World’s Biggest Functional iPhone Towers At More Than 6 Feet

Two YouTubers have won a Guinness World Record for building the world’s largest smartphone replica, a working iPhone that stands a little over 6.7 feet and weighs 400 pounds.

To claim this record, a phone needs to be fully functional—able to make calls, send texts and emails and operate all the standard apps installed on a phone that fits in a pocket. The device also has to have a working camera and buttons, a charging port and flashlight — in this case “a 400-watt torch,” said U.K. tech enthusiast Arun Maini, known online as Mrwhosetheboss. He invented the mega device with help from fellow U.K. YouTuber Matthew Perks.

Perks, known on social media as DIY Perks, builds homemade gadgets including video game consoles and Bluetooth speakers. But nothing approaches this beast of a smartphone he made from scratch.

“This is the hardest project that I’ve designed and built,” Perks said in a comment posted to his YouTube video on the project. “It took a LOT of work, pushing me to breaking point several times over three months.”

The scaled-up iPhone 15 Pro Max consists of an 80-inch OLED TV that’s been turned into a real capacitive touchscreen by adhering a specially manufactured touchscreen layer (this setup posed some challenges, which Perk addresses in the below how-we-built-it video). Perk then built a custom frame for the display that could hold all the phone’s extensive array of components. It even includes little fans to offset the heat-generating bits.

But Wait, It’s Powered By Android?

Because Apple’s iOS is locked down, the pair ironically had to turn to an open-source Android-based operating system to power their giant device. “Of course, I am beyond impressed,” one YouTube commenter wrote. “But my favorite aspect is that in order to make the best, most expensive iPhone, it had to be an Android.”

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That the smartphone doesn’t run iOS led some to niggle over whether the record-winning phone can fairly be called an iPhone, though the meticulous design is Apple through and through. The smartphone even has a three-lens camera array. Its main camera uses a Canon EOS R5 to shoot 8k resolution video, and its zoom camera uses a Sony RX10 IV. Appropriately, the team celebrated their Guinness win with a selfie taken using the massive device.

“It’s very impressive, very slick, made to a high standard,” a Guinness representative said when presenting Maini with the world record on Aug. 29.

Maini, who’s been creating content since 2011, has 19.4 million followers on YouTube. He said he wanted to build the gigantic phone to celebrate surpassing Apple in YouTube subscribers, though as of this writing, Apple has edged out Maini with 19.6 million subs.

Maini and Perk learned they’d gotten the Guiness world record just in time for Apple’s Monday “Glowtime” event, where the company introduced its iPhone 16 line designed to integrate generative AI directly into the smartphone’s operating system.

In keeping with Apple’s quest to imbue each ensuing model with more advanced capabilities and design features than the last, one fan of the record-breaking 6-foot device had a prediction: “Next year’s model will be 2mm thinner.”