Apple is back with a new line of iPhones for 2023, which always means that a new series of premium smartphones that give a glimpse of what the future holds for the main iPhone offerings down the line also emerged from the curtain in the form of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
This year, Apple placed a heavy focus on the internals of the Pro line, introducing the new A17 Pro chip, resulting in a big push toward mobile gaming and pro-grade photography and videography. Apple claims the chip itself is the most powerful one ever included in a smartphone, with a 6-core CPU and 6-core GPU that improve overall performance but with key upgrades to video streaming and gaming.
The presentation hit on videogame performance more than any other iPhone presentation in recent memory, with developers from Ubisoft and Capcom hyping the new tools available on the Pro line, including hardware-based raytracing, mesh shading and MetalFX upscaling. The promise is that games such as Resident Evil Village and the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed Mirage will run on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max with graphical performance unseen on smartphones before.
The jury is still out on that (neither game will be available until later next year/early next year), but the continued innovation in photo and video capture is a bit more tangible to analyze. Apple positioned the Pro line as pro-grade tools last year with the introduction of the “quad-pixel sensor,” and the company says that the new sensor is 25% larger than the iPhone 15’s for even higher resolution images from its 48MP main camera at focal lengths between 24mm and 35mm. That camera array also features a 3x 12MP telephoto lens and the Pro Max includes a 5x optical zoom at 120mm.
The main camera now supports HEIF image formats along with ProRAW, which should be attractive to those heavy into photography. On the video front, the Pro series now supports recording video directly to external storage, and doing so allows users to capture video at up to 4K resolution at 60fps. It’s also the first smartphone to support the Academy Color Enhancing System, the industry standard for color-grading and visual effects. The company also touted spacial video recording specifically for viewing video on the Apple Vision Pro.
The main reason for those video capabilities beyond the internals is the new USB 3 functionality through the Pro’s USB-C charging port, which makes the iPhone 15 Pro series the first smartphone to include USB 3 transfer speeds.
The externals received updates as well, with a new Grade 5 Titanium enclosure for lighter weight, a new Stand By mode that turns the Pro into a tabletop clock/info hub via a collection of widgets when turned on its side while charging and a new Action button in lieu of the standard noise control switch on previous iPhones that is customizable to control various functions including silencing the ringer, starting voice memos among others.
The iPhone 15 Pro’s 6.1-inch and the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 6.7-inch displays feature a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz and both feature, according to Apple, “all day battery life.”
The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be available for preorder on Sept. 15 starting at $999 and $1199 for the 256GB base models. Both will be available for purchase on Sept. 22 and will be available in white, gray, black and blue.