The Pro range of iPhones has always stood out for the care taken in materials – after all, you have to justify the higher price – and the 2023 edition does not fail in tradition. Quite the contrary, since the chassis of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max swaps stainless steel for titanium, a high-end material that Apple Watch Ultra owners are familiar with. For the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple chose grade 5 titanium.
Big job for small borders
Titanium has several advantages: on the one hand, it does not attract fingerprints like stainless steel. Above all, it is more resistant and lighter, which partly explains why these two new smartphones are lighter: 188 g for the 15 Pro (206 g for the 14 Pro), 221 g for the 15 Pro Max (240 g for the 14 Pro Max).
Still in terms of design, Apple has greatly reduced the borders around the two 6.1 and 6.7 inch screens of the smartphones. Soon their definitive disappearance? This is not on the agenda, and there is no doubt that it will require several more years of development, but these even thinner borders on each side of the screen allow the iPhone to distinguish itself from Android smartphones where it there is often a thicker edge than elsewhere.
The iPhone 15 Pro is also distinguished by the presence of a completely new action button, which replaces the switch for silent. A seemingly historic change, this physical button has in fact been present since 2007 and the launch of the very first iPhone! Like its counterpart on the Apple Watch Ultra, the behavior of this new button is customizable, via the iOS settings: launching the Camera app, the flashlight, a shortcut, a mode of concentration…
Read: iPhone 15/15 Plus: Apple recycles the new features of the iPhone 14 Pro
USB-C is coming!
One of the big changes in this new entire iPhone 15 range is the presence of a USB-C port, under European legislation. If all smartphones from 2023 swap Lightning for USB-C, all models are not equal. The iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max indeed support a data rate in USB 3 (10 Gb/s), much higher than the USB 2.0 of the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus (480 Mb/s maximum, and generally this is much less).
This will significantly speed up photo and video transfers! Photographers and videographers will appreciate it, especially the latter since they will be able to record video directly to an external drive.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max goes underwater
It is at the camera level that the two models differ. The iPhone 15 Pro Max is finally up to par with high-end Android devices by integrating a periscopic telephoto lens that the manufacturer has renamed “Tetraprism” in which the light bounces four times. This provides a more powerful optical zoom: where the iPhone 15 Pro is still satisfied with x3, its big brother will seek a x5 zoom (120 mm focal length) with a sensor 25% larger than on the 14 Pro Max.
This will be a relief for many users who saw Apple falling behind in the face of competition from Android. And then it’s one more commercial argument that will allow Apple to promote its Pro Max – and probably justify the price of the large model, for some who can afford it at least.
Aside from the periscope, Apple offers the same camera configuration on the Pro and Pro Max: 48 MP primary wide angle (ƒ/1.78 aperture), a 12 MP x3 telephoto lens (ƒ/2.8) and an ultra wide -angle of 12 mpx (ƒ/2.2). These last two sensors display greater definition compared to the 12 mpx of the iPhone 14 Pro/Max.
The iPhone 15 Pro also has a little something extra: “spatial video” recording! By turning the smartphone sideways, it will capture the world around it in 3D. Of course, this is a clever way to feed content to the Vision Pro. This feature will be available later this year.
A17 Pro, for top performance
The Pro range of the iPhone has always been entitled to the most modern chips, and there was no reason why this should not be the case with the iPhone 15 Pro/Max. Under the hood, we find a brand new A17 Pro system-on-chip, the particularity of which is to be engraved in 3 nm, compared to 5 nm for the A16 chip of the iPhone 15/Plus. 2 nm of difference doesn’t seem like much and yet, at this level of finesse, each nanometer gained is a technological feat that allows us to widen the gap, both in terms of performance and autonomy.
Apple has not failed to display color. The A17 Pro’s processor, which contains 6 cores (2 fast, 4 efficient), shows a 10% performance gain compared to the A16. The graphics circuit has 6 cores, which allows it to claim an acceleration of 20% compared to its predecessor.
The Neural Engine and its 16 cores are up to twice as fast for processing linked to artificial intelligence (it is capable of performing 35,000 billion operations per second). These graphics and AI capabilities give the iPhone 15 Pro hardware support for ray tracing, which is logically much faster than software ray tracing (up to x4). The A17 Pro chip also includes dedicated engines for ProRes video processing and AV1 decoding.
Like the iPhone 15, the Pro models include a new Ultra Wide-Band chip for precise location – with the U2, this function is three times more extensive than the U1. Another welcome new feature: support for Wi-Fi 6E.
It will of course be necessary to put all these promises to the test of facts, the 01Lab is on a war footing!
Storage and price: the annoying questions
Apple is making an increasingly clear separation between these two models, whether in terms of photo sensors or storage. As a base, the iPhone 15 Pro comes with only 128 GB of storage, which for a smartphone labeled “pro” is really more than limited. The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with 256 GB of storage.
The iPhone 15 Pro starts at €1,229, which is a nice surprise considering the same capacity iPhone 14 Pro cost €1,329. This model is then available at €1,359 (256 GB), €1,609 (512 GB) and €1,859 (1 TB).
The bill is steep for the iPhone 15 Pro Max with a price of €1,479, like last year… but we still gain double the storage. You then have to count €1,729 for 512 GB and €1,979 for 1 TB. It’s expensive for a smartphone, but by playing with storage, Apple is doing pretty well in the end. Pre-orders begin on September 15, with sales starting on September 22.