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My first thought as I picked up the iPhone 15 Pro Max was that it felt light, certainly lighter than its predecessor. As it turns out, I was right: 19g lighter than the 14 Pro Max. Now, that’s only the equivalent of two seedless grapes (I just checked) but we spend so much time holding smartphones these days that their precise heft has evidently become as familiar to us as their appearance.
Two main factors contribute to the reduced weight of Apple’s flagship smartphone, the first being a new titanium enclosure that replaces the stainless steel of yesteryear: tougher, lighter and with slightly rounded edges in comparison to the more angular 14 Pro Max. Second, while the actual screen stays the same size (6.7in), the phone’s bezels are slimmer than on the 14 Pro Max, making the whole unit slightly shorter and less wide. The upshot: it’s good to look at and pleasant to hold. Basic attributes ticked off.
The most noticeable change to the body of the phone, however, is the jettisoning of the ring-silencing switch at the top left, something that iPhone users have been jamming their thumbnails into since the very first model launched back in 2007. In its place is a button, dubbed the Action button, which can be assigned whichever task you might deem useful. One press could call up the torch, camera selfie mode, or a sequence of events you’ve defined in Apple’s Shortcuts app. That thing that previously took three seconds might now take just one. Time is everything, after all.
Some of the features that were added to last year’s Pro lineup have now cascaded down to the basic iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus (for example, the “dynamic island” at the top of the home screen, a brighter screen overall, and a jump from a 12- to a 48-megapixel main camera). So, what are Pro users getting this time around? Unsurprisingly, much of the focus (no pun intended) is on the camera, because that’s the battleground where high-end smartphones fight it out these days. Thanks to computational photography, the Pro Max’s three cameras effectively become seven pro lenses, from 0.5x ultrawide, through a bunch of common focal lengths, right up to 5x telephoto. My experience of the 3x zoom on the 14 Pro Max was the difficulty of keeping the framing steady; Apple has recognised this with a new three-way stabilisation system that, on paper, can apparently make micro-adjustments 10,000 times a second. In practice, using telephoto is way easier than it used to be. Some additional icing sugar comes in the form of detailed portrait shots in night mode, and a continuous zoom function when you’re shooting video in cinematic mode – seamless movement across the lenses which creates a smooth, pro effect you really don’t associate with smartphones.
The use of the word “Pro” for Apple’s high-end phones always felt more poetic than literal, but one new change really seems to cement the Pro Max’s reputation as a formidable piece of audiovisual kit: the shift from a Lightning port to USB-C. Ironically, it feels like the one change that Apple may not have made if European regulators hadn’t compelled it to do so, but it does feel like a real game-changer. Plug in a USB 3.2-compliant cable and you get 10Gb/sec transfer speeds, some 20 times faster than you had over a Lightning connection. Practically speaking, that means you can use thumb drives, SSDs (onto which you can record ProRes video directly, should you wish) and all manner of compatible external kit, including microphones and gaming controllers.
I have a low-level fear of computer games and their potential to suck valuable time out of my life (I’ve been there, it wasn’t pretty) but the gaming potential of the Pro Max has been boosted by a newly redesigned and supercharged GPU that brings graphics close to console-quality. Apple is hoping that developers will make use of it; I won’t be, but that’s neither here nor there.
Hardware advances come hand in hand with software development, and there are a few neat tricks baked into Apple’s latest iOS 17 operating system, also launched this week. Portrait shots you’ve taken in the past year or so on an Apple device can now be revisited and refocused onto a different subject already in the frame. AirDrop, the transfer protocol between Apple devices, has been expanded to include NameDrop, where two phones bumped together can exchange contacts automatically. A new Check In feature helps friends to make sure that they’ve both got home safely – oh, and you can now design the screen (“Contact Poster”) that pops up on other phones when you place calls. You do still use a smartphone for making phone calls, right?
iPhone 15 Pro Max, from £1,199 or £49.95 per month, apple.com
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