Unboxed an iPhone 15 Pro Max this morning. We’re well past the point of dark comedy in how little these things change year-over-year. The 15 is indistinguishable from the 14, and you have to be an Apple connoisseur to spot the differences even from a 12 or 13. You can easily tell it apart from an 11, but only because that was the year that Apple made the inspirational jump from curved edges to square edges (a reboot of iPhone 4 era design). Hash tag courage.

That said, as with previous iterations, it’s a great phone. Impressions from the first day of use:

• USB-C, finally. I now have exclusively USB-C gear, so I can travel with only one type of cable.

• The Action button is great. Instead of activating on a simple press (prone to false positives), you hold it for a moment, and it provides the perfect amount of haptic feedback. I have mine mapped to open the camera, so it’s now much faster to do so (the alternative was finding a widget from the lock screen) and I can do it by touch only. The old “silent” switch it replaced was so freaking useless – it was a crime to leave it on there for as long as they did.

• Titanium feels great and is more grippy than the previous body. The phone is easy to hold onto even without a case.

Some people have reported heating problems. Mine definitely got hot as it was restoring from backup, but it’s been fine since.