Apple has just taken the covers off its all-new iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max at its Wonderlust event. Yes, the company has finally replaced the Lightning port with a USB-C connector — but there’s a lot more here beyond new cables.
The new iPhone 15 Pro models feature a new Titanium material, an Action Button, and more. Thanks to that grade 5 Titanium, this is the lightest Pro iPhone ever created, and features contoured edges and the thinnest borders ever on an iPhone.
Dimensions are reduced, but the display sizes are the same as last year. The 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes of the Pro and Pro Max also make a return, but this year’s bezels are noticeably thinner. Apple also uses aluminum on the inside for the sub-structure.
The stunning Titanium is coated with PVD and brushed, and we have to say that it looks absolutely insane. There are four new colors: black titanium, white titanium, blue titanium, and natural titanium.
Internal changes make it more repairable, so back glass replacements are easier to carry out should you drop it. (But please, try not to drop one.)
Sadly, the mute switch is no more. Instead, we get a cool new Action button, borrowed from the Apple Watch Ultra. By default, it still controls the ring and silence options, but you can customize the button to carry out nine alternative functions, such as launching your camera, taking voice notes, or using Shortcuts, perhaps the most important option.
The display remains the same with ProMotion, Always-On, and more. But underneath lurks the new A17 Pro chip, interestingly not the Bionic chip. That’s because Apple has built a whole new generation of Apple silicon on 3nm technology, the first in the industry. That makes the chip more compact, housing some 19 billion transistors.
It has a 6-core CPU with 10% performance increases over the previous model and four efficiency cores. Apple’s Neural Engine, which powers machine learning, is now twice as fast, processing 35 trillion operations per second.
It also has a new USB controller to power the new USB-C chip, and Apple says its 20x faster than USB 2.
An awesome new GPU has a six-core design that’s 20% faster than the previous one at peak performance. Apple’s new chip even has hardware-accelerated accelerated ray-tracing.
On the camera side, a new nano-scale coating brings improvements to Portraits and Night Mode in the same great 48MP ProRaw. There’s also 48MP HEIF and Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro will default to the super high-resolution shooting mode. The iPhone 15 Pro retains the 3x telephoto, but the iPhone 15 Pro Max is getting 5x optical zoom at 120mm focal length at 12MP. Insane stabilization will make 10,000 micro adjustments per second, twice as many as the iPhone 14 Pro, to keep it steady when you zoom in. Those intensely big photos will move much faster thanks to your USB-C cable, and you can even plug your iPhone into a Mac to use Capture One. The iPhone 15 Pro can also capture spatial videos for Apple Vision Pro.
The iPhone 15 Pro is keeping its $999 price, but the iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1199 for 256GB storage, so technically its the same price. Pre-orders start Friday, September 15, and it’ll be available in stores from September 22.
We’re covering all the Apple iPhone 15 event announcements live as they happen. Don’t miss all our iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra 2, iOS 17and watchOS 10 coverage so far.