I've never really been the type of person to go out and buy Apple's new and improved products
that they launch every year, but this might change my mind. This is the iPhone 15, and she's beautiful at first glance.
They've added this very sleek and smooth beveled edge,
which almost creates a more luxury feel,
as well as the very soft matte back,
which is unique to the 15. As in previous years,
they've had more of a shiny glass, and it also has a fingerprint-resistant coating.
We have the pink color here, but Apple also launched this with four other colorways,
including blue, green, black, and yellow.
I've never really been one for colored iPhones, but I really like the pastel colorings
that they have this year. It's a lot more subtle than previous years,
but I kind of find that to be an advantage.
I mean, that is for people who don't put their iPhones in a case right away.
The USB-C charging cable. This, I feel, is probably the most important part
of this new iPhone, because it's universal,
and you can charge your Gen2 AirPods with your iPhone,
so it essentially kind of becomes a battery bank,
and, oh, what is this, instructions? Oh no, this is the sim popper,
which I feel like they're gonna kind of start phasing that out, like the physical SIM cards,
and start integrating more eSIM. I guess as long as telephone providers
are comfortable with that. Do you think I could get it in the room behind?
Yeah. Ah! Wow, great job, bro.
So on the 15 Pro and Pro Max,
I know they have like a button here, but for the standard 15, they've kept the little switch.
We've got our volume buttons. Of course, the beautiful USB-C port on the bottom,
and then your standard on and off button. And I am noticing, actually,
there isn't a lot of fingerprint markings showing,
which means that the coding is working. First things first, let's talk about the screen.
While in previous models, they have also had the Super Retina XDR screens.
This time around, they've also improved the screen brightness, which is supposedly two times brighter
than its predecessor, the iPhone 14.
I'd love to try it out, but unfortunately, it's raining outside.
So Labs has done some testing for us. Let's take a look.
I specifically want to point out the HDR brightness, which in a dark room is about 850 nits.
Brandon, one of our lab teams members, pointed out that 850 nits is actually
pretty crazy for screen brightness, and is much higher than the average 500 nits
that you'd see in a regular phone, or a standard phone.
Another thing to mention is Labs pointed out that in the SDR outdoor test,
they were able to measure 2,200 nits versus the 2,000 nits that Apple claims.
Quite impressive, seeing that it's higher. In contrast to my own iPhone 12,
I've also noticed that on the 15, we have the Dynamic Island, so no more notches.
And I've actually never utilized the Dynamic Island,
or I guess I've never tried the Dynamic Island, so I'm interested to kind of look into that.
Now, I've never really been impressed by iPhone cameras.
I attend to frequent concerts, and that's where I get the best test
out of my iPhone cameras, as I find a lot of the artifacting
doesn't really make the pictures turn out as great as they could.
There's also oftentimes in dark lighting a bit more of a lens flare, which sometimes
you don't want that. But with this phone, the camera has been
one of the biggest features that has been advertised and talked about, and so I think this might change my mind.
It's got fingerprints on it. If only they could add a fingerprint-resistant finish
to the camera lenses. Now that would be a good feature. So the new iPhone 15 has a dual-lens system.
So we've got the standard camera, which is 48 megapixels,
and then our ultra-wide, which is 12 megapixels.
One feature I'm really excited about is Apple has added essentially controls for the user
so that they can control the depth and the focus
on photos after they're taken. I love Apple's like portrait mode,
but I find sometimes when I'm taking pictures of my dog, it kind of blurs the wrong areas.
This kind of allows you to control where the blur is and where it isn't.
Let's try it out. Do you want to come take a selfie with me? Ha ha ha.
Beautiful. All right, let's try it. Edit.
Portrait. Oh, whoa. It can get really blurry.
I don't know if you could see that very well, but. Belle, you don't even exist in this photo.
You're just a... You're a photo baller. Yes, true.
Wow, that actually works quite well. So initial, I guess, impressions is,
that feature is awesome. So we'll do a bit of a blur, and then, whoa!
That's great. Who needs Photoshop anymore?
Just kidding. We've got 0.5 zoom out for ultra-wide shots,
and now I'm going to take a picture of me at that.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, it's starting.
Ha ha ha.
How many people have done that on short-circuit? Ha ha ha.
Oh no. It doesn't look very good, I'll be honest,
but like Andrew said, it's kind of a tricky shot with the light being directly facing the camera.
Then we have the 1x zoom option, which is for like mid-distance shots.
I'll just take a picture of Belle this time. Oh no, it's on timer still.
Three, two, one, yay!
That looks pretty good. I'm so torn.
I'm like not a photographer either by any means, so me judging the photos may not necessarily be
like the best point of view,
but you know, it's all right.
And then we have the 2x zoom distance for close-up shots.
One thing to mention is the 2x zoom is only 12 megapixels.
Let's take a selfie.
Selfie cam seems all right.
As soon as I zoom in on the photo, I'm like maybe it's not as good,
because like when I'm looking at it on the screen, it looks fine, it looks great, it looks super clear,
but as soon as I take the photo, maybe that has, like maybe I just need to fondle
with the settings a bit more, but I kind of expected more to be honest.
Here are a few other photos for you to take a look at.
I guess you get to make that decision.
Now that we've tested the camera, let's test the audio. And what better way to do that
than with our absolute favorite banger?
Let's put some crab brave on. It sounds like I'm on like a tropical island.
There is a very good range to this speaker.
It sounds really good. I've never really compared phone speakers per se,
but in comparison to my iPhone 12, this sounds fantastic.
I could listen to that all day.
The standard iPhone 15 has an A16 bionic chip,
which is the same as in the iPhone 14 Pro. We got Labs to check out the performance.
Here is data to look at. Wow, data.
I'm not much of a mobile gamer, but I mean, hey, if you can get a better phone
for playing mobile games, then maybe it's worth it.
I don't, like what kind of mobile games do you play? Oh, I guess Labs has done the testing for us.
I kind of noticed in their marketing a little bit, it was kind of weird because they said like the iPhone 15
can go up to 26 hours of battery life with whatever video,
but they don't like specifically say the iPhone 15
and the iPhone 15 plus. So you're like kind of led to believe
that it's the regular standard iPhone 15 that's 26
until you actually look at like the side-by-sides of the regular and the plus,
then it says up to 20 hours, which is six hours less,
which isn't an insignificant amount. In our endurance YouTube playback test,
we were able to get 18 hours. And in the stress test, we got 3.3 hours.
We also did a charging test and we were able to get it from zero to 85% in an hour.
Here's the data for how long it took to get it to full.
I feel like the battery is always something that Apple should continue to improve.
And this is something that I felt a lot towards like the iPads and also AirPods and Apple Watches.
Honestly, please just improve battery life for everything
because I don't want to have to charge my phone every single night.
And I feel like that's a universal experience.
However, I know it's not as easy as I'm making it sound.
What if we could just throw a car battery in a phone?
We haven't really talked much about iOS 17. One feature I find incredibly helpful is that
along with their emergency SOS, they have also included a roadside assistant
similar to AAA. Another feature that I find super awesome is
with me and my partner is we have an air tag on our dog.
And with only one person being able to see where the dog is at a time,
if we were both having to like go out and search for her if she ran away, I feel like that would be
a lot less convenient.
So like the fact that you can add two people to an air tag
is, I mean, it should have been something that they had from the beginning,
but it's nice that they're adding it now. I don't know about you,
but I've definitely woken up in the middle of the night
and checked to see what time it is on my phone and absolutely blinded myself.
Apple has since implemented a standby mode,
which we're gonna try now, but...
Oh, there. Oh, no, I did it.
I just shifted it a little bit. Oh, there, okay. Welcome to standby. I love this feature so much.
You can showcase some of the widgets that are more important.
So when you are sleeping in the middle of the night and you wanna check on what time it is
and you don't have a digital clock or anything else,
you could just glance at your phone. In comparison to the iPhone 15 Pro,
which hasn't always on screen, the standard 15 doesn't have that feature.
However, with a simple tap, you should be able to bring up the standby mode.
It's so weird how simple a feature can be, but also so helpful.
Every morning I ask Alexa what the weather is gonna be like,
but if I could have my time and my weather right beside me when I wake up,
I wouldn't have to do that. It's just one simple step that I can skip
using this feature, which is super cool. Is there anything else? Oh, they've got like a wide, wide, wide.
Very wide. Apple has also added this thing called Name Drop,
where you can easily share contacts by simply putting the phone tips together.
Shall we try it? All right.
Wow.
That was wonderful. Oh, I need to set up my card in my contacts.
Oh, there we are. Wow, so fancy. That was fantastic.
Don't dox me. So I think if I go back to my initial question,
where I ask, does the iPhone 15 make me wanna go
to an Apple store, wait in a line, or make an appointment?
Probably not. I think between my iPhone 12 and the iPhone 15,
the features haven't changed too much. I mean, the Dynamic Island is cool
and is a very aesthetic feature and sharing contacts by simply touching tips.
I think the camera is the part that always gets to me,
because it's not really a feature that I am generally super stoked about,
but when you hear all of these positive things about it, try it out for yourself,
and then aren't as impressed as everybody's telling you you're going to be.
I don't know, maybe that's just me.
Everybody can make their own decisions, and if you're the type of person that wants to go and buy every single new version of iPhone
and try it out to its fullest and really get to pick at the positives and the negatives
as you go through kind of the cycle, that's not me.
The iPhone 15 starts at 799 USD.
Oh yes, depending on the storage that you go with, they go all the way up to 1099,
and that's just the standard. Then you have the choice between the iPhone 15 Plus,
which is 6.7 inches, and it's $100 more for each,
or you can choose the Pro or the Pro Max,
which again, ends up being a bit pricier. I haven't checked out the features of the Pro,
but based on the iPhone 15 that I looked at today,
I'm not convinced that I need to upgrade. I do find that adding USB-C is a convincing addition.
However, I don't know if it really would make that big of a difference to my personal workflow,
but maybe it will to yours. So at the end of the day, it's a cool phone.
I hope you enjoyed this ShortCircuit. Like, comment, and subscribe,
and if you're interested in seeing another Apple unboxing, you can check out my Apple Watch 7th Gen unboxing,
or stay tuned for Linus's unboxing of the iPhone 15 Pro.
Thanks for watching. Thanks.