OnePlus 13 vs iPhone 16 Pro Max: David vs Goliath

We all know the David versus Goliath story; it's a metaphor for the improbable victory of the underdog, the outsider, the small kid in the classroom. And even though the OnePlus 13 is far form an underdog, put next to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, it feels like the little David with its tiny slingshot.

Could the OnePlus 13 deal a fatal blow to the iPhone 16 Pro Max and make this a perfect analogy? Today we'll try to find out. The OnePlus 13 officially debuted in China on October 31, so we know everything about OnePlus' new flagship. Of course, benchmarks and camera score will be added soon, once we have the OnePlus 13 on our test bench. The latest info points toward a global release sometime in January, so the time has almost come.

This is our preliminary OnePlus 13 vs iPhone 16 Pro Max comparison.

The iPhone 16 series unveiling was a bit of a downer. We're already accustomed to incremental changes in the smartphone world year on year, but Apple outdid itself with the iPhone 16 and the things that actually stayed the same. Nevertheless, there are some minor changes in the design—a new Camera Control button, a bigger screen, and new cameras but overall, the iPhone 16 Pro Max looks very similar to its predecessors.

The OnePlus 13 also follows in the design footsteps of the previous flagship from the company. The curvature on the screen is now almost non-existent; the phone looks much flatter and, subsequently, similar to what Samsung and Apple have been doing in the past couple of years.

Where these two phones differ is the materials. The iPhone is, of course, using a Grade 5 titanium frame, while the OnePlus 13 is sporting good old aluminum. There's glass on the back of both phones, but the OnePlus 13 has one faux leather option in blue, which by the way looks gorgeous.

Speaking of colors, here are the hues of both phones.

OnePlus 13 available colors:

• While Dawn
• Blue Moment
• Obsidian Black

iPhone 16 Pro Max available colors:

• Black Titanium
• White Titanium
• Natural Titanium
• Desert Titanium

The camera housing on the back is in line with what these two brands have been doing design-wise in the past couple of years; in the case of the OnePlus 13, it's a circular camera bump offset to the left. The iPhone relies on the same squarish camera housing we know back from the iPhone 12 series days.

Moving to the display portion of the comparison, we see some differences, but not as many as one might expect.

The OnePlus 13 is featuring a 6.82-inch LTPO (1-120Hz) AMOLED screen that can hit a super bright 4,500 nits, or 1,600 nits in high brightness mode (HBM). But as always, real-life brightness may differ due to the way companies measure these things (usually on a very small patch of the screen for a very short time). The resolution is 3168 x 1440, giving it a sharp pixel density of around 510 PPI.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max, on the other hand, sports one of the biggest panels out there, a 6.9-inch monstrosity with a 2868 x 1320 pixel resolution, which results in about 460 pixels per inch density. On paper, the OnePlus 13 panel beats the iPhone 16 Pro Max in terms of brightness and PPI, but we need to run our display tests to be sure.

This is probably one of the most interesting sections of this comparison, as initial Geekbench results put the Snapdragon 8 Elite up there with Apple's A18 silicon. Leaked Xiaomi 15 and OnePlus 13 scores put the chip ahead of the A18 Pro in multicore performance and very close in single core.

This battle is yet to be fought in our test lab, so we'll wait until we get our own numbers, but it's closer than ever! In terms of RAM, there's an inherited advantage for the Android flagship, due to the way iOS handles apps and optimizes things for RAM usage.

The OnePlus 13 comes with 12GB of RAM in the base 256GB configuration, and there's also a 24GB RAM model coupled with 1TB of storage. The iPhone 16 Pro Max uses 8GB of RAM, but it doesn't affect performance negatively.

Stay tuned for performance benchmarks and the winner of this intense battle soon!

In terms of software, Apple still polishes and updates its Apple Intelligence, so it's a work in progress. The OnePlus 13 launched with ColorOS 15 in China (based on Android 15) and some interesting AI tricks onboard. 

We expect the company to rely on Google and Gemini for AI magic when the phone goes global, which might be the best way to do it. In China though the OnePlus 13 has its own Chinese AI assistant, and it can search contextually, take voice memos and summaries and pretty much all the AI stuff that's been popular in smartphones of late.

Here's a specs comparison for the number nerds out there.

There's a good chance the OnePlus 13 qualifies to be the first Android flagship that's will be able to challenge the iPhone 16 Pro Max on raw hardware power, thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This, however, might not be enough to sway hardcore Apple fans to switch and reach for the OnePlus, as there are other things to consider. The camera, software longevity, and AI support are all things that are very important in 2024.

Last but not least, the price is still a major factor (and will remain one) when choosing a smartphone, and the OnePlus 13 could have an advantage here as well. Stay tuned for a final verdict once we finish the review.