Name: iPhone 15/15 Pro Impressions: Not Just USB-C!
Uploaded: 2023-09-19T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 13 min 23 s
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All right, so today I got a hold of and got to poke around the new iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pros.

Adverbs of manner

I do remember flying here and I'm thinking what could Apple possibly do?

Like what could they possibly introduce with a new iPhone, the 23rd iPhone that's actually interesting?

Now, there is more stuff than just the iPhone that was mentioned at this Wonderlust event that Apple hosted,

including some stuff that straight up wasn't mentioned on stage at all, so we'll get to that.

So stay tuned and get subscribed to see the rest.

But let's just talk about the new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro.

So here's a lens to look at all this stuff through.

Coming into this, basically everything Apple just added to their newest flagship phones falls into two buckets.

It's either something we've already seen in some other phone for years,

or it's some ecosystem feature that only works with other iPhones,

which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a lens to look through this stuff at, just to keep an eye on it.

There's the same two sizes, again, iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

And yeah, you know there's some small changes,

like the slight soft corner radii on the aluminum rails and the one piece glass back fading between a lighter and darker version of the same color, like this new pink one.

Also, satin soft touch backs across the whole lineup instead of glossy.

But the big headlining feature really is its USB now.

These new iPhones are all USB-C across the board.

Now on one hand, this is a huge deal, like there's only ever been one port change in the iPhone ever back in 2012,

it went from that 30-pin connector thing to this new Lightning thing, which we've had ever since.

And now the second one ever is USB Type-C.

But on the other hand it's, I don't know, it's just USB.

Like it's the same port all these other laptops and tablets all over the planet have had for the past couple years.

I imagine that might be another year or two before the whole lineup, like the baseline cheap iPad and the iPhone SE and everything else gets USB-C.

We knew it was coming, but it's still kind of surreal to look at an iPhone and see a USB port on it.

So what does this enable is a real question, right?

First of all, it's the one cable that you can ideally use to charge all your stuff, so your Mac, your iPad, your iPhone, your friend's Android phone, the new AirPods which just got a new USB-C case.

Oh, and now you can charge accessories like the new AirPods with the wire.

So there's no wireless reverse charging right now, but that C to C cable that comes in the box,

you can like plug it into the iPhone, plug it into the AirPods and charge the AirPods up from the iPhone battery.

But they did hold back on one very key thing and they saved it for the iPhone 15 Pro.

So I'll get to that in a bit, but that's the USB-C.

Aside from that, really it's a slightly updated phone.

You know, you get the Dynamic Island here, of course, on these baseline iPhones and there's also now a higher peak brightness, 2,000 nits now which is twice as bright as the iPhone 14s.

The primary camera is now a 48-megapixel chip, presumably the same one that was in the iPhone 14 Pro last year and all the benefits that come with that.

And then the rest of the phone really follows that same formula.

They do this thing where the new baseline phone is basically last year's Pro phone repackaged, so it inherits the same A16 Bionic chip from last year's Pro phone.

The coolest feature of this phone though, and you know, it's also on the Pro phone but I still think it's pretty solid,

is the camera has this new next-generation portrait mode,

but basically it automatically detects when there's a subject in a photo and captures all of the depth information needed to be able to turn it into a portrait mode photo later.

So you don't have to remember to switch it to portrait mode necessarily every time.

And if you ever forget but want to add that blur later, you can do it with high quality results.

Aside from that, the rest of the phone, I mean it's the same thing, right?

Same sizes, guys, same ceramic shield, same dust and water resistance and same starting prices, 799 for the 15 and 899 for the 15 Plus.

So then there is the Pro phones, the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.

A lot of it, I'm actually gonna want to test just to see if it's actually what they say,

but make sure you get subscribed to see those full reviews when they come out later this month and we can figure out if the phones are worth it.

But basically, it's not bleeding edge stuff that we've never seen before.

And those are mostly in build quality, the chip inside, and the cameras.

So let's just start with the chip inside.

First of all, it's a brand new chip that's called the A17 Pro.

It's the first time they've used the word Pro in an iPhone chip,

and it's their first three nanometer chip, so it promises some performance and efficiency improvements as a result.

I think they said it's like 10% faster high performance cores and the neural engines up to twice as fast, bunch of other stuff.

Not sure how much of this you'll actually notice in everyday use, but hey, future proofing and headroom is never a bad thing, so this is clearly a powerful chip.

They showed a demo of a game with like faster ray tracing which isn't new, but you know, it helped make their point.

But the interesting thing to note here with this chip is they mentioned the chip has a new USB 3.0 controller on it, which means the 15 and 15 Plus don't have that.

So basically that means the Pro iPhones USB-C port actually gets upgraded USB 3.0 speeds, the faster data transfer speeds up to 10 gigabits per second,

but the base iPhones without that controller, they get USB-C, but they're gonna be stuck at USB 2.0 speeds.

Basically the same we've always had with Lightning, like 480 megabits per second.

Now this probably won't make a real difference to most people.

Like I don't know when the last time you plugged your phone in was, but it's kind of a bummer that not all of the benefits of USB-C come to all of the phones,

but for the Pro phones that are gonna be shooting more ProRes video or ProRaw photos, I mean it takes forever.

If you've shot this stuff like I have, you know it takes forever to get those off of the phone 'cause they're big files.

So I kind of wish they'd gone all the way.

I wish they'd done Thunderbolt speeds, 20, 30, 40 gigabits per second.

But yeah, it's just gonna be USB 3.0 on the Pro iPhones and USB 2.- on the base iPhones.

I talked about this on the podcast on "Waveform." I'll try to link the episode below,

but like switching to USB-C, you'd think, oh, this is a huge opportunity for Apple to like explain why they're doing it, and we know why they're doing it,

but oh, why are you giving us this new port and all this big new USB-C deal and it's just the same 20 or so watt charging we've had for the iPhone for forever, no new fast charging.

Kind of figured they would try to do that better.

But yeah, this will still take an hour and a half, two hours to charge.

But anyway, the new design is what most people are fawning over at the moment with the pros.

So they have switched the rails from that shiny fingerprint stainless steel to this new grade 5 titanium alloy with a brushed texture.

First of all, it's noticeably lighter in the hand, which I love and it seems like it's also enabled them to shrink the body of the Pro iPhones just a little bit.

So they have the same screen sizes, but the screens now get even closer to the edges and there's even slightly thinner bezels.

Now, a lot of people are also quoting stronger as one of the benefits too, but I really don't think this is gonna make as much of a difference as people are thinking.

Like the Pro iPhones have had this stainless steel rails for a while now.

I've dropped this phone, as you know, I don't have a case, on the ground.

It's not the stainless steel that breaks, it's the glass that breaks.

And as far as we can tell, it's the same ceramic shield glass on the iPhone 15 Pro.