The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max Sport Very Serious Camera Tech

If Apple’s tech for its standard 2023 iPhones means major improvements, the things the company added to the Pro and Pro Max editions are even more dramatic.

With the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple had to one-up the already advanced technologies it has packed into its cheaper “standard” 2023 iPhone 15 editions.

Naturally, this means that for these pricey Pro editions, there’s a lot to look forward to if you’re a dedicated yearly Apple pilgrim.

Off the bat, the two new iPhone 15 Pro phones are built with extremely durable titanium casings that come in several sleek colors.

As Apple itself boasted of the Pro and Pro Max, “This is the most premium material we’ve ever used,” In case you’re wondering, previous Pro iPhone models were made with stainless steel.

The titanium in the new iPhone Pro editions isn’t even something so simple as ordinary titanium.

This being Apple, they had to fluff things up with the label “Grade 5 Titanium”. Sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, but in reality, it apparently just means that the casing has touches of aluminum and vanadium.

The alloy is for improved durability and corrosion resistance, but then I doubt I Apple wants any dedicated, deep-pocketed iPhone fan actually keeping the same iPhone edition long enough for it to corrode worth a damn.

Another change caused by this switch to titanium -sorry, super titanium- is that the colors of the 15 Pro models are more somber.

Instead of the Space Black, Silver, Gold and Deep Purple of the 14 Pro phones, you can now choose between black titanium, white titanium, natural titanium and slightly more vibrant grayish-blue titanium..

The Pro and Pro Max phones also include tighter display bezels that actually slightly shrink both phones. Curiously, Apple has given them a new action button too. This is in place of the silence switch found in last year’s models. This button can also be programmed to open specific apps.

Size-wise, both phones are identical to their 2022 counterparts, sporting 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch displays for the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max respectively.

These are of course Retina XDR screens with nearly blinding nuclear-fire levels of luminosity with Always-On and Pro Motion technologies.

However, the really interesting tech enhancements of the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max are buried inside the devices, especially in their camera technology.

Both of these phones’ main cameras come with the same 48MP pixel count as the 2014 iPhone 14 Pro models, but their sensor is quite a bit larger for much sharper, generally better photos according to Apple.

In fact, while the 14 Pro and Pro Max editions sported very impressive cameras -albeit with some interesting image processing flaws– the iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max editions promise possibly the best phone camera experience currently available.

The two phones’ cameras include nano-scale coating for reduced lens flare and sport strongly enhanced resolution performance. They also offer a range of focal lengths (the standard 24mm along with 28, or 35mm equivalent options).

Additionally, they include Focus Pixels, which is Apple jargon for phase detection technology, while also having sensor-shift stabilization and LiDAR for focus in low light.

According to Apple, the two phones deliver twice the low-light performance of their predecessors. It’s also worth noting that their 48MP still photos can be shot in Apple ProRAW and .HEIF formats.

As for the resolution enhancements mentioned above, the iPhone Pro phones create this by using computational photography to deliver “super-high-resolution” 24MP shots through their main cameras.

The result according to Apple is “incredible image quality at a practical size ideal for storing and sharing”.

The biggest camera change however belongs exclusively to the flagship iPhone 15 Pro Max. This would be its 5x optical (not digital) telephoto camera with a “tetraprism” design.

A close up of an iphone 15 Pro 15 Pro tetraprism telephoto camera design

We’d previously speculated on the iPhone 15 Pro Max (or possibly next year’s iPhone 16 Pro Max) getting a periscope zoom lens, but this turned out to be false lead.

Instead, the 120mm-equivalent telephoto lens on this phone produces the longest optical zoom yet seen in an iPhone. It can shoot 12-megapixel photos on a sensor that’s 25% bigger and includes 3-axis image stabilization.

Apple has also given the two Pro phones an Ultra Wide 13mm camera with a 120-degree FOV and a 12MP sensor of its own.

Here are a few sample photos captured with these definitively impressive new iPhone Pro editions:

Finally, there are the other major internal specs of the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max phones. One of the most fundamentally useful of these is a USB-C port replacing Apple’s proprietary Lightning connectivity.

Apple stuck to Lightning for way too long, but it’s good to see that annoyingly proprietary nonsense finally croak in this case.

The USB-C connection is shared by all four iPhone 15 models, but the Pro editions get the benefit of 10Gbps USB 3 velocity.

This is fast enough to actually tether these phones to Capture One and shoot ProRes directly to external drives while firing along at 4K/60p.

Apple has given the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus phone models the A16 chip technology of last year’s iPhone 14 Pro editions.

This however is because the 15 Pro and Pro Max models feature the tech giant’s latest A17 chip, with its 3 nanometer design parameters and according to Apple, a 20% faster six-core GPU.

Apple will open preordering of the new iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max phones as of September 15^th and release them for shipping and in-store sales on the 22 of the same month.

The base iPhone 15 Pro will retail for $999 while the iPhone 15 Pro Max will start at $1,199. They’ll be available in 256GB, 512GB and 1TB versions.

Image Credits: Apple

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