Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro may have just enough hardware tweaks and changes to entice the masses to upgrade from their old iPhone, starting with one button.
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Smartphone makers have long faced the challenge of updates. As their phones have gotten better and better, it’s getting harder to improve them meaningfully. Yes, you can add an updated processor, or a different take on the camera, or add a bit more RAM or storage, but a yearly cycle of new shiny phones has to plateau eventually, and it looks like Apple might not be immune to that occurrence. The iPhone 15 Pro is once again peak iPhone but there are only so many areas that Apple can improve.
But improve it has. Apple has brought some pretty remarkable additions to its iPhone 15 Pro lineup, and the improvements it has made have made the overall iPhone experience quite a bit better. The combination of hardware and software upgrades is enough to generate well-deserved excitement. This year, we have new build materials, a screaming powerful processor, one reworked feature you didn’t know you wanted, and another reworked feature that everyone clamored for. So Apple took that plateau and went ahead and built a peak on top of it.
Apple provided an iPhone 15 Pro for the purposes of this review.It’s all about that titanium baby
This year, Apple’s refinements of the Pro line of iPhones started with the build materials, and they’re very different than previous years. Notably, Apple used titanium side rails and hue-infused glass to color its iPhones this year. The side rails have a brushed look to them but they grab fingerprints like they’re booking you into a holding cell. The color on the back of the phone is a very deep hue and the back of the phone has a matte texture that has a nice feel and isn’t as slippery as it has in years past, but it still feels like it can elude your grasp if you’re not careful.
The display is the same display as last year, including the Dynamic Island, and has all the same stats as last year — HDR 10, Dolby Vision, and 2000 nits of max brightness in high brightness mode. But underneath, you’ll find a lot of upgrades. Those include the Apple 17 Pro processor built on a 3 nm process, 8 GB of RAM, and a 3,274 mAh battery, which are, in order, large, medium, and small upgrades respectively.eSIMs are still the future (and not the now)
The iPhone still relies on eSIM for connectivity within the United States and carriers are still not ready for it. You’ll be ok if you’re upgrading from a previous iPhone, but if you are upgrading from an Android phone, be prepared to have a conversation with your carrier either over the phone or in the store. The idea of eSIMs is cool; the execution is sloppy.
This is not entirely Apple’s fault. Truth be told, the U.S. probably should get on board with eSIMs. But transferring eSIMs from one phone to another is an arduous process, especially if you’re moving from one mobile operating system to another. It doesn’t have to be this way; and the fact of the matter is, most people who are upgrading to an iPhone are coming from another iPhone. The rest will switch to an iPhone once and keep it for 2-3 years, so it’s not that much of a headache, but if you are someone who switches phones more than once a year, eSIMs are a dealbreaker. Unfortunately, by going all-in on eSIM, Apple is advertising that it’s not for those people.The button is where the action is
One big change that came to the iPhone 15 Pro is the removal of the silence switch above the volume buttons. Instead, Apple changed it to an Action button which can trigger a function on the phone. By default, the Action button still triggers silent mode (and turns it off, when enabled), but you can also turn your flashlight on and off, launch your camera, turn on the magnifier, and more. Some functions, like turning your camera on and off, come with the bonus of the Action button also becoming a shutter button.
Further, you can use the action button to trigger an iOS shortcut which means you can open just about any app, and in some cases, you can launch directly to a function within that app. So you can launch Safari to jump straight to a given web page, for example. The possibilities are pretty endless once you factor in Shortcuts.
Turning on the flashlight in this way is lovely, as is launching the camera. Those are likely two of the more common things you do with your phone without necessarily wanting to turn on the screen and go through the whole face ID rigamarole. In the future, it would be great if you could assign other actions to, say, a double press like you can with other similar buttons on Android phones.
The placement of the Action button, right above the volume keys, is unfortunate. It’s easy to mistake the action button for a volume button, even though the Action button is noticeably smaller, but other than that, it’s a great added utility for the iPhone 15 Pro.USB-C
Arguably the biggest and most anticipated (or most dreaded, depending on where you stand on the issue) is the switch to USB-C for charging and data transfer. This is a huge change because up until now, half of Apple’s devices charged with lightning ports, and the other half charged with USB-C. Yes, the EU forced this move, but it was about time, and it’s a welcome change.
The USB-C port on the iPhone 15 Pro is capable of USB 3.0, but Apple only ships a USB 2.0 cable in the box. One great side effect of this switch to USB-C is that creators can shoot 4K video from an iPhone 15 Pro and have it saved directly through the USB-C port onto an external hard drive. That’s an impressive upgrade for creators even if such a use case is lost on normals.
But the addition of USB-C also allows you to charge other devices from your iPhone at 4.5W in case you have another device that needs a top-up. This method is certainly not recommended for regular charging of other phones, but it can be used in an emergency every now and then. When you plug in a secondary device, the iPhone automatically sends or receives power, depending on which is lower — and that’s pretty cool.The software story
Apple’s smartphone operating system, iOS, turns 17 this year, meaning it can buy a ticket for an R-rated movie finally. This year, there are a few notable new software features that came to iOS 17 which is shipped on the iPhone 15 Pro. The first notable feature is what’s called Name Drop. This function allows you to send contact information from one iPhone to another iPhone just by tapping the tops of the iPhones together. When you do so, a contact poster that you can customize is sent automatically to the other iPhone so they can save your info.
