if you have an iPhone 14 pro or Pro Max should you even consider upgrading to the 15 Pros well usually I would say no but this year we’re actually getting a lot of upgrades some of which I think are actually worth considering also we’ve recently revealed teaser number four out of five for our big announcement if you can guess what our upcoming announcement is comment down below and you might win a special prize so let’s start with the body changes the 15 Pros now replace the previous shiny stainless steel frame with a new brush titanium frame which is more matte and less fingerprinted but really the main advantage to having this Frame is the weight reduction the 15 Pro now weighs 187 grams down from 206 whereas the pro Max now weighs 221 down from 240.
this should make the 15 Pro Max especially more manageable in the hand whereas the 14 pro last year was literally the heaviest non-foldable phone both models have thinner bezels too by about 15 percent which also makes the bodies narrower by 0 0.
9 millimeters plus the frame itself is now a bit rounded towards the top and bottom with a glass that curves to match it all of these should make the 15 Pros more comfortable to use especially for long periods of time the last body change is the new colors we still get the black and the silver like before only with that new titanium frame but the gold and the poreful have now been replaced by a blue titanium and then also a natural titanium color that looks very similar to the Apple watch Ultras frame
now since titanium is very difficult to anodize apple is using a PVD coating which is a thin Vapor coating on the surface therefore the color titanium variants are likely to be more susceptible to scuffs and scratches revealing the raw titanium color underneath so if you want to be safe.
I suggest going with the natural titanium color by the way these are just dummy units they’re not actual functional iPhone 15s those are coming next week but these are quite close in terms of the colors the feel the weight and the dimensions and all that I myself will be going with the black Titanium because well I’m just a sucker for black overall the body changes are quite big and potentially something that you could consider upgrading for especially if you’re coming from a pro Max.
now there are a number of entirely new features that could also entice CTO upgrade the biggest one by far is Apple’s switch to USB type c allowing us to finally use the same cable to charge all of our devices now I do have to remind you that Apple has only made the switch because they were pushed by the EU to do so the Pro Models also get significantly faster transfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second as opposed to 480 megabits per second like we had before with the 14 pros this essentially solves issues like taking forever to transfer your prores footage
the best part is that now we can also connect external ssds and record prores directly on them in 4k at 60 frames per second we can now also use a USBC cable to charge our Apple watch or 2nd gen airpods with the usb-c case directly from the iPhone now aside from USB C see we also get something quite big which is the action button that replaces the mute switch and allows us to assign one custom action to it like launching the camera toggling between Focus modes Siri shortcuts and of course muting the phone I think that’s a game changer especially for people like me who have been asking Apple to add a quick launch camera option for years these are what I would call the two big new features USBC and the new action button and personally I would say that they’re both pretty big changes that might weren’t an upgrade when it comes to the performance changes usually these are quite small year on year
but this time they’re quite big first of all we finally get eight gigabytes of RAM as we’ve had six since the iPhone 12 pros and I’m really excited to try this out and just see how many more apps I can have open in the background as the 14 Pros were not that great at that we also get a brand new chip the a17 pro the first time we get a pro name for an iPhone chip and this isn’t necessarily due to the performance increases which are fairly modest 10 better CPU and 20 better GPU with a two times faster neural engine but instead the pro name is there because of a number of other improvements first this is the world’s first three nanometer chip which means that we get more performance and more efficiency in the same chip size second we get hardware-based ray tracing something that we’ve seen in the Galaxy s22 series Woody access 2200 and third we get Triple A console quality games such as Resident Evil 4 Resident Evil Village death stranding and even the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Mirage what’s crazy is that these games are not streamed but played directly on the iPhone and of course if you connect the
controller like the backbone one you can literally play AC Mirage with console quality Graphics while on a plane something that you cannot do on something like the switch at all and I’m certain that more and more AAA titles will be coming too including no man’s Sky which already works natively on Apple silicon so if you’re a big mobile gamer the 15 Pros are definitely worth upgrading too not just because the extra RAM and power but also thanks to things like Ray tracing and the ability to play AAA titles also I’m quite certain that the battery life will be better too despite Apple quoting the same numbers as we do get a more part efficient chip as well as those larger batteries which brings us to the camera changes
so if you’re looking at the 15 Pro and not the 15 Pro Max there are zero camera Hardware changes aside from a new lens coating to reduce the reflections yes the main camera is exactly the same and so are the 3XL photo and the ultright the improvements that we get on the 15 Pro compared to the 14 pro or purely software related for example the default resolution is now 24 megapixels rather than 12 like on the 14 pro which initially made me wonder how are they doing pixel binning now as you need at least four pixels to act as one well it turns out that they’re taking both a 12 megapixel bin photo and a 48 megapixel photo at the same time and then they merge them to give you a 24 megapixel photo that has all the low light advantages of the previously been and
12 megapixel one we also get ability to take a 48 megapixel heif photo as with the 14 Pros you could only take a 48 megapixel Pro raw unless you use a third-party app and we also get the ability to select between different default Zoom levels for domain module if you prefer a more zoomed in look but probably the best new feature here is the upgrade to Smart hdr5 from Smart hdr4 that should improve HDR processing and hopefully fix the blown out highlights that were a major issue with the 14 pros of course we’ll be doing a detailed camera comparison soon so do subscribe if you want to see that Apple also improved their portrait mode pretty substantially with depth data now being detected automatically and then you can apply portrait mode effects after you’ve taken the shot and even changed the focus this isn’t anything new by the way as we’ve had this on Pixel and Samsung phones before but Apple’s portrait might have an edge
when it comes to realism at least from their sample images both models also get the ability to shoot log footage which is great for grading afterwards and they are also the first phones to support Aces a global standard for color workflows if you actually want to shoot professional content using your iPhone however lock shooting was already doable on the 14 Pros if you use a third-party app like filmic Pro what is new is that both modules also get the ability to shoot 3D videos that can then be played on the Apple Vision Pro and the pro Max does indeed get that new Periscope Zoo module that can magnify up to 5x as opposed to 3x on the 14 pros and the 15 Pro interesting enough apple is not using a traditional Periscope lens but one that uses a Tetra prism to bend the light and keep the sensor closer to the lens to capture more light Apple likely did a start to bypass Samsung’s first go patterns and avoid paying them a licensing fee in turn we get a zoom module that doesn’t need capture more light but it’s larger F 2.
8 aperture as opposed to the usual F4 but also one that doesn’t have as much Zoom as the competition on the plus side Apple does have an Innovative stabilization in place for all three axes meaning that this lens should be very easy to shoot with even at long Zoom ranges or long exposures so if you’re coming from the 14 pro and you’re thinking of getting the 15 Pro I don’t think the camera upgrades are worth it since aside from the external prores support and smart hdr5 you can just use a third-party app and access most of Apple’s new software features anyways but if you’re coming from the 14 pro Max and you want to get the 15 Pro Max then
I would definitely consider upgrading because of that new Zoom module which also enables up to 25 times digital Zoom compared to 15 times on the 14 pros and the 15 Pro so if we add all of these up the build quality the new features the performance improvements and the camera improvements I would honestly say that it is worth considering upgrading to the 15 Pro especially if you’re looking at the 15 Pro Max obviously these were just the bigger changes there are way more and you can check out our 33 things you need to know about the iPhone 15 Pro to learn more about all the others stay tuned for more iPhone 15 content and also or a big reveal soon
