There are very few surprises from new smartphones these days. Breakthrough new features? Astounding new camera hardware? Get out of here. That’s the stuff of early 2010 mobile technology. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are no exception to recent trends: they’re not seismic shifts; they’re just a bit better than the things that came before them in a lot of small but meaningful ways. What’s unusual this time around is how easy it is to boil those changes down to the simple numbers and specs: 19 grams, USB 3, 120mm. This isn’t just a vibe shift; these are updates you can see and measure. And they add up.There’s one big number to consider, of course: the price. The 15 Pro starts at $999, like the 14 Pro did, but the 15 Pro Max’s entry-level price is $100 higher this year at $1,199. You get 256GB of storage for that price, which is what the 256GB 14 Pro Max cost last year; it’s just that there isn’t a 128GB option for the Pro Max anymore.It all amounts to a familiar phone with some much-appreciated modern conveniences. Not all of them were included by choice, per se, but they’re all welcome. As someone who uses a lot of different phones throughout the year, I’m not used to just picking up any old USB-C cable lying on my desk to charge an iPhone. It was a pleasant surprise to remember that yes, I can take a decent photo of the top of that skyscraper, even though I’m using an iPhone. As usual, Apple took its time getting here — and it may have been dragged part of the way by the EU — but it’s in a good place indeed.The Pro models are mercifully lighter this year. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeIf there’s one number I appreciated the most while using these phones over the last week, it was 19 — that’s how many grams lighter the Pro and Pro Max are compared to their predecessors. That’s thanks partly to the new titanium alloy used on the phone’s exterior in place of stainless steel. It makes a noticeable difference. The iPhone 15 Pro isn’t light by any means, but it feels that much more comfortable to use for a long period of time. The 15 Pro Max, down from 240 grams to 221, actually feels like a regular phone and not an oversized paperweight.The sides of both phones are very slightly curved compared to last year’s models. They retain enough of a flat edge that they still have that iPhone look, but they’re a little more comfy in the hand. Display size remains the same: the 15 Pro still has a 6.1-inch screen, and the Pro Max goes big with the 6.7-inch display. And believe it or not, the iPhone 15 Pro actually shrank a little compared to the 14 Pro thanks to some slimmer bezels. In this, the year 2023 of Big Phones! It’s just one millimeter less on the height and width, but combined with the lighter weight and the curved edges, it’s noticeably nicer to use than the 14 Pro. The 15 Pro is ever so slightly smaller than the 14 Pro and noticeably lighter. Did we mention it’s lighter? Photo by Allison Johnson / The VergeThe color options this year are muted as ever. Officially, they’re natural titanium, white titanium, black titanium, and blue titanium. Realistically, they’re all just different shades of neutral. If you’re looking for a “fun” color, you’ll want to go for blue. It’s the best one, and I won’t be taking any questions on that. And I’ll just tell you right now to skip the FineWoven cases and accessories. If you run your fingernail over the fabric the wrong way — which is very easy to do! — you’ll end up with a faint but seemingly quite permanent scratch. Not a good look.All four iPhone 15 models have USB-C — hat tip to the EU regulators who made that happen — but only the 15 Pro and Pro Max are USB 3 compatible. You’ll get faster file transfer speeds if you have a USB 10Gbps cable, which I don’t because the one that comes in the box only supports USB 2 transfer speeds. That would be awfully nice to toss in with a $1,200 phone! You could shell out an extra $69 for Apple’s Thunderbolt 4 data cable, but you shouldn’t; 10Gbps USB-C cables are like $15 on Amazon. Transfer speeds aside, the USB-C port on all four iPhone 15 models basically just works with whatever USB-C cable or gadget you want to use it with. Apple is being uncharacteristically permissive and letting you use the port with a lot of your existing dongles, adapters, and hubs, and that’s a wonderful thing.I know we all have a lot of mixed feelings about USB-C, but let me tell you about a beautiful thing that happened: the 15 Pro Max’s battery was low, so I unplugged the USB-C charging cable from my MacBook Air and plugged it right into the phone. No searching for another cable. No dongles. Just a USB-C charger powering a USB-C iPhone.No dongle necessary. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeI think that sort of sums up how the switch to USB-C is going to go: either you’ve wanted a USB-C iPhone for years because you hate having that one special cord for your phone, or you’ve been living a peaceful existence with Lightning and you’re irritated about having to swap out your cables or accessories. These are both valid positions, but having spent the past week with a USB-C iPhone, I’ll tell you something from the other side: it’s friggin’ great. I plugged a Satechi hub into the 15 Pro and watched it read photos from an SD card. Then I connected an ethernet cable and switched over to a wired internet connection just like that. Again, no dongle or special accessory was involved in this process — just the same kind of hub you’d plug right into your MacBook. Having spent the past week with a USB-C iPhone, I’ll tell you something from the other side: it’s friggin’ greatLots of people will never plug anything but a charging cable into the port, and that’s fine. Even if you’re reluctant about the change, I think there will come a day when USB-C makes your life a little easier. Your friend with an Android phone will lend you their charging cable, and you’ll think, “Oh, that was nice.” As for the other ways to connect your phone to the rest of the world, there are all the usual flavors of 5G — supposedly faster this year thanks to Qualcomm’s new X70 modem but very hard to see in practice — and for the first time on an iPhone, Wi-Fi 6E. Wi-Fi 6E runs at 6GHz, which is less congested than the familiar 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi bands we’ve been using for years — it can be wicked fast, but the tradeoff is that 6GHz signals don’t travel through walls and other obstructions nearly as well. You can set 6E to “off” or “automatic” in iOS settings; in automatic, the phone is meant to drop back to a 2.4 or 5GHz signal when the 6GHz signal gets weaker or slower.If you have very fast home Wi-Fi, the 15 Pro can keep up. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeIn practice, this is somewhat hit or miss. Our editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, has synchronous gigabit internet service and an Eero Wi-Fi 6E network at home, and the iPhone 15 Pro could consistently pull upload and download speeds of between 700 and 900Mbps when it was connected to 6GHz in the same room as one of the Eeros. That’s incredible for a mobile device on Wi-Fi. The flip side is that iOS 17 holds onto that 6GHz network a little too aggressively. When Nilay moved to a different floor from that same Eero, speeds dropped to just 60–90Mbps until he flipped the 6E switch in settings to “off.” Once the phone connected to the 5GHz network, speeds jumped back up to a fairly normal 300Mbps. Apple’s shipped a few Wi-Fi 6E devices already, but the iPhone 15 Pro is the first one that moves around as much as it does — an indicator showing which flavor of Wi-Fi was active would be helpful here, just like the various 5G indicators.Since you keep your phone silenced all the time anyway, why not have a button instead of a mute switch? Photo by Nilay Patel / The VergeThere was a time — a dark time — when it seemed like Apple would take all of the buttons away on the iPhone 15. I’m sure that will happen eventually, but until then, the iPhone 15 Pro actually gave us an extra button: the much-anticipated Action Button. The mute
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