Design

The design of the iPhone 15 Pro remains special in one specific way: size. In a world where compact smartphones are now on the endangered species list, Apple continues to produce its mainline smartphones in a size almost anyone would find comfortable. Sure, there are always the Plus or Max models if you have dinner plates for hands but the default iPhone or iPhone Pro is always this compact, accessible size.

For anyone who carries their phone in their front pants pocket, the advantages of a compact phone need not be mentioned. It slips into the pocket easily, doesn't stick out too much when you sit, and there's even some room left for your AirPods case. Even if you put a case on, the entire device is still more compact and usable than most other phones in this category without a case.

With the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple pushed the accessibility needle further than its predecessor by switching over to titanium. This resulted in almost 20g of weight loss compared to the 14 Pro, which is pretty significant and noticeable when switching between the two phones.

Since we are on the topic of titanium, let's talk about it a bit further. Titanium is exceptionally strong for its weight but there were some concerns regarding how well the color finish would last on the models that do have color on them. After seven months of use without a case, we can say that the metal and the color of our Blue Titanium variant look as good as they did when it was new. Aside from being prone to attracting smudges, the metal shows no signs of damage nor has the color faded or scraped anywhere.

Of course, this may just be the result of taking care and never dropping the device but that's the bare minimum that is expected from you as the user of a super-premium device.

But while we do appreciate the weight savings of the titanium over the stainless steel and the fact that it comes at no loss to durability, the material just does not feel special in hand. If we were never told that it was titanium we most likely would have assumed it was just aluminum. That's what made the stainless steel body of the previous models so good as there was a jewelry-like quality to them that made them look and feel special. The titanium just feels ordinary in hand and the bland colors with matte brushed finish don't help.

The camera bump is also not particularly pleasant to look at. While the use of a different texture to the glass surrounding the lenses is a nice touch (even though it's the same as the rest of the back glass panel), the three lenses jut out too much. We also find having to clean all three lenses individually a bit annoying as on most other phones there is a single, easy-to-clean glass covering all the lens elements, and the design is definitely starting to show its age.

What's not showing its age is the flat-sided design. While many other phones recently have adopted this shape, it only really works well on a compact design like the iPhone 15 Pro as you can grip the entire phone properly, and feels impractical on larger devices. Also, the way Apple manages to make the two glass panels seamlessly meld into the metal frame is truly artful. There is no lip or raised edge to feel here as you slide your finger around the corners; one second your finger is gliding over glass, the next metal, and once again glass like it was nothing. It's not easy to achieve this without affecting the structural integrity of the glass but Apple gets it done somehow.

The inclusion of the Action button on the side was something new for this generation. After trying out the various preset options and even messing around with the Shortcuts feature to assign a custom workflow (like launching a new Safari tab, for example), we eventually just settled on using it as a mute switch the old-fashioned way. The old alert slider was a legendary feature for a reason and remains a very handy tool that we wish more phones had. So while the customizable aspect of the Action button is nice, mute still seems like the best fit for this button.

The last exterior feature we want to touch upon is the inclusion of USB-C. It's hard to imagine now after seven months just how much ink was spilled on this one aspect before and immediately after the iPhone 15 Pro was launched.

Looking at it now, it just feels like a normal feature you'd find on a normal phone, which is a good thing because it makes the iPhone 15 Pro feel like a normal phone that blends into your life and workflow instead of being a special princess that demanded its own special accessories that didn't work with anything else. Going on a trip somewhere with your laptop, camera, and phone? Guess what, you can now just charge all of them with the same cable. Want to borrow a stranger's charger because you forgot your own? Well, you can do that now because they probably have a USB-C charger, too.

Why it took this long and the looming threat of a government body intervening to get here is beyond us but we are glad it finally happened. Let's never talk about Lightning again.

Display

The display on the iPhone 15 Pro is unchanged from the previous generation model. You get the same 6.1-inch, 2556 x 1179 resolution 120Hz OLED panel with a peak brightness of up to 2000 nits.

The way Apple handles the displays on its devices is definitely something to take inspiration from as the company rarely ever misses. We already have all the numbers in our full review from last year but the sheer accuracy of the colors and the way it handles wide color content is something every phone manufacturer should take lessons from. There are no color presets to fiddle with; the colors always look the way they should, provided you don't have True Tone or Night Shift enabled.

Even better is the handling of HDR content, although this may be controversial. HDR content always loads in high brightness and Apple takes advantage of the phone's display to make the non-video parts of the screen maintain its original SDR brightness levels. This means you can have an HDR video playing in a portion of the screen in the Instagram app and while the video will be searing bright, the rest of the UI around it will maintain the same brightness as non-HDR content. At times it almost looks like the rest of the screen has dimmed but that's only because your eyes have adjusted to the brighter HDR content on screen.

The reason this is controversial is that people don't like being flashbanged by random HDR videos on their timelines while just scrolling through Instagram in bed at night. Instagram supports Apple's HDR video and because iPhones that can record in Dolby Vision have the feature enabled by default (without most people realizing), a lot of video content on the app is now unintentionally in Dolby Vision, which can get seriously bright as it appears out of the blue on your feed. At present, neither Instagram nor Apple provide a way to disable viewing this content in HDR, which annoys a lot of people.

The display's high brightness does come in handy outdoors, as the iPhone 15 Pro has exceptional visibility under direct sunlight. The display seems completely unaffected by the fact that it is competing with a star for brightness and remains exceedingly clear outdoors no matter how bright it gets.

The 15 Pro also benefits from the smallest bezels yet on an iPhone. These are some of the thinnest bezels we have come across and a lot of the time it feels like just holding the screen as the bezels just meld into the dark body of our Titanium Blue model.

As for the Face ID pill at the top, it becomes second nature to ignore it when using the phone normally in portrait orientation. It's only when you turn the phone around and hold it sideways to watch videos or play games do you notice it and then it's hard to ignore. It especially takes up more space on the smaller iPhone 15 Pro than it does on the Max model since it's the same size regardless of the phone. If you are someone who regularly uses your phone for videos or games then this is another reason to go for the bigger model.

One thing we noted over our time using the phone was the oleophobic coating slowly eroding around the bottom left and bottom edge of the phone. These are usually the places you tend to swipe from to go back and to go home and there were permanent smudges there. For now, these are just tiny slivers around the edges of the glass and are barely visible but could grow over time.

Lastly, we had a few notes regarding the refresh rate behavior. While it's cool that Apple got on the high refresh rate train a few years back with the iPhone, the way it's enforced does leave something to be desired. It seems Apple does leave it up to the developer to implement high refresh rate the way they see fit. We have come across apps that either don't support it at all or do so where some animations are clearly taking place at 60Hz even if the rest of the app is animating at 120Hz. These can be quite distracting and we have yet to come upon anything similar on Android, where an app either supports high refresh rates totally or not at all.

Having said that, Apple's own apps and many of the well-made apps work just fine. Even the default Camera app refreshes at 120Hz, something you'll never see on Android where the camera app is usually locked to 60Hz resulting in choppy UI. Also, a lot more games support high refresh rates on iOS than they do on Android. Games like Genshin Impact don't even have high refresh rate support on Android but can go up to 120Hz on the iPhone. It's just another reason why you would want to be on Apple's platforms if you are into mobile gaming.

Software

The iPhone 15 Pro shipped with iOS 17 last year and is running 17.4.1 at the time of this writing.

iOS 17 has been less than ideal at times during our usage. We have seen iOS stability slip a few times in the past and there have been some legendary releases in the past that are now known only for being buggy (we are looking at you, iOS 13). While iOS 17 has been nowhere near as bad, it has been far from reliable. While most of the issues can best be described as minor, the overall frequency of them has been notable and unbecoming of a phone at this price point.

Many of the other gripes are not necessarily with iOS 17 specifically but with iOS in general. It's one thing that the launcher does not let you arrange icons with empty spaces (although we hear that may be changing soon) but it's another how frustrating it is to move icons wherever you want. It often feels impossible to move an icon to where another icon already is and have that icon move to make space. Instead, the OS keeps assuming you want to make a new folder. And if you want to move an icon inside the folder, the folder just refuses to open and instead moves around to make space. It's as if no actual human has ever used this basic feature before shipping it as there is no other explanation why it is so incredibly frustrating and hard to use.

The OS is also filled with animations that take far too long to end. Swiped to a picture in the Photos app and quickly want to double tap to zoom? Too bad, it won't work because the photo is still slowly sliding into place even though it looked like it stopped moving. Only when the animation completely stops will it accept the double tap gesture to zoom and it's hard to tell when exactly it stops.

Then there is the lockscreen. Never mind the fact that the flashlight and camera icons can neither be removed nor replaced, but why does the camera icon exist at all? You can swipe left on the lockscreen to launch the camera, a gesture all iPhone users are familiar with because of how often you accidentally trigger it by simply holding the phone in your hand while walking (it happens less often if you use a case). So why is there a button that needs to be pressed and held to do the exact same thing but slower?

Maybe this is also a good time to bring up how a down swipe on the homescreen brings up Spotlight, a gesture that has existed on the iPhone forever but has rarely ever made sense as most people would rather access the Notification Center or the Control Center instead. To this day there is no way to change this gesture so instead we had to resort to using the double and triple-tap accessibility gestures on the back of the phone to access notifications and settings. The only problem is that these gestures trigger far too easily when you don't want to and not easily enough when you want to.

We also had issues with many of the third-party apps for the platform. Just to preface this, Apple has several clearly laid out human interface guidelines for its developer community, and many developers out there are making exceptional apps for the platform that are some of the finest, period. However, a lot of the apps on the platform come from regions where Android is predominant, and the developers there seem to simply not understand that navigation on iOS works fundamentally differently.

iOS relies on the back swipe gesture by the app for navigation. It's also not the same as the back swipe gesture on Android, which simply emulates a back button press and is handled by the OS. On Android, an app doesn't have to have a back navigation gesture because the OS handles it. On iOS, the app needs to support the said gesture otherwise there is no easy way to navigate. Many developers just forget this part and think adding a back button at the top is how you implement the back navigation gesture in the app. This results in a poor experience for the user as the back swipe gesture they are used to does not work and they have to stretch their thumb every time to hit the back button on the top.

It's not uncommon to come across comments from users complaining about how navigation on iOS is worse than on Android because the button is hard to reach. In reality, that button is merely a backup solution and any good app following Apple's HIG should have a back swipe gesture built-in. But so many apps these days don't because their developers are clueless or only used to building for Android and the end result is frustration for the user and animosity towards the platform as a whole. Apple needs to do better here by either educating developers used to building for Android or simply having the OS itself detect a back swipe and emulate a back gesture.

Another perplexing thing about iOS is just how many interactions and gestures are completely obscure. You could be using the phone a certain way for years only to find out through a TikTok video that there was an easier way to do it through a gesture that no one knows. Text editing alone has a dozen different gestures you could be using to make your life easier but for some reason, Apple rarely ever talks about them.

We could go on with the complaints and trust us, there is a lot to work with here. iOS has become a quagmire of poor design decisions that have piled on over the years and will likely stay that way as the company cannot afford to give a whiplash to its users with a completely revamped design; we all saw how that went down when iOS 7 was released.

The side effect of this is that anyone moving over from Android often has an immediately worse user experience because so many things just feel counterintuitive. The old adage of iOS being easier to use just doesn't hold true anymore. If you are a long-time user then navigating these quirks and inconveniences may have become second nature but a user completely new to smartphones will likely find stock Android much easier to grasp than iOS with all its idiosyncrasies, not to mention a lot more customizable if something doesn't sit right with them.

Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. There are some things iOS does better than its competition and many of them are quite aspirational. The focus on security and privacy has been a rallying cry for the company for years and as far as we can tell Apple has always put its money where its mouth is. Never mind the bigger picture things, simply being able to hit 'Ask App Not to Track' every time the pop-up appears is incredibly gratifying knowing full well the app no longer has any idea what's going on the rest of your device. You are unlikely to see that on Android any time soon as it would be pretty hypocritical of Google to stop other apps from tracking your usage when Google itself does it all the time.

Then there is the software update policy. Other companies have now started promising even longer software support but as of now they are simply castles in the air. Apple never put a figure on its support duration but the company's track record speaks for itself and if there's one thing you are guaranteed with an iPhone it's long-term software support.

Then there's the App Store. While it may not please Tim Sweeney and the EU very much, the App Store is home to some of the best apps you can find on any platform. But what truly sets it apart is the quality of games that you can get. While this has always been true, the recent release of top-shelf AAA titles such as Resident Evil 4 and Death Stranding puts iOS in a completely different league compared to Android even though the latter has innumerable gaming-focused devices. And if you want more, Apple Arcade offers access to a wide range of excellent titles without any ads or in-app purchases, some of which are developed specifically for the platform.

So yes, there are still many valid reasons to move to or stick with iOS. Some may even say the presence of iMessage alone justifies that decision, although we aren't American enough to agree. Also, with the EU breathing down Apple's neck, the company may be forced into making several other changes that should bring iOS closer in line with Android. While the company does seem to be fighting this in the end we think it will be good for the consumers and the platform as a whole.

Performance

The performance on the iPhone 15 Pro is nearly flawless. The phone almost always feels silky smooth to scroll and responds instantaneously to everything. An app has to be exceptionally poorly built to feel choppy on this device.

However, there is a discussion to be had regarding some aspects of the performance concerning one specific part of the hardware, which is the system memory, a.k.a. the RAM. Apple has outfitted this device with 8GB of memory and there are no further memory options available. The system does use a certain amount of storage as virtual memory but exactly how much is unknown.

The 8GB memory feels perfectly adequate for everyday usage. Despite what some like to think of multitasking on iOS, it usually works a lot better than it does on Android. You can open an app on Android, minimize it, and find that it needs to start from scratch when you get back to it a few hours later because the device decided to close it unceremoniously. On the iPhone, we would often tap an app icon we opened a couple of days ago only for it to pop up like it was just in use. It's not just that the device is fast to open apps but they are kept in the exact state you left them unless an app specifically requires refreshing itself every time it's launched.

However, as impressive as that memory management is for everyday tasks, the device quickly runs out of memory when doing anything slightly more demanding. This can be anything from heavy usage of the Camera app to editing video on the device but usually, it happens in gaming.

The aforementioned AAA titles still impress us in that they run at all on a mobile device considering they were built for home consoles but what usually lets them down is the 8GB memory on the iPhone 15 Pro, which runs out too quickly and occasionally causes performance issues. It also requires the developers to drop things like texture settings all the way down to a soupy consistency as anything higher resolution simply won't fit in the phone's memory. And while yes, the PS4 also had 8GB memory, it did not have an entire smartphone running in the background to fight for it.

Battery life and charging

You'd think a phone of this size would not have good battery life but not once during our seven months of use did the iPhone 15 Pro fall short on us. On busy days with a lot of travel, the phone would manage to get through the entire day without needing a top-up and have a little left in the tank before bedtime. After a while, we stopped carrying a power bank as the chances of the phone dying in the middle of the day seemed quite low.

But the phone was at its best on days spent mostly at home. With a few phone calls and mostly doomscrolling on Instagram and X several hours a day, the iPhone 15 Pro would make it through two full days without needing a charge. This also included listening to podcasts using Bluetooth earbuds and the occasional picture or two while on a walk. To think you can get two days on a phone of this size seems ludicrous but the iPhone 15 Pro did it day after day.

As for charging, it's not fast and remains an activity best done overnight. While an hour and a half for a full charge is hardly appalling, it's not something you can leave for the last minute like with some other phones. This is one area where the iPhone definitely feels very far behind the competition, some of whom are charging much larger batteries in a third of the time. The iPhone also tends to run much warmer while charging than these other phones. Still, with most people choosing to charge overnight, this might not be a concern for them.

Camera

The camera hardware on the iPhone 15 Pro was similar to that on the iPhone 14 Pro, with most of the changes coming through the software. The only notable hardware change was on the iPhone 15 Pro Max with its new 5x optical zoom camera but the model we are discussing today sticks to the 3x telephoto from the previous generation.

Let's talk about image quality in general first before moving on to some of the software features. Our iPhone photo gallery currently has over 2300 items, of which over 2000 are photos and the rest are videos. Broadly speaking, the image quality is very good. Things that stand out include the level of detail, which is a cut above the competition due to the use of higher-resolution 24MP files as well as the use of good optics, which means a lot of the detail is captured in-camera as opposed to being added in post, resulting in very detailed files. You can even shoot 48MP RAW files if you are after every bit of that fine detail, making this a good camera for landscape shots.

Main camera samples

The color performance has become somewhat predictable on iPhones as the color rendition has a distinct quality to it that has become recognizable. The camera prefers warmer tones that especially like to bring out the greens and oranges in the scene. Similarly, skin tones also have a warm lushness to them, especially for darker tones, which can often look quite flattering. Aside from that, the camera tends to respect whatever colors are present in the scene, and white balancing is also generally quite reliable.

The 3x telephoto camera is a capable tool in the iPhone 15 Pro's arsenal and one we found ourselves using the most. It has a great perspective that perfectly isolates the subject with good background compression without being too intimate like some other zoom cameras. And if you do want to punch in further, 5x and even 6x zoom can provide perfectly usable results.

Telephoto samples

In that sense, the iPhone 15 Pro telephoto camera may be better than that of the iPhone 15 Pro Max; while the latter has to use digital zoom within the 1-5x range, the iPhone 15 Pro can switch to optical at just 3x. This means you will have superior image quality at the more commonly used 3x factor while also having perfectly good 5x images. The Max can meanwhile only flex its muscles over 5x factors while having less than stellar quality in the more commonly used ranges.

Telephoto samples

One of the new software features we appreciated on the iPhone 15 Pro was the ability to tap the 1x button to switch from a 24mm equivalent perspective to 28mm and 35mm. This was a great addition as there are few things as creatively insipid as the 24mm perspective and having a button to punch in slightly is not only convenient but can vastly improve some compositions.

Another feature we appreciated was the ability to tap on the screen and automatically engage portrait mode in the background. The phone would automatically save the depth information for that image letting you then go into the editor and create further subject isolation, which looked especially good with the telephoto camera. Apple's depth of field effect is also very good these days, with a nice, smooth roll-off and good edge detection. We have come a long way from the days of the iPhone 7 Plus and there are times you must absolutely be using the portrait blur feature to enhance your shots.

Edited portrait mode samples

A less talked about aspect of smartphone photography is what it's like to edit the images right there on the phone itself. Apple does a better job of this than most with a bunch of options for you to adjust after the fact. The HEIF images also hold up very well to post-processing without falling apart at the seams. Apple also has some of the most tasteful filters included in its Photos app and even though they are few they usually give great results without overly altering the images.

Another thing Apple does well that isn't directly related to image quality is the HDR effect in the Photos app. While Android manufacturers finally decided to catch up last year, Apple has been doing actual high dynamic range visualization for photos captured by the phone since the iPhone X days and it looks stunning to this day. Moreover, unlike many of the Android implementations we have seen, Apple's HDR effect stays in place even after you edit the image and persists while you are editing it.

If there is a chink in the iPhone 15 Pro's camera hardware armor, it's the ultra-wide camera. While not bad by any means, it's fairly unremarkable and not up to the phone's otherwise high standards. It also starts falling behind considerably when the light levels start dropping. Still, for the most part, it's fine but definitely something due for improvement in the next version.

Ultrawide camera samples

Some other camera annoyances are also worth discussing. We have been using iPhones for years now and one thing that hasn't changed at all is how bad the phones are at detecting the phone's orientation when you launch the camera app. This is especially true if you are pointing the camera down at an angle instead of perpendicular to the ground. At this point, we are trained to look at the camera UI, realize the phone still thinks it's in portrait even though it's in landscape, tilt it upright for it to correct itself, and then tilt back down to take the shot. If you don't pay attention then you are going to end up with a lot of portrait orientation shots of your landscape subjects.

The camera app still only has a handful of settings you can change even on this so-called Pro model and shooting in RAW affords you no additional customizability for adjusting the image prior to taking the shot. For that, you will have to download third-party camera apps. Many of the useful settings are also buried in the Settings app, which is genuinely frustrating when you want to change something quickly.

While not a complaint exclusive to this phone, the main and telephoto cameras have terrible closest focusing distances. You need to be at least a foot away from the main lens and 2-3 feet away from the telephoto lens for them to focus on the subject. The phone simply won't use the telephoto camera if it's even close to getting out of focus and there's no way to lock the camera to any one lens without resorting to third-party apps again. Of course, a macro mode exists which uses the ultra-wide camera but it doesn't have the best image quality or optics.

Lastly, we will discuss the video recording capabilities. This is Apple's most capable video recording camera yet and in terms of image quality, it is often well ahead of the competition. Whether it's the level of detail (even at lower resolutions like 1080p) the color reproduction, or just the stabilization. Outside of contrived scenarios, the iPhone 15 Pro is taking the best video nine out of ten times.

What has always taken the iPhone video recording game to the next level over the last two Pro models was the inclusion of ProRes recording, Apple's high bitrate codec that is popularly used in professional workflows in the film and television industry. With the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple went one step ahead and added support for the log gamma profile, which records a flat, low-contrast video with all the shadow and highlight detail, which makes it exceptionally flexible for post-production workflows.

Working with the ProRes files from the iPhone 15 Pro was a breeze as the codec is supported by all the major NLEs. The level of detail and dynamic range is on a completely different level from any other smartphone video we have seen. More importantly, it bypasses Apple's color science, which it applies to the non-ProRes videos. This means you can inject your own color preferences and the videos have enough latitude to make extreme adjustments without crumbling like more compressed formats. It's not exactly RAW video but it's as close as you can get to it on a phone today.

The phone can capture ProRes in 4K at up to 30fps internally, which is pretty good. Unfortunately, 60fps requires connecting an external USB-C SSD. This felt silly on our 1TB review unit, which had plenty of space left for at least an hour of 4K 60fps recording. Moreover, if you have the 128GB model, you are only limited to 1080p 30fps unless you plug in that external SSD. So if you are serious about video an external SSD is a worthwhile purchase and is actually a lot cheaper than paying Apple's exorbitant internal storage prices.

Conclusion

Seven months with the iPhone 15 Pro and it's easy to see why Apple enjoys its current position in the market. There's so much it gets right and most of it comes through steadfast founding principles rather than just trial and error, which makes it especially impressive.

Take the design for instance, which understands that 'big' shouldn't be the default size for a flagship smartphone while also lovingly crafting it out of exquisite materials with outstanding fit and finish. Or that when you buy a flagship phone you should get best-in-class software and after sales support for years to come. These are not decisions that happen to come about at random or through inspiration from others but rather from having decades of history behind them that lead up to this moment.

This extends to several other aspects, such as having some of the best and most well-calibrated displays on the market, possibly the most well-rounded camera system around, maintaining a catalog of some of the finest apps and games on any platform, commitment to user security and privacy, and having a greater cognizance of the environment than its peers.

Unfortunately, this steadfastness isn't always a good thing and there's no better example than the company's software. Apple wants iOS to be this simple, easy-to-use interface that anybody could use but under this veneer of simplicity is an operating system that has changed considerably since it debuted over a decade ago. The result is software that is harder to use because of how it obfuscates the features it does have to maintain this charade of simplicity, all the time still lagging behind the competition in both actual simplicity and having useful features.

The truth is that this design has run its course because it was never designed for the world we live in today and all the things we demand from our smartphones. But Apple's stubbornness in sticking to this design while also making it more feature-rich with every new update only results in an incongruous mess that affects usability.

At this point, we are ready to move on from iOS to something that is more in line with modern features and user expectations. It's the only remaining bugbear we have with modern iPhones and we are getting increasingly tired of seeing this incredible hardware being hamstrung by late-2000s era design sensibilities. Enough version updates, Apple, it's time for a real change.