1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,520 No, no, no, no, no. 2 00:00:03,520 --> 00:00:07,040 After being one of the first iPhones to excite me in years, 3 00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:11,520 the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are absolutely mired 4 00:00:11,520 --> 00:00:15,320 in controversy right now. Everything from overheating to Apple providing 5 00:00:15,320 --> 00:00:20,880 weird advice regarding charging cables to even a new bend gate. 6 00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:26,040 But that doesn't mean that I don't still wanna check them out. So let's take a look at not just the phones, 7 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:31,160 but also this fun little report card that the Labs team put together for me. 8 00:00:31,160 --> 00:00:37,240 Right out of the gate, boy, are they ever pretty and the beauty is more than just skin deep. 9 00:00:37,240 --> 00:00:42,200 They feature an aluminum titanium hybrid frame, we'll get into that a little bit more later, 10 00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:45,480 a 6.7 or 6.1 inch display, 11 00:00:45,480 --> 00:00:52,200 depending on whether you go for the Pro or the Pro Max, Apple's new A17 Pro, no longer bionic chipset 12 00:00:52,200 --> 00:00:59,040 featuring two performance cores, four efficiency cores and six GPU cores, along with eight gigs of LPDDR5 memory 13 00:00:59,040 --> 00:01:06,240 and all the wireless fixings, Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3 NFC and their ultra wide band chip 14 00:01:06,500 --> 00:01:11,440 that has some cool new tricks up its sleeve, like the ability to find your friends 15 00:01:11,440 --> 00:01:15,680 just like you can find an Apple AirTag in a crowd of people. 16 00:01:15,680 --> 00:01:19,800 That is legitimately pretty useful if you have friends. 17 00:01:19,800 --> 00:01:24,160 Of course, for the folks whose best friends are their dogs or their cars, there's the cameras. 18 00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:29,520 Each has a 48 megapixel main shooter along with two 12 megapixel auxiliary shooters, 19 00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:35,520 one ultra wide and one telephoto. That telephoto is 5x optical zoom on the Pro Max 20 00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:41,040 and 3x on the regular Pro. For the avid photographers, I could see that being enough, 21 00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:45,320 especially when you combine that with some of the new software enabled capabilities, 22 00:01:45,320 --> 00:01:50,280 like the ability to record log raw footage, even to an external storage device 23 00:01:50,320 --> 00:01:54,200 via the all new 10 gigabit per second USB-C port, 24 00:01:54,200 --> 00:01:56,520 the ability to take a regular photo 25 00:01:57,960 --> 00:02:02,560 and then convert it to portrait after the fact. So you don't have to make the decision at the time 26 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:09,440 and the ability to record spatial video for viewing on the upcoming Apple Vision Pro headset. 27 00:02:09,440 --> 00:02:13,340 There's of course some other physical things. In addition to that USB-C port, 28 00:02:13,340 --> 00:02:16,520 we get our usual volume buttons and okay, 29 00:02:16,520 --> 00:02:21,920 I'm legitimately so excited about this and it should just be on everything, the action button. 30 00:02:21,920 --> 00:02:25,000 Gone is the toggle switch for vibrate and ring mode 31 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:28,920 and here is the action button. Just click it to see what mode you're in 32 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:33,120 and hold it if you wanna switch between ring and silent. Or if you're not into that, 33 00:02:33,120 --> 00:02:36,600 you can reconfigure it to just about anything you want. I have no idea how to do this. 34 00:02:36,600 --> 00:02:40,040 Let's see how quickly I can figure it out. It's not here for some reason, 35 00:02:40,040 --> 00:02:44,880 although that would be fairly obvious to me. Nope, I guess we need to dig into 36 00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:48,360 the old fashioned settings app. All right, well that wasn't that hard to find. 37 00:02:48,360 --> 00:02:53,000 Ooh, configurability, choose a shortcut. 38 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:59,040 This is so much more robust already 39 00:02:59,640 --> 00:03:04,640 than what I've seen with things like the stupid Bixby button that Samsung made extremely difficult 40 00:03:04,640 --> 00:03:08,200 when they first introduced it to just do whatever the crap I want with it. 41 00:03:08,200 --> 00:03:13,160 Okay, this is an example. Even things like the double press, the lock button 42 00:03:13,160 --> 00:03:16,360 to open the camera functionality that's on some Android phones. 43 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:19,440 The lack of configurability for that kind of thing, 44 00:03:19,440 --> 00:03:23,280 this puts it to shame. You know, recognized music, man, 45 00:03:23,280 --> 00:03:26,800 can you configure it though to use it in different ways? 46 00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:30,400 Press, hold, double press, that would be next level. 47 00:03:30,400 --> 00:03:35,120 Oh, accessibility features. In some cases, that's just Apple's way of saying 48 00:03:35,120 --> 00:03:39,000 features that you wanted, but we won't admit are a good idea. 49 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:43,600 Like the mouse support that they added on the iPad as an accessibility feature forever. 50 00:03:43,600 --> 00:03:46,200 And then we're like, okay, fine, it's a good idea. 51 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:51,080 Quick camera launching on the iPhone, yes. Look, I know from the lock screen, 52 00:03:51,080 --> 00:03:55,640 I know you can do this, I know. Okay, watch this, watch this, watch, quick, okay, quick draw. 53 00:03:55,640 --> 00:04:00,440 I pressed the action, but oh, camera's open already. I'm ready, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. 54 00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:06,080 Oh, I like it. I got to be honest with you guys. So far, I still kind of love it. 55 00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:09,480 It's amazing how used to giant phones I've gotten though. 56 00:04:09,480 --> 00:04:14,400 The Pro Max doesn't even feel unreasonably big. I think this is probably the route I'd go, 57 00:04:14,440 --> 00:04:18,160 though for gamers, that might not actually be the best option. 58 00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:22,800 You see, both of them have the same 460 PPI pixel density. 59 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:26,640 Both of them will run at anywhere from 10 to 120 Hertz 60 00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:30,600 with adaptive refresh rate technology. So they'll feel smooth when they need to feel smooth 61 00:04:30,600 --> 00:04:35,800 and can save power when they need to save power. But because the size of the screen of the Pro Max 62 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:39,480 is so much greater, we actually found in our game testing 63 00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:42,640 that our 1% lows were significantly lower, 64 00:04:42,640 --> 00:04:47,520 meaning that in periods of intense action, you could experience significantly lower dips, 65 00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:51,080 which could result in you getting killed. I mean, not in real life in the game, 66 00:04:51,080 --> 00:04:57,160 but you get the point, right? The brightness of these screens is flipping outstanding. 67 00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:02,160 Okay, in SDR, we got 250 nits full screen in a dark room, 68 00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:06,920 1,000 nits outdoors, and in an 18% window, 69 00:05:06,920 --> 00:05:11,480 we got 2,200 nits in SDR. 70 00:05:11,480 --> 00:05:14,640 2,200 nits on a phone? 71 00:05:14,640 --> 00:05:19,160 Are you flipping kidding me? In HDR, we didn't see the same kinds of stratospheric highs, 72 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:22,640 but these are really, really impressive displays. 73 00:05:22,640 --> 00:05:27,880 For me, the gaming story of the iPhone 15 family though is not mobile games like this. 74 00:05:27,880 --> 00:05:31,360 It's the AAA games that they were showing off during the announcement. 75 00:05:31,360 --> 00:05:34,640 If we actually get developers porting their games 76 00:05:34,640 --> 00:05:39,520 to metal for the iPhone, it could be a literal game changer. 77 00:05:39,520 --> 00:05:45,320 Since I've been gaming for so long, now seems like as good a time as I need to talk about the first big controversy, thermals. 78 00:05:45,320 --> 00:05:49,660 While we didn't extensively test for thermals, we did perform game benchmarking, 79 00:05:49,660 --> 00:05:55,800 so we did make some observations. Our devices got as high as 43 degrees on the surface, 80 00:05:55,800 --> 00:06:00,560 which is not particularly comfortable, but isn't going to do any kind of harm 81 00:06:00,560 --> 00:06:06,880 while we've seen reports of as high as 46. Our best guess is that it's one of a couple of things. 82 00:06:06,880 --> 00:06:09,880 Either those other outlets were charging 83 00:06:09,920 --> 00:06:14,120 while performing their testing and therefore adding some additional thermal load 84 00:06:14,120 --> 00:06:17,520 to the device, or there could be some variants, 85 00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:23,000 depending on whether these phones were made in China, where the factories have more experience, 86 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:26,160 or made in India. So here's a fun little thing you can do. 87 00:06:26,160 --> 00:06:30,040 If you look at the box, you will see blah, blah, blah, 88 00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:33,640 assembled in China, something, something. Yes, right there. 89 00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:37,280 But if you look inside the USB-C port, 90 00:06:37,280 --> 00:06:42,920 there's a little engraving that indicates if you got a China or an India unit. 91 00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:46,280 So one of our theories, and this may impact 92 00:06:46,280 --> 00:06:50,800 some of the other controversies as well, is that there could be some slight differences, 93 00:06:50,800 --> 00:06:54,800 whether they're at the factory or whether they're up the supply chain 94 00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:57,880 that are causing these phones to be slightly different. 95 00:06:57,880 --> 00:07:02,880 So my iPhone 15 Pro Max that I ordered on launch day 96 00:07:03,240 --> 00:07:07,660 is China. Our iPhone 15, which the team has already checked, 97 00:07:07,660 --> 00:07:11,220 is a China model, and my iPhone 15 Pro is also China. 98 00:07:11,220 --> 00:07:14,860 So I wonder if there's a little bit better consistency 99 00:07:14,860 --> 00:07:16,100 in these China models. 100 00:07:18,100 --> 00:07:22,940 Like you can just immediately tell, shot on my phone looks better. 101 00:07:22,940 --> 00:07:27,500 Sorry, Android. Really, I'm one of your people, but gotta give credit where it's due. 102 00:07:27,500 --> 00:07:30,780 Now let's talk about the second big controversy, fragility. 103 00:07:30,780 --> 00:07:35,860 Apple spent a fair bit of time talking about the titanium frame, and that sounds really impressive, 104 00:07:35,860 --> 00:07:38,900 but in Zach from JerryRigEverything's bend test, 105 00:07:38,900 --> 00:07:42,180 he actually found that it failed extremely quickly. 106 00:07:42,180 --> 00:07:47,020 I mean, it's not the kind of thing that I think will just happen sitting in your pocket, 107 00:07:47,020 --> 00:07:50,440 like we saw with, what was it, the iPhone 6, I think. 108 00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:54,020 It should be noted that for Zach, the regular Pro, the non-Max, 109 00:07:54,020 --> 00:07:57,060 didn't have any noticeable bending problems. 110 00:07:57,060 --> 00:08:02,020 Another thing that happened was AppleTrack had the camera bump break off during a drop test. 111 00:08:02,060 --> 00:08:05,700 Labz's theory is that the camera module could be introducing a weak point 112 00:08:05,700 --> 00:08:11,180 due to the way that the glass curves up from the main body or the flex in the subframe 113 00:08:11,180 --> 00:08:16,820 that pushes against the inside of the glass during a drop. The break in the glass is perfectly aligned 114 00:08:16,820 --> 00:08:21,100 with the inner frame. Enough about controversy, let's talk good things for a little bit. 115 00:08:21,100 --> 00:08:25,300 Both of these managed to achieve 85% charge in just an hour, 116 00:08:25,300 --> 00:08:29,980 and that's in spite of the fact that Apple does not support wildly fast charging rates, 117 00:08:30,100 --> 00:08:33,500 60 watts, 100 plus watts or whatever else, 118 00:08:33,500 --> 00:08:39,460 like some Android manufacturers do, and they both reached 100% in just over an hour and a half. 119 00:08:39,460 --> 00:08:42,460 By contrast, the iPhone 15 non-Pro 120 00:08:42,460 --> 00:08:49,780 took over two hours to reach 100%, but it should be noted, also reaches 85% in one hour. 121 00:08:49,780 --> 00:08:54,540 So it seems to be just down to the curve that Apple has chosen for topping up 122 00:08:54,540 --> 00:08:58,460 the last 15% of the battery. Another good thing, the USB-C port. 123 00:08:58,460 --> 00:09:05,540 They've actually given me a little bucket of fun things to attach to the new iPhones. 124 00:09:06,020 --> 00:09:09,080 Let's start with a microphone. Wait, did I even mention 125 00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:13,260 that Dbrand sponsored this video yet? There's no broken glass this time, right? 126 00:09:13,260 --> 00:09:16,380 Nope, no broken glass, just iPhone cases. 127 00:09:16,380 --> 00:09:21,420 We've all seen cases like this in the past. They start out clear, they end up yellow, junk. 128 00:09:21,420 --> 00:09:26,100 Dbrand's new ghost case is designed to never yellow. 129 00:09:26,100 --> 00:09:32,500 Wow, never is a really big word. Did they use the word never? Dbrand seems quite confident they have engineered the case 130 00:09:32,500 --> 00:09:35,540 to solve that problem, so much so in fact, 131 00:09:35,540 --> 00:09:38,920 that Dbrand is offering free replacements in the event 132 00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:42,620 that your ghost case ever turns yellow. 133 00:09:42,620 --> 00:09:47,620 This looks absolutely sick, considering all the torture 134 00:09:48,580 --> 00:09:52,940 that they've put me through over the years. I'm kinda hoping they do turn yellow and cause a eugenic. 135 00:09:52,940 --> 00:09:57,220 That must be from our sponsorship team. Yeah, pretty much. 136 00:09:57,220 --> 00:10:01,220 No, I don't hope they turn yellow because I actually believe in Dbrand's approach 137 00:10:01,220 --> 00:10:05,060 to product design. I think that they overall do a pretty darn fine job 138 00:10:05,060 --> 00:10:08,140 and I'm really excited to no longer see ugly, 139 00:10:08,140 --> 00:10:11,360 yellowed plastic phone cases because when that happens, 140 00:10:11,360 --> 00:10:15,100 people inevitably throw them away and we end up just producing more garbage. 141 00:10:15,100 --> 00:10:18,380 It's better to produce some plastic thing once 142 00:10:18,380 --> 00:10:21,380 rather than over and over again and this looks freaking awesome. 143 00:10:21,380 --> 00:10:26,580 So I'll be keeping this on the phone while we test out all these cool USB-C peripherals. 144 00:10:26,580 --> 00:10:29,940 What do you think are the odds this microphone is just gonna work? I don't think so. 145 00:10:29,940 --> 00:10:33,420 There's no way. No. No! 146 00:10:33,420 --> 00:10:37,900 Holy crap, it just worked. It just worked. Volume control, just working. 147 00:10:37,900 --> 00:10:41,020 Is that just the headphone volume control? That's wild. 148 00:10:42,020 --> 00:10:46,340 You could just plug this into your iPhone and be recording audio. 149 00:10:46,340 --> 00:10:50,300 Oh, oh, we definitely need a Razer Viper 8K gaming mouse, 150 00:10:50,300 --> 00:10:55,900 though. Is iOS support a mouse? I know iPadOS does, which is a totally different thing. 151 00:10:55,900 --> 00:10:59,580 Okay. Huh, no way! 152 00:10:59,580 --> 00:11:03,420 I'm a keyboard mouse gamer, folks. What if I lock it in? 153 00:11:04,500 --> 00:11:08,460 All right, because Apple arbitrarily decides that, 154 00:11:08,460 --> 00:11:11,540 well, iPads need to be locked in landscape mode. 155 00:11:11,540 --> 00:11:15,180 iPhones simply don't. What if I do? 156 00:11:15,180 --> 00:11:20,340 Apple is apparently warning that using third-party USB-C cables could cause damage to the device. 157 00:11:20,340 --> 00:11:23,980 My understanding, the last time I looked at this is it was only a handful of stores in China 158 00:11:23,980 --> 00:11:29,820 and I don't even know if they were official Apple stores, but there apparently is some validity to it. 159 00:11:29,820 --> 00:11:34,900 There's a slightly smaller gap between the single row nine pin and single row 11 pin connectors. 160 00:11:35,900 --> 00:11:39,920 Realistically, the same is probably true of any time you're using a third-party cable. 161 00:11:39,920 --> 00:11:44,420 Apple does apparently have a fuse and an identifier chip in their cable 162 00:11:44,420 --> 00:11:49,380 to make sure that it's an authentic cable. I mean, that's sort of not the point of USB-C. 163 00:11:49,380 --> 00:11:53,100 The point is that we can kind of use any cable we want and as you can see, I'm not having any trouble with it, 164 00:11:53,100 --> 00:11:57,420 but who knows, they may reject your warranty claim if you do not use an approved cable. 165 00:11:57,420 --> 00:12:01,060 But hey, at least you're getting pretty decent screen on time. 166 00:12:01,060 --> 00:12:05,140 We weren't able to get anywhere near the 23 and 29 hours 167 00:12:05,140 --> 00:12:10,020 that they advertised for YouTube playback on the regular Pro and the Pro Max respectively, 168 00:12:10,020 --> 00:12:15,020 but we did get 17.75 hours and 21 and a half hours, 169 00:12:15,520 --> 00:12:18,700 which is pretty darn respectable and that was at 200 nits. 170 00:12:18,700 --> 00:12:23,820 We don't know exactly what Apple's test conditions were. It's possible, for example, that they had cellular turned off 171 00:12:23,820 --> 00:12:27,020 or they had the screen at minimum brightness. We are not sure, but those are still 172 00:12:27,020 --> 00:12:32,620 very respectable results and in our stress tests, we saw 3.3 hours, this is running 173 00:12:32,620 --> 00:12:36,840 through your Mark Wildlife Extreme on the Pro and four hours on the Pro Max. 174 00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:40,580 Those are very respectable results. I want to hook up a monitor. 175 00:12:40,580 --> 00:12:44,580 No, I want to do what framework did. 176 00:12:44,580 --> 00:12:47,700 This is so cool. They were meman on their social media. 177 00:12:47,700 --> 00:12:52,020 All like, hey, Apple, way ahead of you. We got your USB type A adapter. 178 00:12:52,020 --> 00:12:55,620 Oh, of course it's not compatible with the Dbrand case. Oh, okay, sorry Dbrand. 179 00:12:55,620 --> 00:12:59,760 Love you guys, go to shortlinus.com to go check it out and get your own ghost case, 180 00:12:59,760 --> 00:13:03,380 but for now we're gonna have to lose it. Let's go ahead and pop this bad boy in. 181 00:13:03,380 --> 00:13:08,340 Woo, type A port, anyone? Ah, ah, they also showed adding the headphone jack back 182 00:13:08,340 --> 00:13:12,300 with their headphone jack module. Of course, that's not what I'm interested in right now. 183 00:13:12,300 --> 00:13:16,620 I'm just gonna pop out my laptop's HDMI port 184 00:13:16,620 --> 00:13:19,940 and plug that in. How cool is that? 185 00:13:19,940 --> 00:13:22,820 HDMI iPhone, HDMI phone? 186 00:13:23,980 --> 00:13:31,040 I have no idea what this monitor is. It's an LG something, but I don't know what resolution 187 00:13:31,040 --> 00:13:34,100 or what refresh rate it runs at, but what we're about to find out 188 00:13:34,100 --> 00:13:41,860 is if the iPhone supports it. Hey, look at that. We got the Chotec USB-C to HDMI cable. 189 00:13:41,860 --> 00:13:45,340 Oh, okay, well, sorry for your framework. Investment disclosure. 190 00:13:46,540 --> 00:13:49,260 I mean, that's not the most elegant thing ever. 191 00:13:50,020 --> 00:13:53,220 Ow, you ready, you ready? I think we got this. 192 00:13:54,740 --> 00:13:59,740 Hey, even just for doing reviews of iPhones back in the day, 193 00:14:01,140 --> 00:14:04,180 I would have given my left testicle 194 00:14:04,180 --> 00:14:09,180 for this easy, seamless, flawless, freaking screen capture. 195 00:14:10,500 --> 00:14:14,700 Just plug this bad boy into a capture card and you are good to freaking go. 196 00:14:14,700 --> 00:14:18,640 How did they not go USB-C sooner? This is awesome. 197 00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:22,040 I mean, you know why they didn't so they could collect their licensing 198 00:14:22,040 --> 00:14:28,600 and certification fees for the lightning cable, but for the user, how did they not do this sooner? 199 00:14:28,600 --> 00:14:35,640 The best part is that it's super mature because iOS and iPadOS, let's face it, not that different. 200 00:14:35,640 --> 00:14:39,960 And a lot of this stuff has been awesome in iPadOS for a long time. 201 00:14:39,960 --> 00:14:45,440 That's one of the killers for me. It's just like, how ahead of the game Apple was on USB-C 202 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:51,200 and then how far behind the iPhone was on it. Not gonna lie, definitely some upscaling going on here 203 00:14:51,200 --> 00:14:55,120 that is more noticeable in the larger display, but that looks not bad. 204 00:14:55,120 --> 00:14:58,720 Oh, what the hell? So if you touch it, it shows up. 205 00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:04,280 If you're interacting with it, you can see that. 206 00:15:04,280 --> 00:15:08,160 Interesting. Yep, that's rendered on an iPhone, all right. 207 00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:11,560 And this video is rendered out. 208 00:15:11,560 --> 00:15:14,840 Subscribe to ShortCircuit. Don't forget to check out our sponsor Dbrand 209 00:15:14,840 --> 00:15:17,880 with their ghost cases. We've got that linked down below.