Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max gaming test shows up to 69% less performance loss than iPhone 17 Pro Max

For Death Strandingboth phones were tested at 900p using the High preset. At the start of the run, the iPhone 18 Pro Max offered around 40 FPS, while the iPhone 17 Pro Max was around 32-33 FPS.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max reached “Fair” thermal status in 6 minutes 31 seconds, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max only reached “Fair” in 11 minutes 27 seconds. At this point, the 17 Pro Max had already moved to the “Serious” level, although the video doesn’t give the exact timestamp of this transition. The 18 Pro Max only reached “Serious” state in 19 minutes 57 seconds.

At around 34 minutes 40 seconds, the iPhone 18 Pro Max was still averaging around 37 FPS, while the iPhone 17 Pro Max was down to around 24.5 FPS. Again, the newer phone doesn’t completely avoid thermal throttling, but it takes much longer to reach the same thermal states and loses much less performance once there.