Apple just announced its new high-end iPhones, the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. It’s made of titanium, it has an Action button, and Apple promises it’s the most powerful device Apple has made.
This year’s Pro has a 6.1-inch screen, and the Pro has a 6.7-inch display. Both are powered by the A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has the fastest performance in any smartphone and can even challenge some high-end PCs.
Both phones, of course, has a USB-C port on the bottom, rather than the old Lightning port. But in the Pro’s case it could be for more than charging: Apple says the 15 Pro is the first phone with 10Gbps transfer speeds, which will make getting photos and videos (or large files of any kind) off your phone vastly easier.
All that power is inside a new, stronger enclosure, which Apple promises is some of the toughest stuff you’ll find on a phone anywhere in the industry. Just based on what we’re seeing in the video so far, it doesn’t look hugely different, but it’s a big change nonetheless. The new devices come in white, black, blue, and “natural” colors. And, naturally, Apple is extremely proud of the complex engineering behind the process.
The Action Button, which replaces the ringer switch on the left side of the iPhones Pro, is a new button that you can customize to run shortcuts, bring up accessibility features, open the camera, turn on the flashlight, and more. By default it’s still a ringer switch — but you’re going to want to use it to do more.
The Pros both have Super Retina XDR displays with ProMotion, and support both the always-on display and the new StandBy mode in iOS 17.
Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the new devices at Apple’s Wanderlust event at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, though the rumor mill has (as always) been going for months. In terms of how you’ll actually use your iPhone, some of the largest changes this year will be in iOS 17: the new StandBy mode could change the way you use your phone when it’s off, interactive widgets could redesign a lot of homescreens, and features like Live Voicemail and Contact Posters might have you actually making phone calls every now and again.
Apple followed roughly the same rubric it has for the last few iPhone launches: the base models get the stuff from last year’s Pro — like the Dynamic Island and some of the camera tech, even the A16 Bionic chip — and the Pros are the guinea pigs for Apple’s big new ideas.
