I’ve the iPhone 15, 15 plus, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. I’ve flown all the way to Apple Park in California where I’ve gone Hands-On with the phones while also sitting down with some of Apple’s major Executives so that I can give you everything you need to know. The things I like and the things I don’t like, so let’s start with the base iPhone 15 Features and 15 plus which have had three minor changes and three major ones from last year. The first being the design. The iPhone 15s come in a whole Suite of pastely colors which are all pretty inoffensive. I mean, No One’s Gonna Hate them, but me personally, I strongly prefer just proper vibrant confident colors as opposed to all this washed out off-white hoopla. I remember seeing some rumors that there was going to be like a hot pink and a bubblegum blue and honestly that would have been awesome.
But what I am really glad about is these softer edges and the matte frosted finish on the back. It may not be as cool as the very literal edginess on the last year’s iPhones, but I would take comfort any day. You pick these phones up and instantly you notice this is like 200% more comfortable than the last phones. And then the other minor but still very definitive Improvement is dynamic Island. Last year, got it on the pro iPhones, now we’ve got it on every iPhone, and it doesn’t fundamentally change the way you use your phone, but I would say it’s a combination of both a nicer aesthetic than the notch. It just feels more futuristic and less like your phone’s got a fringe.
They’re the same picture with just a Sprinkle of nice to have features. Things like when you start a timer, you can see the progress of that timer. How when you order an Uber, it’ll tell you how many minutes till the Uber arrives. Funnily enough, on my flight on the way here, it was telling me the whole journey, how much longer I had left to Landing time, which is actually really convenient. And the other perk of it is that it persists even when you move to other apps. So even though this Dynamic Island, it isn’t physically creating any new screen space. It’s the way that Apple has made the software around it that almost makes it behave like a secondary sub display within your main display that lets you do two things at once.
Also, the display itself is even brighter at up to 1600 nits or 2,000 nits if you’re in direct sunlight. If you haven’t already used a 2000 display, it’s pretty staggering. Like it will not just be readable in broad daylight but actually bright. There’s a new Ultra-wideband chip. Wideband being one of the ways that your iPhone communicates with your other Apple gadgets. So the better chip basically means you can find your lost goods from further away and also your lost friends in case you’re really bad at directions.
iPhone 15 Features
And it looks like the iphone 15s are also getting a lot of the big camera upgrades of last year’s top-end phones. This is the first big change. You know how Apple’s used a 12-megapixel resolution main sensor for almost a decade now? Well, it’s gone in place of a bigger 48-megapixel sensor, and thank goodness for that because yeah, I mean Apple did Squeeze quite a lot out of the 12-megapixel sensor they had, but it’s only so far you can go. And so with each of the last few Generations, we really felt the pro iPhone stepping up and then the regular iPhones scraping together some very minor software improvements but clearly restrained by the limits of this week of Hardware.
So it’s nice to see that limitation being lifted, and also this 48-megapixel sensor has the side perk of letting you take two-time zoom shots with far less of a quality hit than if we’re still on the 12-minute pixel sensor. And it means that in a lot of ways, these base iPhone 15s are kind of like repackaged discounted versions of last year’s 14 pros, and that’s not a bad thing if in one year what was previously Pro can become mainstream. And that’s progress, and it does make this definitely feel like a bigger jump than what we saw last year between the iPhone 13 and the iPhone 14.
Although you are missing one key thing in the ultra-fluid 120 hertz displays that the pros get, these phones still have a standard 60Hz refresh rate, which feels slow to me because 120 hertz is what I’m used to. But it may not bother you at all if that’s what you’re used to. One more thing, though, and this is something I never really thought I wanted, but now that I’ve seen it, this is nearly as big of a deal to me as the actual camera upgrade itself. When you shoot a photo with the 15 now, your phone can capture depth information automatically, which means you don’t need to sit there and think what mode should I be in right now? You just take the shot, which means you can take the shot quicker. And every single shot has the perk that afterward you can go through and make it a portrait and even switch between the different focal points within that shot.
Now I would guess that the reason they not done this sooner is that to do this, your phone’s got to capture a lot more information when it takes that photo. And so it should take the phone longer and that would introduce some potential shutter lag and therefore blur in your shot. This is going to need more testing on my end to see if Apple’s managed to do it with no extra delay, but that is what they’re claiming.
But now it’s time we talk about the elephant in the room, the thing that the entire industry has been talking about for the last six months. Apple has shifted from a lightning connector to a USBC or in other words, they’ve shifted from a custom Apple-made connector to the industry standard. Now it’s not a secret that a big part of this is just Apple trying to get ahead of new EU rules which state that by 2024 all new smartphones need to be USBC to cut down on the unnecessary duplication of accessories. And it might even be annoying in the short term if you have a bunch of accessories that are designed to work around lightning, then they might well not work anymore. But in the long term, I think this is a pretty clear win on forefronts.
A, it’s better for the environment because from now on any smartphone accessory only needs to be made once and not in two separate versions. It’s about a customer experience because now you can get away with buying and carrying fewer cables as well as using whatever charger you want. Like I can actually feel the relief from the fact that when I now go places, I can just take one power brick, one cable, and that will charge my MacBook, my iPhone, my Nintendo switch, and even any Android whatever I’m carrying at the time. This move is also going to reduce some of the force lock-in that people feel with Apple’s ecosystem, meaning that even if you use an iPhone, you won’t feel like you have to ditch every single accessory that you bought if you fancy trying an Android.
And then the final thing is that this is not just any USBC port, at least on the pro iPhones. This is a USB 3 Port which is not by any means unusual in the industry, but it does mean that the transfer speeds are up to 10 gigabits per second, which is a lot better. It’s like 20 times faster than lightning was. What’s not clear is if you’re going to be able to get that maximum speed with the cable they ship you and also if you’re going to be able to fully take advantage of it without using specifically made for iPhone accessories. We’ll find out.
It’s quite funny because as they’re announcing this, I was just thinking to myself, now it’s just airpods left with a lightning connector. And then they announced a set of airpods which also have USBC. And I mean that is a pretty big ass to upgrade if you’ve just bought a lightning pair, but it is good news if you’ve held off so far. And then those airpods can be charged by your phone with the same cable that charges your phone, which is good to have, but it also feels pretty outdated given that most manufacturers can now wirelessly charge their earbuds.
And then the last big change for these base iPhones is the Chip. And this is both kind of one of the biggest draws and one of the biggest drawbacks. See, every year up until 2022 when Apple’s launched a set of phones, all those phones were released with the same chip with potential slight modifications. The A14 bionic, the A15 bionic, Etc. But last year, they started to separate the pros got the very latest A16 while the normal phones stuck with the same chip as the year before, the A15. And so while it’s great that the base iPhones this year are getting an upgrade, the normal 15s will now get the same A16 that the pros got last year.
And that it is, let’s be very clear, a super-fast chip that will not cause any performance problems. What we’re not getting is the very latest A17 that the 15 Pros have, which basically means yeah, this is a trend that we can just expect to see going forward that the pro phones will have not just better materials and better cameras and better display Tech but will also be the only way to actually get the latest internals too. Remember, there’s two ways to grow a company, you can either increase the amount of customers which I’m sure apple is doing, but it’s a difficult Market to be doing that in, or you can increase the average revenue per customer. And I think this is what’s happening with the iPhone right now.
I’m about to show you this in full force but the point is there has never been a bigger gap between Pro and non-pro as there is now with the iPhone 15s. And the reason is to make it as much of a no-brainer as possible for a non-pro user to become a pro user because once you become a pro user once, if you think about it, you’re going to stay a pro user. You’re going to keep buying the thousand dollar plus phones every time you upgrade and you’re probably going to feel more bought into the ecosystem as a result. Like you might well think, well, I’ve already spent a grand on my phone. I should probably get airpods Pro. And if I get an iPad, I should probably get the iPad Pro. And ugh, what’s another ten dollars a month for some apple music too?
Regardless of the strategy, the iPhone 15 Pros pretty badass. And for these, there are six major things that we need to talk about. The screen is using a brand new bit of tech that’s allowed Apple to shrink the bezels to basically record-breaking levels. To be clear, some other phones do have Slimmer side bezels, but from everything I’ve seen, I don’t think there’s a phone that’s achieved bezels like this while also having symmetry on all four sides.
And it’s kind of a double win because anytime you manage to shrink the borders around your screen, you get a choice, you can either make the screen bigger and fit it into the same footprint or you can make your phone smaller with the same screen size, which is exactly what Apple’s done. It’s kind of like they’ve taken last year’s iPhone 14 pro and just trimmed off the entire outer layer around the outside.
The phone is thicker than last generation, though presumably to accommodate a bigger battery. And so in a way, it’s actually really important that Apple’s managed to do that trimming so that the phone doesn’t feel bulky. And then you’ve got the action button. A button for which you can decide what it does, which is something it seems like Apple tested last year with the more Niche watch Ultra before now rolling out to the mainstream with the iPhone.
And my hot take is that I like it but I don’t love it. Because I mean on one hand, for me, it’s not taking away anything. I never really used the ring silent switch because when I don’t want to be disturbed by notifications, I’d rather just go all the way into do not disturb. And you can still use this action button to silence your phone. But it’s just that as well as that you can now also use it to open the camera to start a voice recording or what’s really appealing to the hardcore Android customization freak inside of me is that you can also use it to trigger any of your Siri shortcuts, which basically means any function of your phone.
So you could use it to open up Spotify. You could use it to activate power-saving mode, which I could actually see myself doing quite a lot. Well, you can even use it to vibrate your speakers (Bose Portable Home Speaker Review) at a specific frequency to clear out any water that’s got into them. My version of a good time. But it’s just there was also something nice about a slider that you could see what state it was in at a glance and that you can never accidentally trigger like you can with a button. Plus the key perk of an action button in my mind is that it is a faster, more convenient way to trigger a command that you regularly use. But one I’m holding my phone, and I imagine when you’re holding your phone, my fingers are never all the way up here to be able to do that comfortably.
At that point, it might actually be easier to just program multiple Taps of your power button to execute that same command. I mean that is how I set up my iPhone 14, triple-tap on the power button turns the screen grayscales. But I do want to live with the action button first before I give any conclusive thoughts on it.
Apple has swapped materials on the pros from stainless steel to a titanium alloy. Now this is not the whole phone, there’s still the ceramic shield on the front and frosted glass on the back. But what has changed is this enclosure in between, and honestly, titanium is great. I mean it’s even stronger than stainless steel which I mean I have dropped this phone probably six or seven times without a case directly on the floor each time I’ve had a mini heart attack and every time I’ve picked it up and been like no way there isn’t a single permanent mark on the body. So having something that’s even stronger than that, it’s obviously a nice peace of mind.
But I think the thing that people will largely notice and appreciate more than that is the fact that titanium is also lighter. The pro iPhone for a while now I’ve all been on the slightly too weighty for their size side, so the reduced density that these bad boys have takes them to that really nice sweet spot where they still feel substantial like any pro phone should but without going so far that it’s heavy. It also means better thermal conduction out of the phone.
And we got these curved edges again. Ever since the day that Apple announced they were switching rounded sides for Sharp flat sides on their phones, I’ve been counting down the days till they go back to having curves. I mean it just makes sense, your hand is not an angular object so neither should be the single device that you hold in your hand for the longest time. So yeah I mean we took our time getting to this stage but boy am I glad we got here. This phone feels amazing and it does so while not completely losing the core factor of having some sharpness to the design.
It’s a bit of a shame that they didn’t finish this all off with some more exciting unusual colors. I mean a deep red wouldn’t have hurt anyone but to be fair the silver this time is clean. Oh yeah, there’s a camera upgrade obviously. There’s a camera upgrade smartphones in 2023 so there’s a slightly improved ultrawide camera and a big bigger sensor for the main camera which they’re saying is going to make up to a two times difference to low-light shots. So we will definitely test that theory. And also, subtle little thing they only spent like three seconds in the event talking about it, but they’ve also introduced a new coating to the camera which apparently reduces the amount of lens flares.
This is a top-requested feature. Loads of people have asked for this but equally I don’t think it has completely eliminated it based on my very quick testing. 24 megapixels is now the Default Resolution output for the main camera which I know sounds a little underwhelming given that it is a 48 megapixel sensor but what’s happened so far and what tends to happen with most companies who use high-resolution cameras is that they take the shot at full resolution and then they downscale that resolution to have a cleaner but lower resolution output whereas this kind of makes it seem like Apple is now confident enough in the image cleanliness already that they’re no longer feeling like they need to reduce that resolution so much.
Obviously Apple’s example shots are very curated but they are showing levels of detail that the iPhone 14 in auto mode just could not do. And then probably the biggest camera change is on the iPhone 14 pro Max only, it’s a new telephoto lens. We started off as a 2X, it then became a 3X, and now it is a five-time zoom camera. Five is a lot of zoom. And so I imagine the reason that we’re not seeing this on the normal size Pro is space limitations. And then they’re pairing this new lens with better stabilization which is actually really important for higher magnifications because those lenses are much more prone to handshaking.
Cool as it is though, I do have some doubts, like how there are other phones with 10 times optical zoom cameras which this probably won’t outdo, plus a big part of what makes Apple’s portrait mode so great is that it uses the three-time zoom lens so you can sit further away from your subject and you get less distortion on their face. But then if your only zoom camera is a five-time zoom camera, there’s probably too much magnification, you’ll most likely have to leave the room you’re standing in to still fit them in the shot. And so it seems like what they’re going to do instead is to use the main 1X camera and to crop into that which kills the quality a little bit. The only way you fix this problem is by having two Zoom cameras, you have one high magnification Zoom when you want to properly get into something and then one much lower magnification one for the portraits.
Last little camera tidbit is that the iPhone 15 Pros are going to be able to take spatial video, basically 3D immersive video that you’ll be able to properly watch and experience on an Apple Vision Pro headset. It’s very cool integration, it’s just not a cheap combo.
Just before we get to pricing, we’ve got to talk about one thing that I am really excited for, and that is this A17 Pro chipset. So keep, because this is the first chip in the world to be based on a three nanometer process. Why is this a big deal? Well, every other top engine in the world is based on a four-nanometer process, and basically the smaller that number, the smaller the transistors that make up the chip. If the transistors are smaller, then they consume less power and you can have more of them.
And the cool thing about this is that proportionally speaking, the jump between the four-nanometer process and the three-nanometer process is actually even bigger than the last major jump, which was between five nanometers and four nanometers. So basically you can expect a three-nanometer chip to either run a lot faster if they use the extra space to cram in more transistors or draw less power and produce less heat if they don’t. And it seems like based on Apple’s stats that they’re really pushing for the power efficiency angle which based on the iPhone 14s is exactly what I would have wanted them to do.
There’s a pretty decent jump to the graphics power with support for Ray tracing, and they did show some cool examples of console games that are making the jump to iPhone because of it, which I’m all about. But then beyond the examples that they showed, I find it hard to believe that mass-market mobile game developers are actually going to get on board anytime soon. And me, I can probably retrace games. They also have a new Wi-Fi chip that’ll let the pro phones connect to Wi-Fi 6E, which if you have a 6E router is a big jump, and a new 5G modem versus last year which should cut the power drain from connecting to mobile networks.
So yeah, while the last iPhone 14 series had good battery life, it wasn’t as good as the iPhone 13 series which really was chart-topping, but we will test this for ourselves, so if you want to see that then wait for few days.
Then we’ve got the price. This is the first year in a long time where we’ve had a price bump. Everything’s the same except the pro Max which is now not just $100 more than the pro but $200. You do get more storage but this does put it very squarely up against other companies Ultra phones. My first impression is that it probably does do enough to separate itself from the cheaper iPhones, but that’s what our detail tests are for.
