- You know what's funny? When There is not that many changes, it really puts a magnifying glass on the few changes that there actually are. Have You ever listened to a car reviewer describe the latest generation Porsche 911? Like, This is a car that's looked more or less the same for the past 50 years with slight evolutions with each new generation.. And Literally,, every time you watch or read a review, they always say every single time, "Oh, it's so refined, oh, this is an engineering masterpiece that's been perfected over generations. It's a formula that's been developed in the same direction for years." I Actually, as a kid, I used to actively dislike Porsches because I just, I knew they were expensive, but I thought they're all so boring, they all look like the same thing.

Why would you get one of those, when you could get a way more exciting Ferrari or McLaren instead? But As I've gotten older,, I can appreciate the Porsche formula a little more. I don't love it or anything, I wouldn't say I love it, but I can appreciate it more, does that make sense? I Hope that makes sense. Bling I am the one at optimum I got the drum, I got the drop on 'em I got the lock, stock and barrel on top of them I got the chopper for the block they knocking on Act Tion tion Look at the crowd, the way they packed in in Lone wolf hear the howl, where the pack then then Is he packing, then Shooting off at the mouth like rat tat tat bling Anybody in a pine for life Your Size ain't nothing for you to die for All Up in my eye for This is the iPhone 15 Pro. Not A lot of changes.

So, okay, I Think people gotta get this thought out of their head that you've gotta upgrade every year to the newest phone. Like, I Realize most of us already know this, but for some reason, people are still stuck on this thing where they say, "Oh, last year's phone is barely different from this year's phone, it's not worth upgrading." But Like, that's not new, like the Zenfone 10. I just reviewed is just a refinement of Zenfone 9. Like The Bleeding Edge ROG Phone has looked the same for three years now,.

the Pixel is finding its stride with design. But What we're really looking for is for them to fix anything that's wrong or bad, and then just find ways, clever ways, good, interesting ways to just get a little bit better every year, so that over a long time, over a bunch of improvements, it adds up to a bigger, more significant change. So That's what's happening here with this. iPhone 15 Pro.

I've been using it for about two weeks now. They've made some improvements, but now we're starting to also see some possible problems, some new issues that have risen up, so let's talk about it. So There's basically four new features they've added here. I'm gonna go over some of the more fundamental and existential stuff in the regular iPhone 15 review, so definitely make sure you're subscribed to see that when it comes out..

But For the Pro, it's time to deep dive on the stuff that's unique to this one, the professional stuff.. That Being the build, the chip, the cameras, and the Action Button. So Easiest place to start is the way they've built this phone. So Apple Made an update to the build and the materials of the iPhone this year,.

They've softened the corners a little bit, it's clearly still a boxy design, but, you know, now, instead of a completely flat glass at the front, there's this gentle little curve just at the very edges. I Think that'll maybe make screen protectors slightly more intricate, but I think it has a nice look to it. And Then the screen sizes are exactly the same, but now the bezels are actually a tiny bit slimmer all the way around.. So Technically, the phone is like one millimeter smaller diagonally, and the rails have famously switched from that shiny stainless steel to a lighter, coated and brushed titanium..

The Result,, it's very slightly better, I think. It's kind of funny, I've always associated a heavy phone with like expensive feeling, you know? Like, the ceramic phones are like extra heavy, they feel like substance. But I Understand why people want it to be lighter. And So, this phone is actually noticeably lighter than the previous Pro.

It's 10% on paper,, but it feels like more than 10%. And Then, there's a new set of colors too, so I'm sticking with it,. this new natural titanium is the best color, this is the first year I am not ordering a dark or black iPhone. They still look good, don't get me wrong, but they get all kinds of fingerprints on them like crazy.

And Also,, my worries about the light colored scratches, if you go deep enough, were all confirmed by Zack, JerryRigEverything, in his video cutting the thing up. So Because I'm on team. No case, I'm going with the all gray phone, I Think it looks dope, so I'm going with that. I Think Basically the idea is, if you have a perfectly working phone, there's no world where you should upgrade to this one just for the titanium build or just for the slightly thinner bezels..

But You have to appreciate, put this up next to an iPhone 11, then, yeah,, you can see the differences compounding over time. Just like if you sat in a 992 Generation 911 right now after sitting in a 997 generation car. But The real highlight of this build here, let's be honest,, is there's a new port at the bottom, that USB type C, which makes a big difference to people like me who have other gadgets in their life, computers, headphones,, mouse, keyboard,. I Just bring one charger, it works with everything.

I Have already had this rite of passage moment that everyone who gets this phone is gonna have where you have an existing Lightning cable and you try to plug it in and then you're like, oh right, new cable. But Now I've gotten used to it. But The thing is, I could have sworn Apple would do more with this port. Like, okay, we know that they were basically forced into doing this by the EU, so shout out to the EU for that.

Now We have a USB iPhone, but like the only pitch is just, hey,, one cable for everything. That's it, Apple really? So Like with 30 pin to Lightning all those years ago,, the benefit was obvious,. it's just so much smaller of a port so that let them fit more stuff in the phone, plus it's reversible now. Now with this USB type C, it's like okay,, it was already small, it was already reversible, charging speed did not improve at all, it's still 25 watts.

There's no extra like desktop mode, plug it into a monitor and get, there's no decks or anything like that, right? It's just one cable for everything. Okay, fine, sure, welcome to the club. You Know, iPhone Users can now take advantage of the U in USB-C. I Talked about the handshake it does with plugging directly into other phones and reverse charging them at four and a half watts in the unboxing video, that's pretty neat.

You Can also plug in other things, plug in a keyboard and type with it,. plug in a monitor, it'll mirror your screen at up to 4K 60. And The Pro phone now supports USB 3.0 data transfer speeds, so you can get that ProRes footage off the phone noticeably faster, and you can actually, for the first time, shoot video directly onto an external drive.. Now There's some talk about the cable that comes in the box.

Remember That nice high quality braided USB-C cable that comes in the box? But It's only USB 2.0 transfer speeds, it's a slow cable. So If you have a Pro phone, you need get a faster separate cable for it? That Seemed weird to people, but it's not,. that's very normal. Most Smartphones come with just a USB-C cable just to charge.

It's a charging cable. If You wanted a data cable, you'd have to buy a thicker, more robust cable that looks the same, but is a data cable. It's kind of confusing and annoying actually.. Welcome To the world of USB-C, my friends,, it's good to have you.

But That is a good segue to the main enabler, the new powerhouse chip inside this phone with a new name, the A17 Pro. So The base iPhone 15s got last year's A16 bionic from the 14. Pro. And So, here's this new more powerful chip in the highest End phones.

and it's not the A17 Bionic, this is the first one with the Pro name, A17 Pro, and this thing goes kind of crazy on paper. This is their first three nanometer chip, actually, the first three nanometer chip in any phone that we'll probably see for at least another year or two. I ran some benchmarks, it's literally approaching M1 chip levels of synthetic benchmark scores, and compared to last year, it's 10 to 20% more powerful on both the CPU and the GPU, which is very respectable. But more power is like more horsepower in a car.

It's only really useful or noticeable if it lets you do more things with it. I'm gonna live in this analogy a bit more for a minute, but like the last generation Porsche 911, Turbo S, it was already so ballistic fast that you never approached that limit anywhere on public streets until you get to the highest end of performance, on the track. And The highest End iPhone is the same way,. like, the Pro iPhone's been great at just surfing Instagram and texting and doing all the normal web browsing, basic stuff you'd do on a phone.

And So, the only place you'd really notice the extra performance is, well, we got a gaming demo. Apple Showed these wild demos on the new iPhone at the keynote. And Just a disclaimer, I'm not much of a phone gamer, so I'll defer the commentary on this to Dave2D, you can go watch his video, linked below. But They literally launched exclusive games on the iPhone, that are like "Resident Evil: Village" and "Assassin's Creed", but not on cut down mobile versions, These are literally the same versions with the same assets and same textures and everything from the PlayStation version 'cause it literally is the PlayStation version.

That's impressive. Plus You know,, performance headroom is never a bad thing. But I Think also for me, and for a lot of other people, the more impactful things that you'll actually notice about this new chip are in the dedicated parts of it that are for specific tasks. Like, the new image signal processor lets you take really, really fast, lag-free photos constantly.

The New neural engine recognizes Portrait Mode subjects, like people's faces and dogs and cats automatically, and lets you go back in time and set a regular photo to a Portrait Mode photo. The USB 3 controller that enables faster data transfer speeds is also on the A17 Pro, all of that is coming from the new chip. But What I'm more concerned with at the moment is battery life. Okay, So actually, it's kind of two main issues that have been popping up that you kind of have to try to figure out, are they isolated issues or are these real problems with the phone? And Those are battery life and overheating issues.

And To be honest,, part of the reason this review took like longer than normal is: I've been really trying to dig into the battery and figure out what's going on here. So Objectively speaking,, these phones have slightly bigger batteries than last year and a new three nanometer chip. So In a controlled environment, they should do better. And they do,.

they literally last longer on like simple benchmark stuff. So that's good news. Now when I test a phone, like normal, I pretty much, I kind of go by feel, I always have some mix of good days, some average days and then some bad days, where I can sort of figure out what's draining it, what its weaknesses are, and then I can come to a conclusion from that. So Now here we are, I get a couple days in, I get a couple weeks in and I've had a good amount of average days, I've had a couple of those bad draining days, but I also haven't had any of those amazing days where I get like nine hours of screen on time.

I just haven't had any yet. And Then, we also started to see some of those headlines about battery life potentially being worse. and there's also some overheating issues popping up on Twitter or X and some people were asking if mine has had any issues. So Here's the weird answer, yes, but not when I would expect, Two days ago, literally, I was just at a golf tournament, it was in Florida, it was like 100 degree really feel or something crazy like that.

And I'm outside with my phone at max brightness with GPS going all day out in the sun, and it was fine, no problem, no overheating issues. But Then, a couple hours later, I'm on the airplane with my phone in Airplane Mode and I've got just like music playing on Bluetooth with Spotify and like scrolling through Instagram, and for like five minutes, the phone just gets really hot and just blasts through like 5% battery, and then it's fine again afterwards, and I'm like, there almost seems to be no rhyme or reason why it does this randomly once in a while. So My best theory is that the A17 Pro is just, it's a more powerful chip and so therefore, is able to drain power more quickly than before in high intensity settings, like gaming, et cetera.. And There's also been some issues attributed to iOS 17 bugs, like we're already on 17.0.2.

I Imagine there's some more updates coming to both iOS and a bunch of apps. But By the end of this, I kind of feel like I'm expecting battery life to basically even out to be the same as last year, which is a boring answer, but that's kind of what I expect. Now We can talk all we want about what the word Pro actually means in a smartphone, but with iPhones, that has mostly meant cameras. And It turns out there is a lot going on with these relatively similar looking cameras on these new Pro phones, both in hardware and software..

So You're looking at a new bigger 48 megapixel main camera. There's also an improved ultra wide with a closer up macro capability and a whole telephoto situation that we'll get to in a minute. But Then with software, there is this whole new intricate image processing pipeline happening.. So You know how most smartphones, a lot of 'em today have like 48 megapixel cameras and they all bin down to 12 megapixels.

They Give you 12 megapixel shots. You Know,, previous iPhones did this, this new one, for those who might've missed it,, is actually by default spitting out 24 megapixel images instead of 12, and it's only about one and a half times of file size. So This new process, which is the same actually across the board for iPhone 15s and 15 Pros, is it's taking a 48 megapixel full sensor shot for detail information and also taking a full sensor 12 megapixel shot, which is the quad binning for light information and noise. And Then, it's using the neural net to combine them and do a sort of a detailed transfer to get you this hybrid 24 megapixel image.

It's very complicated, very clever,, and the end result is slightly better. It's really right in line with what I've been saying. So If you just generally look at photos shot on this camera,, it's an iPhone photo,. Like,, they look pretty great, they're awesome with dynamic range and sharpness across the board.

I Still prefer and shoot in the rich contrast profile most of the time, but, yeah,, mostly, the iPhone is one of the best cameras at just pointing and shooting, in full auto, just getting results that look good, even if it doesn't look the most like real life, you know,, it's doing the classic relighting and tone mapping and everything we're used to from all this smart. HDR, it's all here and a lot of people like it and it looks good. The Improved Macro Mode is also really good. And With this natural fall off with the primary camera without even needing Portrait Mode, you can get some blurred backgrounds, It's awesome.

Autofocus is also really, really fast, especially whenever there's a face in the scene,. this thing loves seeing faces. And The benefit of the bigger sensor shows itself at night too, with even longer handheld captures. It's not magic, it's just physics, But, you know,, does the 24 megapixel make a difference over the 12 megapixel? Well, zoomed out, absolutely not,.

they look basically the same. So You gotta zoom in, and even at 50% zoom, you still can't really tell. It's not until you zoom all the way in that you can, Okay,, you can see a difference,. you can start to notice a difference in fine detail and contrast.

The 15 Pro is definitely,, when your pixel peeping, more contrasty and sharp when you're all the way zoomed in versus last year. But That's just when you've zoomed all the way in. And By the way,, once you get past 2X zoom, it's back to kicking out regular 12 megapixel images. So Again,, it's like, it's a small, small year-over-year improvement with that tiny amount of like pixel peeping detail, but over a longer distance, over a bunch of generations, that's the type of thing that adds up..

They Even, on the Pro phones, did a couple of presets from the 1X lens. There's a 24 millimeter all the way zoomed out, then a 28 millimeter, a little bit tighter,, and a 35 millimeter that all have their own dedicated image processing pipeline presets to maximize detail into these basically super res, zoom, focal lengths that you can digitally zoom between.. I Wouldn't exactly call it having extra lenses on the phone, but, you know,, 1.5X zoom on last year's phone versus 1.5X zoom on this year's phone,. slight difference.

But There is a difference. Honestly, The most Pro things about these new phones though, is definitely their video cameras, so I'm just gonna nerd out about these for a second. Because The iPhone's video capabilities, I've talked about this so much, but they're still so clearly far out in front of the rest of the smartphone world. It doesn't even shoot 8K, which it's totally capable of with the 48 megapixels.

I wish they would let us, but even just at 4K 30 in full auto, the detail, the auto focus, the slight depth,, the dynamic range,, the stabilization, they're all world class. I Mean, if you wanna just look at test footage, the entire electric Rivian delivery van review I did on the Auto Focus channel was shot on iPhone 15 Pro, audio included, I'll drop the link below if you wanna watch that whole thing. Also, shout out to the new AV1 Codec support on the chip, that's gonna play nice with YouTube. But This year, you can also shoot Log, literally a Pro camera feature.

Now It is annoyingly buried several layers deep in the separate Settings app, which is really not very Pro. But If you find the time to go, switch over there and get into Log, the iPhone will shoot with way more information, that classic flat Log look, dynamic range, everything.. And You don't have to deal with whatever Apple was gonna do with over sharpening and saturation and processing. Apple has its own transformation LUT To turn it into SDR or HDR or you can go in and fully grade it yourself to really get the most out of the iPhone's video and it looks really, like, really, really good.

So The one thing that I'm gonna say to, you know, because I'm pixel peeping at this point, is the haloing from point light sources. You Know, it's one of the hardest challenges with these tiny optics. So I get why they haven't just fixed it yet, but like it's pretty bad. Anytime There's any sort of point lights, especially with video,.

despite whatever new lens coding they're doing, it's pretty dramatic and it seems like it's the worst on the iPhone of any other phone.. So it's there, gonna point it out again, but, hey,, if that's the biggest downside of iPhone video, I'll definitely take it. And Then, iPhone 15 Pro Max, the big one is the only one that comes with the new 5X larger telephoto lens. I Would bet my life that that's gonna come down to the smaller 16 Pro next year, whatever,.

but it's only in the big one this time. But Yeah,, it does let you get a little further with max zoom, from 15X to 25X. It's nice if you do a lot of zoomed photos and videos, which is a very specific crowd, there's some people that do that, you know,, concert goers, things like that. But There are just very few people who should buy one just for this lens because it also means you have to have a bigger phone.

And it also happens to mean that your 4X photos just before you get to 5X will actually be worse on this phone. But, yeah,, it's not nearly as capable as some of the longer telephoto periscope lens.. I mean Samsung has a 10X optical lens that blows this one out the water in terms of reach, I Think Apple's main advantage really is just stabilization. Like, they finally do that zoom in preview window on the corner of the viewfinder and they overstabilize the frame, so you can zoom all the way in and get a shot in super creeper mode, It's great..

But I'm just gonna shamelessly borrow a line from Mr. Mobile because he said it as well as anyone possibly could, and he's right, which is just that. So much of the differences between these cameras, this one,, the last iPhone, the Samsungs, the Pixels of the world, so much of the differences between them is software that it's hardly even consistent anymore. So If you are looking for like a hard verdict on like iPhone 15 Pro side by side versus Samsung versus Pixel or Oppo, whatever else, you kind of just have to make it up after a while, like, yeah, there are gonna be certain instances, like exact zoom focal lengths where one is sharper than the other, but honestly, at at the end of the day, a lot of it is gonna be taste.

And So, yeah, you just kind of have to figure out which one you like as far as image quality and especially UI, just the actual way you shoot photos and videos. Which Reminds me, I Do wanna mention, this RAW Max button is hilarious. This is a button to take your full res 48 megapixel Pro RAW photos, but it just says RAW Max, okay. And If you want a 48 megapixel JPEG, you have to jump back into the Settings app, switch it over,, then bounce back, and now the button says JPEG Max, which is also hilarious.

Last thing I Gotta say though,, this new Pro phone has an Action Button on this new Pro iPhone only because only pros need customization. Look, I Kind of love the Action Button, but I also need to realize that it's kind of either overrated or underrated, depending on who you are. Like, on one hand,, it's literally a customizable button, like, who even saw this coming? It replaces the least used button that was on previous iPhones because your phone should always be on mute anyway. And So, then, you can map this Action Button to basically anything you want.

You can keep it as a mute switch and it has the same strong haptics so you can tell if it's muted or unmuted in your pocket without looking. But There's also a bunch of other cool functions you can pick from, from launching your camera to a voice recorder, to just literally any app on your phone you want through a Siri Shortcut. Your Favorite YouTube channel right now is probably making a tutorial on the best Siri Shortcuts To map to the Action Button From launching apps, to the specific things inside of apps,, from unlocking your car,, to not just launching my favorite Task Manager app, but launching a new task inside of my Task Manager app. It Just lets me, it's great, it's awesome, honestly, I Hope it gets copied, even though a bunch of phones were doing this years ago and then they stopped.

I hope they bring it back now in a response to how great this is. But On the other hand,, I do kind of feel like, for a lot of people, this is gonna be one of those things that they play with for like three or four days and then just kind of forget about it and never use it again. And I Mostly think that's because it's not super reachable. Like, it's not a one handable button where your fingers usually rest for everyone, especially on the Pro Max, it's way up there on the corner above the volume buttons.

It Could be a cool shutter button for the camera, but the volume buttons already do that, so yeah,, I Feel like you might as well just end up setting it back to a mute switch and forgetting about it after a few weeks. But I Guess that's fine too. It's one of those things that you'll just figure out which user you are after you use it for a while. Kinda Like I've been using that Eight Sleep mattress cover that I was talking about, I've been using it for about three months now,.

this is the pod cover that goes on your mattress that either warms you up or cools you down, helps you sleep. Like, now that I've used it for a while, I've understood, like I was a skeptic at first, but honestly, it's one of those things where I go to a hotel bed and I have a harder time sleeping, which it used to be the other way around,. but I just sleep so much better in the Eight Sleep bed 'cause it's cooled down to let you get sleep early and then warms up in the morning to help you wake up. And It's become really clear that temperature is one of the most important factors when it comes to sleep, and it's become real obvious to me that falling asleep faster, getting better quality sleep and then being able to depend on it is something I wouldn't trade for anything.

It's just, it took me some time to learn that. Plus There's an app that shows me all my info about my sleep every night and it lets me adjust the autopilot if I want. If Your partner sleeps at a different side on the same bed, they can adjust the temperature in the app too, it's great. So I'll leave a link to it below, and since they're a great sponsor, they're actually giving you guys $200 off the pod cover if you use code "MKBHD" at Eightsleep.com/mkbhd.

But Anyway,, what's the verdict? What's the verdict with the new Pro iPhone of 2023? It's one of those things where like I have conversations with friends and I always end up having to try to condense it all and summarize it into like one sentence, and the truth is like, it's the same phone as last year with USB, a little bit of a faster chip, a little bit of a brighter screen, a little bit of thinner bezels,, and like, I don't know, better cameras, that's kind of it. So You have to decide how much of that is important to you. Are Any of those things important to you? Honestly, USB might be the most important thing about the new iPhone, despite what Apple was hoping. Welcome To the club, my friends.

Thanks for watching, catch you guys in the next one, Peace.