I moved from the normal sized iPhone to the Max this year. No regrets so far. The most common thing I do with my phone is consume media so the cumbersomeness has been a good tradeoff.
I had bought a 15 Pro on release day but returned it for the max after a week of continuing to doubt myself after holding a max in the store. I had jumbophones up till the iPhone X, I even had a Dell Streak back in the day.
Most suprising thing to me was that the speaker was insainely better. I stopped carrying a Bluetooth speaker around with me for when I'm working cause the speakers get the job done well enough now. It's not a 1-to-1 replacement but it is just ggod enough that it suffices. Also, the battery life from the smaller phone to the larger was such a big increase that I’ve stopped carrying around an external battery but just keep a usbc cable with my in case my ecig runs out of battery and I need to charge it off my phone.
It’s been an interesting series of trade offs going back to a larger phone but then again, the bezels and thickness have reduced so much that a Max without a case feels the same as a normal size phone with a case. I thought I'd get bit by the screen being too big more than I have but I guess some honest self reflection on what I actually use my phone for compared to what I picture I use it for helped with the decision making. (I totally get that other people's use cases with have completely calculus)
It’s also easy to forget that degradation on the highest spec cables is pretty severe. A 1m full spec thunderbolt 4 cable can be made dirt cheap but there extremely limited 3m cables to the point that $160 is reasonable despite it sounding silly
I'd genuinely be shocked if they didn't try to annex the majority of the land if not all of it. Cornering a mass of people isn't a wise decision but they will use the inevitable violence as an excuse for all out ethnic cleansing
The onomonopia I hear is PONK