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You already heard our thoughts on the iPhone 15 and on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, now we want to hear what you think of Apple’s latest (and supposedly greatest) smartphones.
The big change this year is that Apple adopted the industry standard USB-C for its iPhone 15 series (and the updated AirPods Pro 2). It did so under duress from the EU, but Tim Cook and company put a positive spin on it. From a previous poll we already know that the majority approves of this move. But is that enough to get you to upgrade?
Hold your horses, there are so many upgrades that we need to talk about. Like the iPhone 15 now has a 48MP main camera (finally!), which can do “optical-quality” 2x telephoto shots – actual tele lenses are still the exclusive domain of the Pros. Additionally, the chipset was updated to that of the iPhone 14 Pros, the Apple A16 Bionic, so you get improved performance. And we can’t not mention the tectonic shift that is the Dynamic Island, not that it takes up any less space than the notch that it replaces. And, uhm, there’s UWB 2, but that’s about it.
The iPhone 15 Plus is in the same boat. In case it wasn’t clear, this is a $900/€1,100/£900/₹90,000 phone with a 60Hz display and a USB 2.0 port (now with a Type C connector, but still).
Now is a good time to talk about pricing – the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus cost the same as they did in the US and India, but are a bit cheaper in Europe. Or rather would have been cheaper, had Apple not cut the pricing of the 14 and 14 Plus to $700/€850/£700/₹70,000 and $800/€950/£800/₹80,000, respectively.
Here are the global prices of the iPhone 15 models:
iPhone 15
iPhone 15 Plus
iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
US
USD 799
USD 899
USD 999
USD 1,199
UK
GBP 799
GBP 899
GBP 999
GBP 1,199
Germany
EUR 949
EUR 1,099
EUR 1,199
EUR 1,449
India
INR 79,900
INR 89,900
INR 134,900
INR 159,900
China
CNY 5,999
CNY 6,999
CNY 7,999
CNY 9,999
Japan
JPY 124,800
JPY 139,800
JPY 159,800
JPY 189,800
Moving on to the iPhone 15 Pro. Both Pros feature the latest 3nm Apple A17 Pro chipset with a record-setting 3.77GHz max clock speed on the big CPU cores. Also, there is more RAM on board, 8GB (up from 6GB). The frame is now made out of titanium rather that stainless steel, so it’s 19g lighter. And, unlike the vanilla models, the USB-C port is capable of 10Gbps data transfer speeds (vs. 480Mbps). But even the USB 2.0 ports on the vanilla phone support DisplayPort (i.e. video out).
While the Pro cameras are essentially the same as last year, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a tangible upgrade – Apple’s first periscope camera comes with a 120mm lens and a 12MP sensor with 1.12µm pixels. With 5x zoom the Apple camera can finally take the fight to Androids, although this also leaves quite a gap between the main camera (which supports native 2x zoom) and the tele – that’s a long range for digital zoom to cover, but Apple didn’t want to add a fourth camera.
