Things done right

Not a comparison. The equivalent to chromecast is the remote control to apple tv. Airplay is just a way to cast whatever is playing to a different screen whereas chromecast is a remote control to tell the target device to play what you want (all decoding and processing are done on the target device)

No they don’t. You need a mirror and then point the back camera at you when doing video calls too.

I had a xs max running ios 17 before my 15 pro max arrived. No issue whatsoever.

Pro max. Battery life alone is worth it. And it’s not really that big the in the pocket like everyone is making it to be