iPhone 17 Pro Max vs OnePlus 13: preview and expectations

Apple typically has four-five colors on its Pro models. For 2025, rumors say we will get Black, Gray, White, Dark Blue, and Orange. Yet another rumor spoke of a special "Liquid Glass" color — probably the white variant with a nice translucent slab of glass on the back? We'll see.

OnePlus 13 comes in Black Eclipse, Midnight Ocean, or Acrtic Dawn. What's fun about OnePlus is that you are not picking color — you are also literally picking your finish, as some colors have a matte glass back, others — faux leather.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max should have a 6.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR OLED display with dynamic 1-120 Hz ProMotion, just as before. The OnePlus 13 rivals that with its own 6.8-inch AMOLED panel with 120 Hz. 

Rumors do say that Apple has an ace up its sleeve — apparently, Cupertino is working on a new anti-reflection coated screen glass. Possibly to rival the excellent Gorilla Armor that's on the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Ultra. If so, Apple's flagship will definitely have another leg up on most of the competition.

The OnePlus 13 does have the impressive-sounding 4,500 nit peak brightness, but that's a momentary measurement for a small section of the screen. It won't be much brighter, in general, than the iPhone (as it's not much brighter than the iPhone 16 Pro Max).

Apple should have a new A19 Pro chip for the next iPhones. Probably built on a 3 nm process, though faint rumors have suggested 2 nm. It's probably a bit early for this development. In any case, the Apple A18 Pro was already great. Word now is that the thermal management in the iPhone 17 Pro Max will be a revolutionary combination of graphite and vapor chamber. If so, it may finally achieve the gamer device status that Apple has been chasing for the past couple of years.

Same goes for the 3 nm Snapdragon 8 Elite inside the OnePlus 13 — it rivals Apple's silicon and, depending on manufacturer and implementation, can even get sustained results. While the OnePlus 13 isn't a gaming phone or anything, it had some pretty impressive thermal management, managing to keep benchmark scores high for longer.

It looks like the iPhone 17 Pro Max might finally break the 12 GB RAM barrier — and honestly, it makes sense. Apple has traditionally been conservative with RAM, relying instead on tight hardware-software integration. But the game is changing. With AI features slowly becoming a staple and Apple Intelligence pushing more on-device processing, the need for more memory is no longer optional—it’s necessary. We already saw a bunch of 2024 Apple hardware quietly upgraded to support these new capabilities. Rumor has it all 2025 iPhones are getting 12 GB of RAM across the board. Not just for performance today, but to keep them relevant over Apple’s usual 5+ year support window.

The OnePlus 13 already comes with 12 GB RAM at its base 256 GB storage tier, but goes up to 16 GB RAM on the 512 GB model.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max will probably have the same options as before — 256 GB minimum, then 512 GB and 1 TB upgrades. 

The iPhone 17 Pro Max will ship with iOS 26, and the new Liquid Glass aesthetic brings subtle transparency, layering, and animation across the entire OS. If you opt for the new “Clear Look” mode, it becomes even more pronounced — a full-on glassy interface makeover.

There’s more than just eye candy, though. The Music app has been revamped with animated album art. Notifications can now interact with a dynamic wallpaper that shifts with the time of day. The lock screen also gets a fresh animated feel.

Elsewhere, the Camera app has been simplified — you only see the essentials up front, and swipe to access everything else. And there are new functional tools in Phone and Messages, like Call Screening, Spam Message Filtering, and Live Translate — a long-awaited Apple answer to Android’s real-time call interpretation.

You also get small quality-of-life refinements: smarter rerouting in Maps, decluttered Photos layout, and, finally, typing indicators and chat backgrounds in Messages.

Both the iPhone 17 Pro Max and OnePlus 13 have AI features baked in, but Apple’s long-term vision for Apple Intelligence isn’t fully rolling out until 2026. That said, the A19 Pro and 12 GB of RAM are being positioned to power those features down the road. In contrast, OnePlus leans more on Google’s Gemini integration, offering a lighter AI layer on top of Android 15.

The OnePlus 13 is promised four years of Android updates and six years of security patches. Apple, as usual, will support the iPhone 17 Pro Max for five to six years.

Apple throws everything at the camera, and it does show — iPhones are very consistent and dependable with photos, easily the best for recording video. The OnePlus 13 costs about $300 less than the current iPhone 16 Pro Max, so it will definitely be more affordable than the 17 Pro Max. But that doesn't mean its cameras are $300 worse — OnePlus has been putting a lot of muscle (and a Hasselblad partnership) behind that, too!

After Apple updated its main, ultra-wide, and zoom cameras to have high-res sensors, we now expect the front-facing camera to get some love, but nothing too extreme. A jump from 12 MP to 24 MP — we'll see what improvements that brings.

Recent rumors say the zoom camera of the new iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max will see an improvement and new feature. Instead of being locked at 5X zoom, you will be able to control the lenses to shift between 5X and 8X. Whether it will be a continuous zoom, a-la Sony Xperia, a-la actual camera lenses — it's yet unclear, but I do assume so.

The OnePlus 13 feels really nice with its triple cameras, offering a lot of versatility and pretty good quality. It got 145 overall points on our camera benchmark test, which is only 9 points below the iPhone 16 Pro Max. So, unless the iPhone 7 Pro Max makes some major leaps — the OnePlus 13 is still in the game!

Apple's iPhones don't bet a lot on huge batteries — they achieve endurance with hardware and software optimizations. That said, the Pro Max units have felt the pressure from the other top-tier competitors, and every year inch closer and closer to that 5,000 mAh cell, which is now standard in Android line. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is rumored to have between 4,700 and 5,000 mAh. 

Meanwhile, OnePlus has already passed that threshold comfortably, offering a pretty enduring OnePlus 13 with its 6,000 mAh cell that also charges quite feast with the proprietary 100 W charger.

So, here's what we know so far about the iPhone 17 Pro Max vs OnePlus 13 specs:

The iPhone 17 Pro Max will very probably be another incremental step up, but if the new thermal solutions and anti-reflective display rumors become true, it may just be more than that. Apple's phones are typically a well-known package of dependable battery, predictably good camera, and stable performance. However, the competition on 2025 is fierce and we may just need a little bit more.