iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Vivo X300 Ultra

iPhone 16 Pro Max

The headline strength: a ~4,685mAh battery delivering the best flagship endurance reviewers had measured — undercut by slow charging.

• Battery life is the best of any flagship phone in the last few years — extremely efficient.
• In a robotic intensive battery test, the iPhone 16 Pro Max beat all the competition.
• Even after a year of daily use it still measured 100% battery health and reached 10h07m screen-on-time in a 7-phone drain test (best result observed: 12h44m on iOS 18.3.2).
• It charges slowly: ~39% in 30 min and a full charge in ~2h03m, versus a Galaxy S25 Ultra's 1h17m.
• Max wired charge is only ~30W and Apple doesn't even sell a 30W adapter (you must buy the 40W one); MagSafe is 25W.
• Heavy users report finishing the day with 40–50% remaining — a huge jump coming from a 15 Pro.

Vivo X300 Ultra

Vivo grew the silicon-carbon cell 10% to 6,600mAh while keeping the body the same size. Real-world endurance is strong — ~16h active-use score, ~7h heavy screen-on, 13–14 hour days with charge to spare — and 100W wired refills it in under an hour, with 40W wireless.

• Vivo increased the battery by 10% to 6,600mAh despite the phone being practically the same size on paper.
• In our battery test it earned an active-use score of almost 16 hours; 100W charging took it 0–66% in 30 minutes and a full charge in 46 minutes, plus 40W wireless. A charger is in the box except in Europe.
• On the China version I'm finishing entire 13–14 hour days with 25–30% left; the global version keeps the 6,600mAh cell so battery life should comfortably last 12–13 hours of heavy use.
• Getting nearly 7 hours of screen-on time with very heavy usage from the 6,600mAh silicon-carbon unit, with 100W wired and 40W wireless charging support.
• After a 4-hour heavy-usage simulation the phone still had ~45% battery left, which is solid by today's standards, and 100W wired charging takes about 45 minutes to full.

iPhone 16 Pro Max

At $1,199 (128GB) it's the best iPhone of its year and ages superbly, but it's an incremental upgrade with stingy base storage.

• It's the best iPhone Apple has produced yet and the one to get for a maxed-out feature set.
• For most people this is the best phone — Samsung and Google really need to step it up.
• It's terrific but an incremental update to its predecessor with little in the way of useful new features.
• Base storage still starts at 128GB at $1,199 — a downgrade from the 15 Pro Max's 256GB minimum.
• Owners who upgraded from older models call it 'the BEST iPhone yet' and one of their favourite iPhones of all time.
• In 2026 it still feels current — an older product that holds up, though the aluminium-free titanium ages better than rivals' finishes.

Vivo X300 Ultra

This is a deliberately niche, camera-first flagship: roughly €1,175 in China for 512GB, around £1,399 globally for the phone, and close to €2,600 for the full kit. For the people it's aimed at it draws some of the strongest praise of any 2026 phone; for everyone else, a cheaper X300 Pro or the Oppo Find X9 Ultra may make more sense.

• Last year's X200 Ultra was, in my opinion, one of the best smartphones of 2025 — and this is the best smartphone I've ever used, with the best camera application I've ever used, provided with zero script from Vivo.
• The cameras are nothing short of amazing — this is the best Android camera phone, with image quality better than anything from Samsung.
• The versatility here is just ridiculous — more like a phone in a camera than the other way around, a camera system built from the sum of its many parts.
• If you accept the 35mm main, are willing to tolerate AI processing in some scenes, and don't mind the front-camera stabilisation limits, this Vivo is an excellent choice.