Hands-on with the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro

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All right, so today I got a hold of, I got to poke around the new iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pros.

I do remember flying here and I'm thinking, what could Apple possibly do?

Like what could they possibly introduce with a new iPhone?

The 23rd iPhone that's actually interesting.

Now there is more stuff than just the iPhone that was mentioned at this Wunderlust event that Apple hosted, including some stuff that straight up wasn't mentioned on stage at all.

So we'll get to that, but this is just the new iPhone stuff.

So stay tuned to get subscribed to see the rest, but let's just talk about the new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro.

So here's a lens to look at all this stuff through.

Coming into this, basically everything Apple just added to their newest flagship phones falls into 2 buckets.

It's either something we've already seen in some other phone for years, or it's some ecosystem feature that only works with other iPhones.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a lens to look through this stuff at just to keep an eye on it.

There's the same 2 sizes again, iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

And yeah, you know, there's some small changes like the slight soft corner radii on the aluminum rails and the 1 piece glass back fading between a lighter and darker version of the same color, like this new pink 1, it's pretty seamless.

Also satin soft touch backs across the whole lineup instead of glossy, I definitely like that.

But the big headlining feature really is it's USB now.

These new iPhones are all USB-C across the board.

Like there's only ever been 1 port change in the iPhone ever Back in 2012, we went from that 30 pin connector thing to this new lightning thing, which we've had ever since.

But on the other hand, it's, I don't know, it's just USB.

Like it's the same port all these other laptops and tablets all over the planet have had for the past couple of years.

I imagine that might be another year or 2 before the whole lineup, like the baseline cheap iPad and the iPhone SE and everything else gets USB-C.

We knew it was coming, but It's still kind of surreal to look at an iPhone and see a USB port on it.

First of all, it's the 1 cable that you can ideally use to charge all your stuff.

So your Mac, your iPad, your iPhone, your friend's Android phone, the new AirPods, which just got a new USB-C case, all that stuff, 1 cable.

Oh, and now you can charge accessories like the new AirPods with the wire.

So there's no wireless reverse charging right now, but that C2C cable that comes in the box, you can like plug it into the iPhone, plug it into the AirPods and charge the AirPods up from the iPhone battery.

But they did hold back on 1 very key thing and they saved it for the iPhone 15 Pro.

So I'll get to that in a bit, but that's the USB-C.

Aside from that, really it's a slightly updated phone.

You know, you get the dynamic island here, of course, on these baseline iPhones.

And there's also now a higher peak brightness, 2000 nits now, which is twice as bright as the iPhone 14s.

The primary camera is now a 48 megapixel chip, presumably the same 1 that was in the iPhone 14 Pro last year, and all the benefits that come with that.

And then the rest of the phone really follows that same formula.

They do this thing where the new baseline phone is basically last year's Pro phone repackaged.

So it inherits the same A16 Bionic chip from last year's pro phone.

The coolest feature of this phone though, and you know, it's also in a pro phone, but I still think it's pretty solid, is the camera has this new next generation portrait mode.

But basically it automatically detects when there's a subject in a photo and captures all of the depth information needed to be able to turn it into a portrait mode photo later.

So you don't have to remember to switch it to portrait mode necessarily every time.

And if you ever forget, but want to add that blur later, you can do it with high quality results.

Aside from that, the rest of the phone, I mean, it's the same thing, right?

Same sizes guys, same ceramic shield, same dust and water resistance, and same starting prices, 799 for the 15 and 899 for the 15 plus.

So then there is the pro phones, the iPhone 15 pro and 15 pro max.

A lot of it I'm actually gonna wanna test just to see if it's actually what they say, but make sure you get subscribed to see those full reviews when they come out later this month and we can figure out if the phones are worth it.

But basically it's not bleeding edge stuff that we've never seen before.

And those are mostly in build quality, the chip inside and the cameras.

So let's just start with the chip inside.

First of all, it's a brand new chip that's called the A17 Pro.

It's the first time they've used the word pro in an iPhone chip.

So it promises some performance and efficiency improvements as a result.

I think I said it's like 10% faster, high performance cores and the neural engines up to twice as fast, bunch of other stuff.

Not sure how much of this you'll actually notice in everyday use, but hey, future-proofing and headroom is never a bad thing.

They showed a demo of a game with like faster ray tracing, which isn't new, but you know, It helped make their point.

But the interesting thing to note here with this chip is they mentioned the chip has a new USB 3 controller on it, which means the 15 and 15 plus don't have that.

So basically that means the pro iPhone's USB-C port actually gets upgraded USB 3 speeds, the faster data transfer speeds, up to 10 gigabits per second.

But the base iPhones without that controller, they get USB-C, but they're gonna be stuck at USB 2.0 speeds.

Basically the same we've always had with lightning, like 480 megabits per second.

Now this probably won't make a real difference to most people, like I don't know when the last time you plugged your phone in was, but it's kind of a bummer that not all of the benefits of USB-C come to all of the phones.

But for the pro phones that are gonna be shooting more pro res video or pro raw photos, I mean, it takes forever.

If you've shot this stuff like I have, you know it takes forever to get those off of the phone cause they're big files.

So I kind of wish they'd gone all the way.

I wish they'd done Thunderbolt speeds, 20, 30, 40 megabits, gigabits per second.

But yeah, it's just gonna be USB 3 on the pro iPhones and USB 2 on the base iPhones.

Like this, I talked about this on the podcast on Waveform.

I'll try to link the episode below, but like switching to USB-C, you'd think, oh, this is a huge opportunity for Apple to like explain why they're doing it.

And we know why they're doing it, but oh, why are you giving us this new port and all this, this big new USB-C deal?

And it's just the same 20 or so watt charging we've had for the iPhone for forever.

Kind of figured they would try to do that better, but yeah, this will still take an hour and a half, 2 hours to charge.

But anyway, the new design is what most people are fawning over at the moment with the pros.

So they have switched the rails from that shiny fingerprinty stainless steel to this new grade 5 titanium alloy with a brushed texture.

It is, first of all, it's noticeably lighter in the hand, which I love.

And it seems like it's also enabled them to shrink the body of the Pro iPhones just a little bit.

So they have the same screen sizes, but the screens now get even closer to the edges and there's even thinner, slightly thinner bezels.

Now, a lot of people are also quoting stronger as 1 of the benefits too, but I really don't think this is gonna make as much of a difference as people are thinking.

Like the pro iPhones have had this stainless steel rails for a while now.

I've dropped This phone, as you know, I don't have a case.

On the ground, I've dented the stainless steel rails.

It's not the stainless steel that breaks, it's the glass that breaks.

And as far as we can tell, it's the same ceramic shield glass on the iPhone 15 Pro.

So if you drop it on the glass, you're still gonna have not great results.

But yeah, technically sure, titanium is stronger.

Either way, the new colors are black, white, and this new blue, which is really subtle.

And then natural, which I guess it kind of embraces the raw titanium feel, reminds me of starlight if you're curious, kind of like this warm tone.

But also something else Apple said on stage, and this is pretty quick, so you might not have even picked it up, but they did mention that they have redesigned a bit of the interior of the chassis to make the back glass more replaceable.

So it's a more repairable iPhone design, technically.

It's a small thing, it's just 1 little step, but it's a step in the right direction for a more repairable iPhone.

But my favorite feature, And before we get to any of the cameras, I honestly think this is my favorite feature, is the new action button.

A new customizable button on the side of the iPhone.

So it replaces the mute switch, which is pretty iconic, but it's in the same spot as the mute switch and it's actually customizable.

So it's a pretty small button, basically about the same size as the switch.

And by default, it actually behaves just like the mute switch did.

So you actually hold it down to switch between muted or ringer on.

But if you dive into the settings, there's actually a section for this action button, and it's actually really in-depth and super solid.

It basically lets you go through and pick the function of the button.

And there's way more here than I expected.

So you can keep the mute switch on, or you can have it switch you in and out of a certain focus mode, like do not disturb, or you could pick whichever other 1 you want.

You could also have it auto launch the camera and pick whichever camera mode it opens.

You could also do flashlight turning on or opening up voice memos, or it can toggle the magnifier.

Or the last option actually is you can have it trigger a Siri shortcut, which as you know, can technically do almost anything, including basically launching any app on your phone.

I think there may be a bit of a delay from the button press to the app opening, if I'm thinking about this correctly, like it's done in the past, but I'll have to test that for the full review.

But theoretically, you can map this button to open whatever, your calendar app, your to-do list app, whatever app you want, which is totally not what I expected to be on the list of things you could do with a new button on the side of the iPhone, but now you can.

But then last but not least, the new cameras across the board here, there's a new larger 48 megapixel main sensor for the pros and improved ultra wide.

And then the Pro Max, just the Pro Max gets a new intricate folding 5X telephoto camera.

I'm guessing if I asked Apple, they would say that there was only enough room in the bigger Pro Max to fit this folding lens.

But until then, the regular 15 Pro is gonna still have the 3x telephoto, the regular 3x from last year.

And then we found this seemingly random feature.

They also talked about it in the keynote, but where you can change your default focal length to be either 1x or 1.2X or 1.5X for some reason.

So it's buried in the middle of the camera settings, but you can tell it to default to 1 of these specific 3 focal lengths.

So if you switch back to the camera app, that 1X button is now always going to take you to the new focal length that you've chosen.

And you can still get to 1X or whatever other focal length you want, but I just found that interesting.

So maybe if you somehow, if you're someone that takes 1.2X photos so often that you want a button to get there as fast as possible, cause it's the perfect focal length for you, then sure.

Maybe if you're a photographer, you don't wanna do the work of digital cropping, just hit that focal length every time, sure.

But there's been a lot of comments that at the end of the day, it feels like USB is literally the biggest headlining new feature of this year's new iPhone, which is crazy.

I can't quite get rid of my lightning cable yet.

There's like MagSafe Duo, there's AirPods Max.

There's a couple of things that still are lightning now.

Maybe they'll switch that in the next couple of months.

But now I'm genuinely curious if there's going to be a bunch of new USB-C phone accessories because of the iPhone getting USB-C, similar to our sponsor of this video, Anker.

So they've made a whole new lineup of products for the iPhone 15, Headlined by the Anker Nano, which is like this little small but mighty USB-C power bank that can crank out 30 watts with the built-in USB-C cable.

And if you hit that little button up at the top here, it'll actually show a literal percentage of how much battery you have left.

Or if you're plugged in, it'll show you a time, which counts down so you really know exactly how much of the 10, 000 milliamp hours you have left.

Plus there's some other stuff in the lineup.

There's a wall charger, braided USB-C cables galore.

So feel free to learn more about Anker's new lineup at the link below and shout out to Anker for sponsoring this video.

So iPhone 15 Pro will start at the same price as last year, which is 999, but they've bumped up iPhone 15 Pro Max sneakily, interestingly, it will start at 1199, but it's also the only 1 with a 5X camera and it's the only 1 that starts at 256 gigs.

And last year, the price of the 256 gig pro was the same, so you're kind of matching.

It's just like getting rid of the $1, 100 phone for some reason.

Either way, let me know If you're interested in these new iPhones at all, you're either in camp, don't care at all, or you're in camp, like, totally getting 1 of these, or maybe you're watching to see if the reviews prove that the new features are worth it.

Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you in the next 1.


Speaker 0: All right, so today I got a hold of, I got to poke around the new iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pros. I do remember flying here and I'm thinking, what could Apple possibly do? Like what could they possibly introduce with a new iPhone? The 23rd iPhone that's actually interesting. Now there is more stuff than just the iPhone that was mentioned at this Wunderlust event that Apple hosted, including some stuff that straight up wasn't mentioned on stage at all.

So we'll get to that, but this is just the new iPhone stuff. So stay tuned to get subscribed to see the rest, but let's just talk about the new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro. So here's a lens to look at all this stuff through. Coming into this, basically everything Apple just added to their newest flagship phones falls into 2 buckets. It's either something we've already seen in some other phone for years, or it's some ecosystem feature that only works with other iPhones.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a lens to look through this stuff at just to keep an eye on it. So this is the iPhone 15. There's the same 2 sizes again, iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus. And yeah, you know, there's some small changes like the slight soft corner radii on the aluminum rails and the 1 piece glass back fading between a lighter and darker version of the same color, like this new pink 1, it's pretty seamless. Also satin soft touch backs across the whole lineup instead of glossy, I definitely like that.

But the big headlining feature really is it's USB now. Lightning is officially dead. These new iPhones are all USB-C across the board. Now on 1 hand, this is a huge deal. Like there's only ever been 1 port change in the iPhone ever Back in 2012, we went from that 30 pin connector thing to this new lightning thing, which we've had ever since.

And now the second 1 ever is USB type C. But on the other hand, it's, I don't know, it's just USB. Like it's the same port all these other laptops and tablets all over the planet have had for the past couple of years. I imagine that might be another year or 2 before the whole lineup, like the baseline cheap iPad and the iPhone SE and everything else gets USB-C. But yeah, I don't know.

We knew it was coming, but It's still kind of surreal to look at an iPhone and see a USB port on it. So what does this enable? It's a real question, right? First of all, it's the 1 cable that you can ideally use to charge all your stuff. So your Mac, your iPad, your iPhone, your friend's Android phone, the new AirPods, which just got a new USB-C case, all that stuff, 1 cable.

Oh, and now you can charge accessories like the new AirPods with the wire. So there's no wireless reverse charging right now, but that C2C cable that comes in the box, you can like plug it into the iPhone, plug it into the AirPods and charge the AirPods up from the iPhone battery. So that's pretty cool. But they did hold back on 1 very key thing and they saved it for the iPhone 15 Pro. So I'll get to that in a bit, but that's the USB-C.

Aside from that, really it's a slightly updated phone. It's a little bit of a new display. You know, you get the dynamic island here, of course, on these baseline iPhones. And there's also now a higher peak brightness, 2000 nits now, which is twice as bright as the iPhone 14s. And there's a new camera.

The primary camera is now a 48 megapixel chip, presumably the same 1 that was in the iPhone 14 Pro last year, and all the benefits that come with that. And then the rest of the phone really follows that same formula. They do this thing where the new baseline phone is basically last year's Pro phone repackaged. So it inherits the same A16 Bionic chip from last year's pro phone. The coolest feature of this phone though, and you know, it's also in a pro phone, but I still think it's pretty solid, is the camera has this new next generation portrait mode.

But basically it automatically detects when there's a subject in a photo and captures all of the depth information needed to be able to turn it into a portrait mode photo later. So you don't have to remember to switch it to portrait mode necessarily every time. And if you ever forget, but want to add that blur later, you can do it with high quality results. So that's cool. Aside from that, the rest of the phone, I mean, it's the same thing, right?

Same sizes guys, same ceramic shield, same dust and water resistance, and same starting prices, 799 for the 15 and 899 for the 15 plus. So then there is the pro phones, the iPhone 15 pro and 15 pro max. There is some more new here. A lot of it I'm actually gonna wanna test just to see if it's actually what they say, but make sure you get subscribed to see those full reviews when they come out later this month and we can figure out if the phones are worth it. But basically it's not bleeding edge stuff that we've never seen before.

It's just welcome stuff. And those are mostly in build quality, the chip inside and the cameras. So let's just start with the chip inside. First of all, it's a brand new chip that's called the A17 Pro. It's the first time they've used the word pro in an iPhone chip.

And it's their first 3 nanometer chip. So it promises some performance and efficiency improvements as a result. I think I said it's like 10% faster, high performance cores and the neural engines up to twice as fast, bunch of other stuff. Not sure how much of this you'll actually notice in everyday use, but hey, future-proofing and headroom is never a bad thing. So this is clearly a powerful chip.

They showed a demo of a game with like faster ray tracing, which isn't new, but you know, It helped make their point. But the interesting thing to note here with this chip is they mentioned the chip has a new USB 3 controller on it, which means the 15 and 15 plus don't have that. So basically that means the pro iPhone's USB-C port actually gets upgraded USB 3 speeds, the faster data transfer speeds, up to 10 gigabits per second. But the base iPhones without that controller, they get USB-C, but they're gonna be stuck at USB 2.0 speeds. Basically the same we've always had with lightning, like 480 megabits per second.

Now this probably won't make a real difference to most people, like I don't know when the last time you plugged your phone in was, but it's kind of a bummer that not all of the benefits of USB-C come to all of the phones. But for the pro phones that are gonna be shooting more pro res video or pro raw photos, I mean, it takes forever. If you've shot this stuff like I have, you know it takes forever to get those off of the phone cause they're big files. So I kind of wish they'd gone all the way. I wish they'd done Thunderbolt speeds, 20, 30, 40 megabits, gigabits per second.

But yeah, it's just gonna be USB 3 on the pro iPhones and USB 2 on the base iPhones. You know what is disappointing though? No fast charging. Like this, I talked about this on the podcast on Waveform. I'll try to link the episode below, but like switching to USB-C, you'd think, oh, this is a huge opportunity for Apple to like explain why they're doing it.

And we know why they're doing it, but oh, why are you giving us this new port and all this, this big new USB-C deal? And it's just the same 20 or so watt charging we've had for the iPhone for forever. No new fast charging. Kind of figured they would try to do that better, but yeah, this will still take an hour and a half, 2 hours to charge. But anyway, the new design is what most people are fawning over at the moment with the pros.

So they have switched the rails from that shiny fingerprinty stainless steel to this new grade 5 titanium alloy with a brushed texture. And it's nice. It is, first of all, it's noticeably lighter in the hand, which I love. And it seems like it's also enabled them to shrink the body of the Pro iPhones just a little bit. So they have the same screen sizes, but the screens now get even closer to the edges and there's even thinner, slightly thinner bezels.

And I actually do notice that. Now, a lot of people are also quoting stronger as 1 of the benefits too, but I really don't think this is gonna make as much of a difference as people are thinking. Like the pro iPhones have had this stainless steel rails for a while now. I've dropped This phone, as you know, I don't have a case. On the ground, I've dented the stainless steel rails.

It's fine, it doesn't break. It's not the stainless steel that breaks, it's the glass that breaks. And as far as we can tell, it's the same ceramic shield glass on the iPhone 15 Pro. That hasn't changed. So if you drop it on the glass, you're still gonna have not great results.

But yeah, technically sure, titanium is stronger. Either way, the new colors are black, white, and this new blue, which is really subtle. And then natural, which I guess it kind of embraces the raw titanium feel, reminds me of starlight if you're curious, kind of like this warm tone. Weirdly, I think I like it the most. But also something else Apple said on stage, and this is pretty quick, so you might not have even picked it up, but they did mention that they have redesigned a bit of the interior of the chassis to make the back glass more replaceable.

So it's a more repairable iPhone design, technically. It's a small thing, it's just 1 little step, but it's a step in the right direction for a more repairable iPhone. But my favorite feature, And before we get to any of the cameras, I honestly think this is my favorite feature, is the new action button. A new customizable button on the side of the iPhone. Just the Pro iPhone.

So it replaces the mute switch, which is pretty iconic, but it's in the same spot as the mute switch and it's actually customizable. So it's a pretty small button, basically about the same size as the switch. And by default, it actually behaves just like the mute switch did. So you actually hold it down to switch between muted or ringer on. Great.

But if you dive into the settings, there's actually a section for this action button, and it's actually really in-depth and super solid. It basically lets you go through and pick the function of the button. And there's way more here than I expected. So you can keep the mute switch on, or you can have it switch you in and out of a certain focus mode, like do not disturb, or you could pick whichever other 1 you want. You could also have it auto launch the camera and pick whichever camera mode it opens.

You could also do flashlight turning on or opening up voice memos, or it can toggle the magnifier. Or the last option actually is you can have it trigger a Siri shortcut, which as you know, can technically do almost anything, including basically launching any app on your phone. I think there may be a bit of a delay from the button press to the app opening, if I'm thinking about this correctly, like it's done in the past, but I'll have to test that for the full review. But theoretically, you can map this button to open whatever, your calendar app, your to-do list app, whatever app you want, which is totally not what I expected to be on the list of things you could do with a new button on the side of the iPhone, but now you can. But then last but not least, the new cameras across the board here, there's a new larger 48 megapixel main sensor for the pros and improved ultra wide.

And then the Pro Max, just the Pro Max gets a new intricate folding 5X telephoto camera. I'm guessing if I asked Apple, they would say that there was only enough room in the bigger Pro Max to fit this folding lens. I'll ask, we'll see what they say. But until then, the regular 15 Pro is gonna still have the 3x telephoto, the regular 3x from last year. And then we found this seemingly random feature.

It's in the settings. They also talked about it in the keynote, but where you can change your default focal length to be either 1x or 1.2X or 1.5X for some reason. So it's buried in the middle of the camera settings, but you can tell it to default to 1 of these specific 3 focal lengths. So if you switch back to the camera app, that 1X button is now always going to take you to the new focal length that you've chosen. And you can still get to 1X or whatever other focal length you want, but I just found that interesting.

So maybe if you somehow, if you're someone that takes 1.2X photos so often that you want a button to get there as fast as possible, cause it's the perfect focal length for you, then sure. Maybe if you're a photographer, you don't wanna do the work of digital cropping, just hit that focal length every time, sure. But there's been a lot of comments that at the end of the day, it feels like USB is literally the biggest headlining new feature of this year's new iPhone, which is crazy. I can't quite get rid of my lightning cable yet. There's still some accessories.

There's like MagSafe Duo, there's AirPods Max. There's like the magic track pad. There's a couple of things that still are lightning now. Maybe they'll switch that in the next couple of months. But now I'm genuinely curious if there's going to be a bunch of new USB-C phone accessories because of the iPhone getting USB-C, similar to our sponsor of this video, Anker.

So they've made a whole new lineup of products for the iPhone 15, Headlined by the Anker Nano, which is like this little small but mighty USB-C power bank that can crank out 30 watts with the built-in USB-C cable. And you can also charge it up 30 watts. And if you hit that little button up at the top here, it'll actually show a literal percentage of how much battery you have left. Or if you're plugged in, it'll show you a time, which counts down so you really know exactly how much of the 10, 000 milliamp hours you have left. Plus there's some other stuff in the lineup.

There's a wall charger, braided USB-C cables galore. So feel free to learn more about Anker's new lineup at the link below and shout out to Anker for sponsoring this video. So iPhone 15 Pro will start at the same price as last year, which is 999, but they've bumped up iPhone 15 Pro Max sneakily, interestingly, it will start at 1199, but it's also the only 1 with a 5X camera and it's the only 1 that starts at 256 gigs. And last year, the price of the 256 gig pro was the same, so you're kind of matching. It's just like getting rid of the $1, 100 phone for some reason.

Either way, let me know If you're interested in these new iPhones at all, you're either in camp, don't care at all, or you're in camp, like, totally getting 1 of these, or maybe you're watching to see if the reviews prove that the new features are worth it. Let me know what you're thinking. Comment section's always open. Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you in the next 1. Get subscribed.

See you later. Peace.

See all Marques Brownlee transcripts on Youtube

iPhone 15/15 Pro Impressions: Not Just USB-C!