iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max hands-on: Titanium frame, 5x zoom camera and spatial video

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max were launched by Apple Annual fall event On Tuesday. From the moment I took them into the Steve Jobs Theater, I could tell there were some significant refinements compared to the previous Pro models. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are made of titanium instead of the stainless steel found last year. iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max And, as a result, are significantly lighter.

In recent years, Apple has kept its pro phones in line with technological advances, keeping standard models with the previous year’s technology, keeping costs down and encouraging upgrades to more expensive premium models. This proved true with the standard iPhone 15 and 15 Plus receiving 14 Pro offerings last year. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max continue this tradition iPhone 15 Ultra Rumors Unsubstantiated, these are Apple’s most advanced phones yet.

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Note that: iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max: First Look

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max have slightly rounded edges that feel good in the hand. Note that we had about 30 minutes to try them out in a very crowded demo room, but the light weight and less bulky feel made a positive impression. The new Pros have thinner bezels for slightly more glass on the front screen — still 6.1 inches for the iPhone 15 Pro and 6.7 inches for the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

As for colors, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max come in four metallic colors: traditional black and white titanium, as well as blue titanium and “natural” titanium with a gray tint.

The iPhone 15 Pro starts at $999 (£999, AU$1,849), while the iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1,199 (£1,199, AU$2,199). While the Pro Max is more expensive than the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s $1,099 starting price last year, the new iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at 256GB, double the internal storage of its predecessor.

Pre-orders for iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max Starting this Friday, the phones will go on sale in Apple stores and online next Friday, September 22.

More from the Apple event

Rumor has it that the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max ditched the Lightning port for USB-C for data throughput of 10GB per second (the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus also switched to USB-C).

There’s also one new feature: an action button that replaces the mute switch that’s been on iPhones for years. By default, you can long press to mute or unmute. You can customize it to trigger multiple shortcuts, such as turning on the flashlight, recording a voice memo, or opening the camera. With the camera app open, I used the action button as a physical shutter button to take photos. Reminds me a bit Sony Xperia 1 v And its dedicated hardware shutter button.

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Note that: Everything Apple announced at its iPhone 15 event

Better cameras, better zoom

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max have a 48-megapixel camera with a larger sensor. Photos are 24 megapixels by default, and lidar scanning enhances low-light and night photography. The phones also feature a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera carried over from last year’s iPhone 14 Pro.

But only a large premium phone has the best zoom feature this year. The Pro retains its predecessor’s 3x telephoto camera (equivalent to a 77mm lens), while the Pro Max has a 5x optical zoom (equivalent to a 120mm lens) — a “tetraprism” design that refracts light multiple times, zooming in even further. The smaller frame of the iPhone. When I tried out the Pro Max’s new telephoto camera, it was eye-opening what a difference 5x made over 3x on the 15 Pro. I was also able to digitally zoom to a ridiculous 25x magnification for an iPhone.

The phone view in the iPhone 15 Pro Max's camera assembly shows light entering through a lens and reflecting four times through a prism.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max has a telephoto camera capable of 5x optical zoom (equivalent to a 120mm lens), thanks to its “tetraprism” design.

Apple

High-end Android phones, especially the Samsung Galaxy S series, have had something similar for years — periscope cameras — that employ a design strategy that stacks lenses inside the phone’s frame and uses glass to angle them back. of telephone. The Galaxy S23 Ultra, for example, has a periscope camera capable of 10x optical zoom.

Apple is trying to appeal to more pro photographers by adding more intermediate zoom steps to the camera app’s interface. When the camera app is open, users can tap the 1x zoom button to switch between popular focal lengths — 24mm, 28mm and 35mm — and set one of them as the default focal length when opening the app.

read more: The iPhone 15 Pro Max ‘tetraprism’ camera means an excellent 5x telephoto

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max cameras feature expanded video capabilities such as Vlog encoding, as well as use faster throughput speeds over USB-C cables to capture and instantly transfer photos taken from your iPhone 15 in maximum sharpness Pro Raw format. Pro for Mac. It can record video in ProRes format directly to an external storage drive.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max also get forward-looking spatial video capture, which uses multiple cameras to capture videos with depth that can be seen on an Apple Vision Pro AR/VR headset. Unfortunately, this feature won’t roll out until later this year.

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Note that: What the iPhone 15 Pro’s Spatial Video Feature Means for Vision Pro

Faster processor, more gaming

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max debut with A17 Pro Bionic processor, a 3-nanometer chip with 19 billion transistors for faster performance. The new six-core GPU is 20% faster than the A16’s GPU, and enables ray tracing.

Apple has pushed mobile gaming in its iPhone releases for years, and this year was no exception, with developers Ubisoft and Capcom announcing full console versions for Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Resident Evil 8 and the Resident Evil 4 remake, respectively. . (The latter two are confirmed to come to the iPhone 15 Pro later this year, with Assassin’s Creed arriving in early 2024.) Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding is also coming to the iPhone 15 Pro.

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Apple/Screenshot courtesy of CNET

While Apple will push the iPhone 15 Pro’s mobile gaming capabilities, the A17 Pro silicon will also benefit augmented reality applications.

The iPhone 15 Pro will launch with iOS 17 (publicly available when the phones launch on Sept. 22), which introduces the StandBy mode previewed at WWDC 2023. It basically switches the phone to a more dormant mode at night. Time in large category and app widgets. It works when you turn the phone on its side, but it looks like the world’s most expensive alarm clock, and must be used when the phone is mounted on the MagSafe stand.

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