Powerbeats Pro 2 can also integrate with the Fitness app and help you close your rings like AirPods Pro 3.

When Powerbeats Pro 2 were released back in February, you had to use a third party fitness app on iPhone in order to log your heart rate, calories, etc. Now with iOS 26, you can use Apple’s own Fitness app and track your heart rate with a workout.

The fine print in AirPods Pro 3 press release:

Heart rate sensing with AirPods Pro 3 and Powerbeats Pro 2 during workouts is available in the Fitness app on iPhone with iOS 26, iPad with iPadOS 26, and Apple TV with tvOS 26 when also paired with iPhone or Apple Watch. Apple Fitness+ requires a subscription.

The Powerbeats Pro 2 got a lot of flack from the fitness community due to its woes with accurate heart rate monitoring and lack of consistency in getting readings. It worked better on Android for God’s sake.

AirPods Pro 3 are a signature Apple product, and it needs to work well all the time in order for people to take its heart rate sensing capabilities seriously.

Red Apple Watch faces that are easy on the eyes when sleeping and maintain your visual acuity (in-depth guide).

For a simple watch face when going to sleep, you could use the Sleep Focus and get a minimal watch face, but the problem is you have to tap the screen to see the time, which defeats the purpose of an always-on watch, and maybe your just overpowered by sleep and moving your other arm feels like a real drag in the moment.

The next best option? Minimal red watch faces.

Having a minimal watch face is always the best choice when going to bed, since blue light can strain your eyes and disrupt your sleep. Depending on which Apple Watch you have, you can use different watch faces with a minimal appearance that won’t launch apps with accidental taps and sear your eyes.

There’s nothing more scary than checking the time at 2AM because you hear some sounds, and now you’re blinded by your watch face. The moment you gain some ability to see in the dark again, you see your child almost right up against your face letting you know they leaked themselves.

Now that makes two of you.

To avoid further leaks, use these watch faces.

Note: All these watch faces are red to the naked eye, maintain your night vision, and give off significantly less light than Apple’s Sleep Focus watch face.

Apple’s Sleep Focus watch face.

A quick tip before we get started - when you select the default red color, tap the red color circle and turn the digital crown to make the red as dark as possible.

All the colors above the dash mark can be edited this way.

Apple Watch Series 3

If you’re still stuck on the Series 3, you have two choices for an all red watch face:

Modular - The Series 3 stopped getting updates after watchOS 8, keeping the older Modular watch face. This has a special advantage since you can change the color of the time, something no longer available with the new Modular watch face. Simply disable all complications, choose red as your color option, and you have the most minimalist, least distractive watch face.

Since you can change the color of even the time, just get rid of all complications…

to get this minimalist watch face that’s easy on the eyes.

X-Large - The X-Large watch face in red is another solid option. You get one spot for a massive complication, still giving you time in big font on a single line. The Series 3 version of X-Large on watchOS 8.8 has a unique problem because none of the complications are static, meaning touching the massively sized complication will open its respective app. The Moon Phase complication for example is actually a static complication in later versions of watchOS, but in watchOS 8.8, it opens the World Clock app.

The only option is to turn off complications and keep the huge font.

The regular X-Large face is the way to go. As neat as the complication looks, it’s not ideal for sleep since the touch target is huge.

Apple Watch Series 4, Series 5, SE 1st generation

These three watches were updated to watchOS 10, giving them an advantage with the X-Large face, but taking away the Modular watch face as we knew it. The new Modular watch face becomes more modernized with an extra Date complication and rounder fonts, but now the time can only be had in white, disqualifying the watch face since a truly red watch face cannot be achieved.

Bummer.

The new Modular watch face has multiple colors, but the time is always white when the background color is turned off.

X-Large - The X-Large face gains more complications in watchOS 10, with the key feature being static complications. These static complications don’t interact to touch and don’t open any apps, making it impossible to get any white light exposure. You can choose from two different static complications that are all red in the Astronomy category:

1. Moon

2. Solar System

Depending on the Moon phase, you could get a brighter image, which is why I recommend the Solar System complication for the least intrusive look.

The Moon and Solar System widgets work as static complications, but Solar System is the better option since it’s almost invisible.

Apple Watch Series 6 thru Series 10, SE 2nd generation

X-Large - on watchOS 11 and later, you get three static complications:

1. Earth

2. Moon

3. Solar System

Earth can get bright if you’re a daytime napper in a blacked out room like myself, so once again, the best complication is Solar System.

Solar System wins every time, but Earth and Moon still give off way less light than the Sleep focus watch face.

Photos - the Photos watch face in watchOS 26 gives you the ability to put any photo as a wallpaper, and more importantly, you can select the color of the time, just like the old Modular watch face on the Series 3. Selecting the time color is not always an option depending on the photo but for our purposes it is.

Use the following process to get an all-black watch face:

1. Take an all-black photo (or just use this sample).

2. Select Create Watch Face.

3. Select the Photos Watch Face.

4. Select your preferred Time Size.

5. Pick your font.

6. Pick your Numerals.

7. For Style, pick Natural.

8. For Time Color, select the red time color and slide the gradient to dark red as described earlier in this article.

9. Turn off all complications.

Note: For whatever reason, you can only change the color of the time on the iPhone and not on the watch directly.

Take a look at how similar it is to the original Series 3 Modular:

Original Modular (left) vs new Photos (right).

Photos watch face with small, medium, large and X-large time sizes.

I will admit I do cheat a bit with the Photos watch face and add a complication on top. It is such a small touch target that I have never activated it by accident. The Top complication does make the time even smaller, making it closely resemble the original Modular watch face on the Series 3:

Original Modular (left) vs new Photos (right). That complication is Wind Speed if you’re wondering. And yes, it matters a lot to me.

Apple Watch Ultra and Ultra 2

These watches get watchOS 26, so they will benefit from the X-Large and Photos watch faces, but with two additional Ultra-exclusive watch faces - Modular Ultra and Wayfinder. Not only are these exclusive watch faces, they are also the only watch faces that support Night Mode, making everything turn red.

Modular Ultra - Simply remove all complications, and pick how you want your time to be displayed. Either select the red color or activate Night Mode to ON to have a big beautiful red clock (or small) with no distractions.

Wayfinder - Once again, remove all complications, and turn ON Night Mode to get an all-red analog watch face.

Wayfinder (left), Modular Ultra (right).

Source: MacRumors

Honorable mentions

There are a few other watch faces that get honorable mentions, but they don’t meet my strict criteria of solid red color with no active complications. They still shine too much light compared to the red watch faces I mentioned above, almost equivalent to Apple’s Nighttime watch face.

Numerals Duo - The top number in the darkest red isn’t a true red, shining white light at you.

Meridian - If you select the Fall 2021 (PRODUCT) RED color, you get a fully red dial, but the hour and minute hands are outlined in white.

Close, but no cigar.

Even the Digital Time complication is all red, making this one receiving the highest honorable mention.

Typograph - Similar to Meridian with the standard red color.

Will Apple gatekeep Night Mode to the Ultra lineup?

It’s hard to say what Apple will do with the Series 11, because if they open up Night Mode (which I am all for), it would change the whole dynamics of having the perfect bedtime watch face. Many more watch faces would qualify with an all red look, but we’re only a few weeks away from finding out.

How to disable headphone safety notifications on iPhone and Apple Watch.

Normally this isn’t good advice, but I had to get rid of these safety notifications for my sanity. My background noise sleep setup coupled with earplugs is my ultimate sound proofing system for working the graveyard shift, and there’s nothing worse than your speaker warning you about loud volumes along with your watch vibrating with the same notification during a deep sleep session.

These can be disabled only in certain regions, but thankfully the US is one of them. The settings are buried, but on iPhone:

1. Go to Settings.

2. Accessibility.

3. Audio & Visual.

4. Headphone Notifications.

5. Toggle OFF.

On Apple Watch (or your iPhone’s Watch app):

1. Go to Settings.

2. Accessibility.

3. Headphone Notifications.

4. Toggle OFF.

If you’re in a region that doesn’t allow you to toggle Headphone Notifications off, and you are in a similar situation where you need loud white noise and use ear plugs at the same time, you can try and re-categorize your Bluetooth speaker:

1. Go to Bluetooth.

2. Select your device’s settings by clicking on the blue “i” logo.

3. Click on Device Type.

4. Select Other.

I think this will work. Logic would say, since your devices are technically no longer connected to headphones, you shouldn’t get any Headphone Notifications, right?

I don’t know exactly what the “other” category does, but audio still plays through my Bluetooth speaker.

For my hardwired devices such as my Bose SoundDock XT, I was able to change the settings so the audio levels are not recorded under the Health app.

Toggling this feature OFF should not give you Headphone notifications.

If you have a lightning to headphone jack or USB-C to headphone jack adapter connected to an external speaker, you can change the settings to (hopefully) avoid getting headphone notifications:

1. Go to Settings.

2. Sound & Haptics.

3. Headphone Safety.

4. If you have an iPhone with a lightning port, you will see the words Lightning Adapters on the bottom. If you have a USB-C iPhone you will see the words USB-C Audio Accessories on the bottom.

5. Click your option, and toggle OFF Connected To Headphones.

Wired reviews the best hearing aids, and it’s no surprise which ones are the best dual-purpose hearing aid/Bluetooth earbuds.

It’s no surprise that the best hearing aids cost thousands of dollars, with the top rated one being the Jabra Enhance Select 300 at a whopping $1,700 a pair, which is cheap compared to the Edge AI RIC RT’s $4,000 asking price. The best budget hearing aid? The JLab Hear at $100 that also doubles as wireless earbuds.

The overall best hearing aid and Bluetooth earbuds combo? AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C. They’re always on sale for $169, making them an excellent value with a low barrier of entry.

Here is Wired’s take:

OTC hearing aids have been around for more than three years now, but it might be Apple that really kickstarts this market into gear, now that hearing aid features are available on its AirPods Pro 2 wireless earbuds (8/10, WIRED Recommends). A software update is all you need to turn your existing earbuds into hearing aids, giving them a second job of helping you hear better, even when you’re not streaming.

All the expected features common to OTC hearing aids are here and more, including the ability to upload an existing audiogram to tune them to your specific needs. The units quickly and effectively shift between hearing aid mode and streaming mode, and—unique to Apple—iOS now automatically applies your hearing aid settings to streaming media, which can make a difference to the clarity of dialog and other sounds. For the most part, they do the job as intended.

Mind you, AirPods Pro 2 aren’t perfect as hearing aids, and they may not be the best choice for everyone. There’s a lingering hiss and some audio artifacts that need to be ironed out, and the built-in hearing test feature needs some work. With just six hours of battery life (plus 24 more in the case), they aren’t a great solution for people who need uninterrupted hearing help all day long. But the big news is that, at $249, Apple is now producing some of the least expensive products in the category, a position in which it rarely finds itself. As a first step toward investigating a solution for hearing loss, the price alone makes them worth strong consideration, presuming that you have an iPhone.

Also, former MythBuster Adam Savage who personally uses AirPods Pro as hearing aids had this to say:

I think Apple turning the AirPod Pros into a substitute hearing aid is one of the best sub-features I've seen out of this consumer product in a long time. Having been a very public hearing aid wearer for 15 years, I have been sent a lot of people’s versions of earbud-hearing-aids and I’ll, I’m not naming any names but everything I have tried sucked. Everything I have tried had a very bad user experience in the calibration, in the testing, in the integration. These (the AirPods Pro 2) were really really just as advertised by Apple, straightforward, simple to understand, fast to execute, and awesome to use […]

If you have people in your life who need hearing aids, this might be a great gateway drug to hearing aids, given that it is a lot less expensive and it carries a lot less of the, stigma of hearing aids. One of the rhetorical flourishes I gave people a few years ago that a lot of folks have told me worked on people in their lives, is to explain that no one who ever got hearing aids thought to themselves, “well that was a bad idea.”

REEVUS water bottle is great for workouts

I was too lazy to go upstairs and try to find my iPad for working out, so I decided to just use my iPhone and prop it up with the MagSafe compatible lid on the REEVUS water bottle and get the job done. I knew I would get side tracked if I went upstairs so I just had to grind it out on the small screen.

Quick access to water without having to open a lid.

Cap stays clean + phone stays in place = happy runner.

The best water bottle for iPhone users.

Great landing page for the REEVUS Insulated Stainless Steel Bottle. Everything here makes sense and shows its capabilities well. I’ve been using this bottle for over two months now, and I have some points I would like to add for anyone who wants the perfect water bottle:

It really is very minimal with a cap, a bottle, and a Find My tracker. That’s it. Cleaning is simple and the wide mouth swallows even the biggest ice cubes with ease.

The diameter of the bottle is the same as the width of an iPhone 16 Pro Max. It is as tall as a 16 Pro Max and a pair of AirPods Pro vertically stacked on top of each other.

You see, the iPhone also has a measuring tool!

For car cup holders, it should fit most modern vehicles, but your mileage may vary. If your Pro Max device of choice fits your cupholder vertically, so should this bottle.

The landing page shows the phone on the MagSafe lid as a place for both creating and watching content, but it is also usable with the lid detached. This makes more sense since there’s nothing worse than having messy hands while watching content, only to realize you have to remove your phone, and open the lid to get a drink. Just remove the lid before eating, and now you can get your dose of YouTube (and your drink of choice) uninterrupted. The lid is on its side when watching content this way, so it won’t get dirty and contaminate your drink.

Watch content while keeping your lid clean.

The REEVUS tracker doesn’t have a replaceable battery, but it lasts 300 weeks (almost 6 years).

The MagSafe handle also works well for keeping your MagSafe compatible AirPods Pro 2 or AirPods 4 in a safe spot.

Comes with a spare magnetic ring that you can apply to your device or case, with neat little diagrams showing you exactly where to place the magnet depending on what phone you have.

The circular handle is just as sturdy as it was on day one which is assuring for long term durability.

Putting the tracker on and off the lid is my new fidget toy.

It’s taken some serious falls onto concrete but it only gives it more character and fits into that “journey” lifestyle.

Sure, it’s $90, but it is well worth it, especially since Journey is (seemingly) always running some sort of promo to give you 15-20% off. A much greater quality experience with useful features compared to those overhyped Stanleys.

If I were to buy this again, I would get the black bottle with the white and yellow cap. Just fun contrast with a hint of sunny side up eggs.

Background Sounds do not work on the HomePod mini.

Background Sounds are great for white noise, but they won’t play over a HomePod mini. If you want to use Apple’s built-in white noise to help you sleep or stay asleep, you would need to use another Bluetooth speaker or hardwired speaker.

I use the Bose SoundDock XT which is connected to my iPhone via an aux cable and USB-C to headphone jack adapter, and it simultaneously plays both YouTube and Background Sounds.

Same thing happens with my Anker Bluetooth speaker, where all sound is routed to the speaker.

If I turn off the Bluetooth speaker and select the HomePod mini as the source, the YouTube audio transfers over but the Background Sound stays on the iPhone. What’s even wackier is if I have my Anker Bluetooth speaker connected, I can play the YouTube video on the HomePod mini, and the Background Noise on the Anker speaker.

I know the HomePod mini uses both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth so it should be able to play both audio sources, but it seems Apple has prevented Background Sounds from playing on the HomePod mini, and I presume the regular HomePod as well.

Background Sounds in iOS are great for White Noise

I play YouTube videos as my background noise when going to sleep, but I found a way to prevent any hiccups in case the YouTube app crashes for whatever reason (which it does).

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing Background Sounds.

This isn’t a new feature by any means, but it provides redundancy to my background noise should my main source of background noise (YouTube) stop working. Every once in a while, the app crashes, and there’s nothing worse than waking up earlier than expected.

With Background Sounds ON, I can still have white noise playing, keeping me sound asleep. The great thing is you have 8 different sounds to choose from, and you can control the volume of Apple’s background noises separately from your main source of volume.

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Background Sounds. From here, you can adjust the volume along with whether or not you want to stop Background Sounds when the iPhone is locked.

You can do this easily by adding a Control Center widget as well.

The Bose SoundDock XT fixed my HomePod mini problem.

I work a weird schedule.

I work a normal 8am - 4pm shift for 2 weeks, and then I work 1am - 9am on the 3rd week, rinse and repeat. I have been doing this rotation for the last 10 years, so I have gotten used to it.

Kind of.

With a full house (wife and 3 kids), I have to balance my sleep into multiple naps when I work the graveyard shift. The rest of the family is awake, and they do a great job of staying quiet. They’re homeschooled, so they stay home during daytime hours except on certain days when they have in-person classes.

The problem isn’t them making noise, but the problem lies with my white noise stopping in the middle of my nap. I have my iPhone connected to my HomePod mini, and I play my favorite YouTube video as a form of white noise at a high volume. To protect my hearing and to double down on normal house chatter (because…kids), I also wear ear plugs.

More often than I would like, my YouTube video stops playing and I wake up due to some noise that would easily be masked by the HomePod. If this happens when I am sleeping at night like a regular human, it isn’t a big deal since I can just restart it and go back to bed. If it happens during the day or late in the evening when I have to wake up at midnight for work, it becomes a challenge to fall back asleep.

As much as I wanted the HomePod mini to be my permanent solution, I just can’t rely on it when working the graveyard shift.

I also use a Bluetooth Anker speaker as an alternative, but that has its own annoyances. If I permanently keep it plugged in and charged, it will fail in 2 years due to the battery conking out (I’m on my 2nd unit). Plus, I don’t want to fiddle with yet another device that needs to be charged.

With Anker, I get reliable audio but annoying charging. With the HomePod, I get reliable power but annoying AirPlay issues. I needed something that has the best of both, and I decided to get a Bose SoundDock XT.

This was released back in 2012, but still holds up well today. It has no wireless capabilities whatsoever and has to be physically plugged into the wall like the HomePod. It has very simple touch controls in the front for volume, and that’s it. You can plug in a lightning iPhone and it will charge while playing audio, but I ended up using the AUX jack in the back. With Apple’s USB-C to headphone jack adapter, I can plug in my iPhone from a distance and I am set. No more power, Bluetooth, or AirPlay issues to worry about.

As for my iPhone, I have it docked on a dome-shaped, MagSafe charging station by Anker.

My white noise is bass heavy, and this Bose system handles it just fine. You can fetch one of these on eBay for about $50-60, and with shipping it was $75.

I liked it so much that I bought another one for only $50 with shipping.

If you want old-school, high-quality sound with reliable connectivity, you can’t go wrong with one of these older Bose SoundDocks.

A journey to find a physical SIM slot iPhone 15 Pro Max.

When the iPhone 15 Pro Max launched, I was ecstatic, as I was every year. I had pre-ordered 3 different colors: Blue Titanium, White Titanium, and Natural Titanium. Black was completely out of the question. I didn’t really want a dark color at the time since I had a purple 14 Pro Max for a whole year, and I really was leaning towards one of the lighter colors. 

When I got the 3 phones on launch day, I was distraught between two beautiful phones, the white and the natural. I loved the back of the natural, but I really loved the sides of the white titanium. 

The slightly yellow tinge of the natural titanium looked like someone pissed on the white titanium phone. 

The funny thing is, if I only got the natural phone, I wouldn’t know that the white phone would have a better sheen to it, and I would just be perfectly happy with the natural color. I don’t live close to an Apple store (about an hour away from the closest one), and I didn’t feel like waiting in line, so I had to buy them for myself to make sure I picked the color that would resonate well with me. I finalized my decision to keep the white titanium and to return the other two. 

I was at the time with AT&T, and have been with them forever. I have been getting a shoddy signal at work for the last 9 years, but it didn't really bother me since I would use my company’s Wi-Fi. It would be annoying at times though when I had to either make or receive phone calls from work, and I would have to stand outside to have a conversation. I could go to Verizon and pay more money, but I didn’t feel it was worth the extra cash, especially in today’s environment where everything is already going up in price. 

I thought to myself, “I have this brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max, and I get the same crap reception as my iPhone SE (1st gen) in the same building. Surely there must be a way to get a better provider for at least the same price.”

And then I remembered a friend of mine telling me that he was paying $10/month for unlimited everything with his Ting plan through a promotion he received. The catch was that you have to be a Ting home internet customer. Since I do have Ting as my home internet provider, I thought to myself to check their website to see if they still had this insane promo for only $10/month.

As it turns out, they still had the promo active, and I decided to try a line. Worst case, it won’t be any good and I’ll just be out $10. I had a feeling though that it would be great since they are using Verizon's towers. 

I ordered a SIM, and it arrived in 2 days. Pretty seamless process, and I just inserted the SIM into my iPhone SE. When I went to work the next day, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw my iPhone SE having near full bars, and my 15 Pro Max stuttering along with just one bar. I tried it out for a few days, and I was able to even make video facetime calls over cellular at work, whereas with AT&T, I couldn’t even make regular voice calls!

So now the choice was obvious. Either I continue to pay $130/month with AT&T for 3 lines, or I could pay $36/month (about 12 bucks a line after taxes and fees) and save myself $94 dollars a month. This was a huge savings, especially once again in today’s inflated greedy economy where every corporation can keep raising prices because, who's there to stop them? 

This was the clearest no-brainer for me in a long time. I still couldn’t believe that I would be getting unlimited data, unlimited hotspot, and no throttling.

There was one catch though, a HUGE catch. 

And that catch would send me for a search halfway around the world.

The catch was that Ting only supports physical SIM cards, and does not support eSIM. That means that any US version of the iPhone 14 or later would not be supported. 

The timing couldn’t be better though. I was planning a trip overseas to Makkah and Madinah for a religious pilgrimage, along with a family wedding, and it was coming up in a few weeks. I had to get packed for this trip, but now I also had to rush to send back my iPhones since I knew that they would be no use to me without a physical SIM slot. As much as I loved my iPhone 15 Pro Max in white titanium, it was time to part with it. Saving $94/month is just too good of a deal to keep an inferior provider. Plus if I didn’t return them in time, I would be over the return timeframe and would be stuck with over $4,000 in iPhones.

I did some research on Apple’s Saudi website to see where I could buy a phone, but the stores it told me were all saying that availability was sold out. There didn’t seem to be a reliable way for me to acquire this elusive iPhone 15 Pro Max with a SIM slot. 

I also had to set my priorities straight. This trip was after all a spiritual trip first and foremost, and since there will be a lot of family present, there were dinner plans every day, along with other activities that would take up a lot of my time. The average amount of sleep on trips like these is about 4 hours, maybe 5. Of course there were the 5 daily prayers that would be prayed at the Grand Mosques, so I would have to find time in between one of the prayers to somehow acquire a phone. 

Needless to say, time was extremely limited.

Before I could even do that, I needed a local SIM card since I had no service with Ting and the hotel Wi-Fi was a complete joke. Ting’s international plans are pretty expensive, and even if I wanted to activate it, it wouldn’t work in Saudi since I kept getting “No Service” in the status bar. The local SIM plans are pretty cheap, and I was able to get a 15GB plan for about $17.

Now I was finally connected to the world once again, so I could do some casual research to see where some of the cell phone provider stores were located. Later in the day, I had an epiphanic moment, “Fahad you idiot, why don’t you just ask the guys who sold you the SIM card where to buy an iPhone 15 Pro Max instead of trying to do the research yourself? They’re the locals, so they would definitely know!”

Since the teenagers who set me up with the plan spoke English (albeit, just enough to get by), I went back to them and asked them point blank, “Where can I buy… iPhone 15 Pro?” I said it just like that, leaving out the “an,” to come down to their level of speech. It’s a thing you do if you speak multiple languages. They immediately told me to go to the Jarir Bookstore. I said, “A bookstore?” They said, “Yes!”

First I thought to myself that they might have misheard me since I was not looking for books, but apparently Jarir Bookstore is like THE place to buy a phone. It never showed up as an official Apple retailer when I searched their Saudi website, but that website honestly didn’t seem that reliable to begin with. 

I googled this store, and it wasn’t that far from my hotel, maybe around 15 minutes. 

So my last day in Madinah was the day I would go to this store. My brother and I went after breakfast time, which was prime nap time, but sleep would have to wait for this iPhone 15 Pro Max, if they even had one. I couldn’t really call in advance since they weren’t open yet, but I would just have to bite the bullet and pray they had one.

We were able to flag a taxi pretty easily, as the taxi drivers are plentiful, ready to take you wherever you want to go. We had a couple of stops before the bookstore since they weren’t open yet, but once we got there at 8:45am, we just had to wait till 9am for them to open.

It was quite a grand store that could be best described as a mix between Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, and Target. Needless to say it was my favorite store, filled with all kinds of tech. Time wouldn’t allow me to peruse through the whole store, but I just had to get down to business.

I initially went to a booth that looked like a Best Buy Apple display area, but there was no one there to help me. Looking at where all the salespeople were, I turned my eye towards the counter that had practically all the latest Android smartphones from all the brands that are not mainstream in the US: Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Huawei. But it was time to see where the real phones were. Where were the iPhones?!

Instead of looking like a panther trying to catch its next meal, I decided to simply ask the gentleman at the counter without sounding desperate, “Do you guys have the iPhone 15 Pro Max in stock?” I was physically normal in my appearance, but mentally I was flinching to see what they would say. This could literally be my only chance to get this phone, since I would be leaving the following day to go to Makkah.

They did have some in stock! Now it was up to me to see if I wanted to purchase from what they had. At this point, beggars can’t be choosers. My goal was to get a 256GB or even 512GB white or natural titanium, but I might go with another color if I had to.

It seems that the popularity of the white and natural titanium phones is not only a US phenomenon, and the only phones they had were in blue or black with 512GB. They had a regular Pro in natural titanium at 1TB, but I wanted that 5x telephoto zoom.

I decided to go for the Black Titanium 512GB phone because I remember someone saying on Twitter-X that the black phone provides the most immersive experience with the edges disappearing into the color of the side rails. It was a $300 premium over the same phone if I had bought it in the United States, so that SIM card slot literally cost me $300.

I was still a bit nervous after purchasing the device because you can’t return anything here unless it has a defect. There is no return for buyer’s remorse.

Once I got back to the hotel, I unboxed the Black Titanium, and I was in awe of how the brushed metallic finish looked in black. It was better than I had imagined. Yeah it picks up fingerprints, but they can easily be wiped off with my shirt to reveal that shimmery brushed titanium. The look of the Black Titanium with natural light also gives a very striking graphite color that reminds me of a shiny pencil tip. I almost feel like if I rub the phone on paper, it will start writing!

Direct sunlight also shows off one of the titanium phone’s secrets: that lustrous particulate sheen. Under most lighting, the phone looks like brushed metal, but when under direct sunlight, it’s almost as if there is another texture that becomes active in the harsher light. The hue also changes a bit and you can almost see the whitish titanium underneath it, or maybe that’s just my slight desire to want this phone to be white.

Overall, I am glad I was able to get the Black Titanium, even though it wasn’t my first choice. The phone also worked flawlessly out of the box with no issues, so I wasn’t going to have to go through the whole return process. The Blue Titanium that I purchased on launch day did have a slight chip or discoloration on the back panel near the bottom, but this phone was flawless. 

A story like this wouldn’t be complete if there weren’t some other plot twists, and there was a twist right at the end of my trip. While I was walking in the airport to find my gate for my flight back to Dulles airport, there was a Jarir Bookstore in the airport itself, and I decided to just ask the guy and see if they had a white titanium iPhone 15 Pro Max in stock.

Of course they did. 512GB too!