Plus" in the naming — and unlike the Plus era, the Max carried no camera or memory advantage: it was precisely an XS with a bigger display and battery, at a $100 premium starting from $1,099 and topping out at $1,449, then the most expensive iPhone ever sold. Buyers took the deal enthusiastically: the Max outsold the 5.8-inch XS by most estimates, confirming that at the four-figure tier, bigger had become the default.
Like the XS, it served one year before the iPhone 11 Pro Max replaced it.
1 Design✎
The XS Max scales the X/XS architecture — stainless band, glass sandwich, notch — to 157.5 × 77.4 mm, fractionally narrower and shorter than the iPhone 8 Plus while showing an inch more screen diagonal. At 208 g it took the "heaviest iPhone" title from the 8 Plus. Space Gray, Silver, and the new Gold matched the XS, as did IP68 sealing and the durability-upgraded glass. Reachability — the old Plus concession to thumbs — returned via a swipe-down gesture on the bottom edge.
2 Display✎
The 6.5-inch Super Retina OLED — 2688 × 1242, the same 458 ppi as the XS — was the largest and highest-resolution display ever on an iPhone, with HDR (Dolby Vision and HDR10), True Tone, wide color, and 3D Touch. Landscape apps regained the two-pane layouts lost since the Plus era, and video in HDR on the big OLED became the phone's best demonstration. Reviewers measured it, like the X panel before it, among the most color-accurate mobile displays ever tested.
3 Hardware✎
| Developer | Apple |
|---|---|
| Generation | 12th |
| Announced | September 12, 2018 |
| Released | September 21, 2018 |
| Discontinued | September 10, 2019 |
| Predecessor | iPhone 8 Plus (size class) |
| Related | iPhone XS · iPhone XR |
| Successor | iPhone 11 Pro Max |
| Display | 6.5-inch Super Retina OLED 2688 × 1242 (458 ppi) HDR · True Tone · 3D Touch |
| Chip | Apple A12 Bionic (2 + 4 cores, 7 nm · 8-core Neural Engine) |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| Storage | 64 GB · 256 GB · 512 GB |
| Rear cameras | 12 MP wide, f/1.8, OIS (1.4µ pixels) + 12 MP telephoto, f/2.4, OIS Smart HDR · adjustable-depth Portrait |
| Front camera | 7 MP TrueDepth · Face ID |
| Battery | 3,174 mAh · Qi wireless charging |
| Connectivity | Gigabit-class LTE · dual SIM (eSIM) Wi-Fi 802.11ac · Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Durability | IP68 · stainless steel frame |
| Colors | Space Gray · Gold · Silver |
| Launch price | $1,099 (64 GB) · $1,249 (256 GB) · $1,449 (512 GB) |
| OS | iOS 12.0 ~ 18 |
Internally the Max is an iPhone XS — A12 Bionic, 4 GB of RAM, identical dual camera and Smart HDR pipeline, IP68, eSIM dual-SIM — plus the largest battery yet fitted to an iPhone at 3,174 mAh, rated an hour past the X and ninety minutes past the XS. The undifferentiated camera marked the clean break from Plus-era logic: size itself, not features, was now the premium.
4 Camera✎
Identical to the XS: the larger-pixel 12-megapixel wide sensor, OIS telephoto, nine-frame Smart HDR, adjustable-depth Portraits, and extended-dynamic-range video. On the 6.5-inch HDR OLED, the camera's output simply looked better — the Max as its own best photo frame.
5 Software✎
Shipped with iOS 12, with the restored landscape split-view layouts as its size dividend; Memoji, Shortcuts, and Screen Time debuted with the release. Supported through iOS 18, its final major version.
6 Release and reception✎
The Max absorbed the XS launch's energy — carrier and analyst data through the fall consistently put it ahead of the smaller model, sometimes two-to-one, and the 512 GB Gold Max became the season's status object at a sticker no phone had carried before. Reviews treated it as the XS verdict at larger scale: the best big phone made, the best battery in the line, priced past any easy recommendation while the iPhone XR existed. It was discontinued with the XS on September 10, 2019.
7 Legacy✎
The XS Max established that the largest iPhone is the flagship in practice: from the iPhone 11 Pro Max through the current iPhone 17 Pro Max, the Max tier has anchored Apple's top price and its buyers have kept choosing it. It normalized both the $1,099+ price band and the 6.5-inch-class display that every subsequent generation refined — and it retired the Plus name's original meaning for good, "Max" becoming the word for the phone with no compromises but its size.