- 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. (logo whooshing) 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. (upbeat music)
