Here in Canada, where I live, the price tag for an iPhone 15 Pro is almost $1,500.
It's $1,000 in the US, but still, that's a lot of number.
Even if I had the money, are the Pro only updates that cash is going towards even for
me? I like the non-Pro iPhone this year, so I'm going to try all the new stuff on the Pro
model to see if I can justify its price. Because geez, for that number, it better be made out of titanium.
Oh, it is.
The glossy, heavy stainless steel frame of the 14 Pro has been replaced with a lightweight
titanium one. It makes it smaller and lighter, the edges are rounded off and easier to hold.
And because the bezels on the screen are thinner, the Pro is only 0.6mm wider than
my personal no phones wider than 70mm policy.
In fact, when I first unboxed this 15 Pro, I thought it felt a lot more toy-like than
the rather serious models that preceded it.
It is the closest one is going to get to a mini iPhone these days.
But all of these changes actually are best felt on the Pro Max model.
I usually hate big phones. After using this one for over a week, it's almost tolerable.
That is, until I have to sit or bend down. I really like the natural titanium color, and I like the blue less so.
Fun story, Jake Bell ordered one of these and really wanted a white one.
Every color was sold out except blue. Oh yeah, the ringer switch is also gone, replaced by the new action button.
This allows you to choose from a list of fun functions or customized shortcuts, and toggle
that choice on and off by long pressing. I do wish you could double or triple click for additional functions, but this does add
a nice bit of flexibility and has a cool settings page with awesome animations.
Myself, I'll be using it as a ring silence button.
Like the regular 15, the Pro gets the very useful USB Type-C port.
It supports up to 10 gigabits per second transfer speeds,
and that helps make the iPhone Pro more pro than it has ever been,
because transferring those humongous ProRes video recordings is no longer a pain.
But it's even better, because you don't need to transfer anymore.
The iPhone 15 Pro supports external recording onto SSDs,
which means that you don't need to opt for a spendy storage upgrade just to record 4K.
It even enables up to 60 frames per second at that resolution.
Furthermore, Apple added a log video profile option as well.
Log video is important in professional video circles because it retains the most
amount of dynamic range from the darkest and brightest parts of each frame.
That means that an editor can manipulate the look of the footage to their liking in post.
Up until now, the phone would apply its own look, and if it were wrong, tough.
But Apple's gone a little too far in the other direction.
Right now, only those with a developer account have access to Apple's LUTs.
That's the lookup table, which helps editing software translate the flat image
into a more viewable starting point. That's a major hurdle to go through just to take advantage of log footage.
You either have to create your own LUT, or buy someone else's, or wait until Apple's gets added into the editing software of choice.
But it certainly works, preserving more detail than if you were to just shoot an HDR.
One of my favorite TV shows at the moment is How To with John Wilson.
It's a show that captures the weird visuals that New York can throw,
and then uses them to great effect to tell a story.
In an interview in Variety, John revealed that a fifth of Season 2 was shot on the iPhone.
Dude, this is for you. Because everyone has an iPhone, you can film covertly while still getting the best quality
I don't know how to pronounce covertly anymore. Covertly. Covertly.
Though an SSD dangling off the phone might draw some attention,
just say it's a battery pack. I still know that despite Apple's marketing push,
the iPhone will never replace the professional cameras we and John use at work.
But the iPhone is absolutely the phone to have for video.
For me personally though, I think when it comes to these features, I'd rather save the money and leave this in the camera den at work.
Back to the USB-C port for a moment. Unlike the transition to lightning,
I don't think that this transition is going to be as big of a deal because you probably already have a USB-C cable at home.
Well, I discovered this week that Apple's new fine woven case has a very small plug hole,
so not all cables will fit, especially the ones that support USB 3 speeds.
The camera hardware hasn't changed much on the 15 Pro from the previous 14 Pro.
I mean, I think the photos look different. Though these night photos Jake Bell took on his blue phone in Toronto do look quite good.
The only new camera is found on the Pro Max, which gets a brand new 5x telephoto lens.
It's really nice to be able to capture detailed images from farther away.
It's certainly better than trying to get 5x zoom from the smaller Pro's 3x camera.
Is it worth not only the Pro price tag, but an extra $200 for the Max?
My big gripe with the Pro iPhone's cameras is all the settings and the app.
Reviewing an iPhone camera used to be easy, but now there are five different quality options for the main camera alone.
And you can only toggle between four of them from within the app
if you have Pro Raw and Control toggled on.
And all the toggles for the camera app are still contained in the iPhone's settings app.
Look, when the iPhone was a cute little simple cell phone, it made sense to keep extra settings in the settings app,
but this is insane. The record video menu lets you select your default video quality in dynamic range,
among other things, but the setting for Pro Res recording in dynamic range encoding is in the formats menu.
It's great that I can shoot log footage. It's not great that I have to leave the camera app to toggle it on and off,
while lacking the ability to set my white balance, a constant shutter speed, and or ISO.
Pro Res was introduced two years ago. Are we going to have to wait another two years before the iPhone will give us those controls?
If Apple is going to charge Pro pricing, they need to at least redesign the camera app for the Pro models.
Apple made a big deal about the new A17 Pro chip.
It is faster, especially in my Lightroom test. The biggest improvements Apple advertised though were with the GPU,
which Apple says is now Pro Class. K, whatever.
But what it actually supports is hardware accelerated ray tracing and metal FX upscaling,
the type of features found on real graphics cards. I don't play mobile games ever, I even gave up on Townscape-er.
But the coolest games that Apple announced will be supporting this technology,
including Rainbow Six Division, Assassin's Creed, and a pair of Resident's Evils.
Or is it Resident's Evil? R, console tier, AAA games, that won't be out for a while though.
I did, however, miraculously get my hands on Resident Evil Village.
And it looks pretty good. There are a lot of graphics settings that one can adjust, but no ray tracing.
My colleagues at the Orange Channel are planning on doing a deep dive on this, so you should check that out, but only after you're done watching this video.
Genshin Impact, however, does support metal FX,
and Labs found that it does improve graphics fidelity immensely, while providing more stable frame times with slightly less GPU utilization.
What I really want is City Skylines. But I really won't because of the App Store tax.
So, this thing doesn't win me over, does it?
And I don't think the new features are for most people, unless you're John Wilson, things like the ProMotion screen,
extra optical zoom, and fancy processor are actually luxuries.
If I had to buy a phone right now, because I desperately needed to,
I think I'd still go with a regular 15, unless I could get a 13 mini on clearance.
I should really get a 13 mini on clearance. Thanks for making this Mac Address flat.
Like and subscribe, and tell me in the comments below whether you'd go with a Pro model or a regular 15.
And I'm not filming a video on the iPhone 15 Pro,
because I already did that with the iPhone 13 Pro when ProRes came out.
Check it out. There's a link here. Here's a button.