- Apple/Pocket-lint
Apple iPhone 15 Pro
Our top pickThe iPhone 15 Pro has an updated chipset can finally run AAA games. The addition of the Action button and USB-C make it worth the upgrade, with only the iPhone 15 Pro Max offering more.
Pros- Light titanium body
- Handles console-grade games
- Action button and USB-C
Cons- Expensive
- Same display and camera
- No periscope lens
- Apple/Pocket-lint
Apple iPhone 14 Pro
A good alternativeThe iPhone 14 Pro has a stunning display and a good three-camera system. It's also the phone that introduced us to the Dynamic Island. It's a good choice if you can still find one.
Pros- Gorgeous display
- Decent cameras
- Dynamic Island
Cons- Lacks USB-C
- No Action button
- Slow transfer speeds
The iPhone 15 Pro was announced at Apple's event in September 2023, with some significant enhancements over the iPhone 14 Pro. However, all the talk after the event was about the upgrade from Lightning to USB-C. If the new charging port was the big news, is there really enough else to make it worthwhile upgrading?
We put the iPhone 15 Pro up against the iPhone 14 Pro to see what else has changed, and whether those changes are enough to recommend making the upgrade. Here's what you need to know.
Price, availability, and specs
The iPhone 14 Pro launched in September 2022 and cost from $999/£1099 at launch. Although you can still buy a standard iPhone 14, the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are no longer available for purchase through the Apple website, you may still be able to get hold of one through another retailer. There are four storage options: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB, and it's available in four colours: Space Black, Gold, Silver, and Deep Purple.
The iPhone 15 Pro was introduced in September 2023 at a starting price of $999/£999. There are four colour options: Natural Titanium, Blue Titanium, White Titanium, and Black Titanium. The colours are fine, but it's a shame to say goodbye to the Deep Purple of the iPhone 14 Pro as none of the iPhone 15 Pro colours are particularly exciting. The iPhone 15 Pro comes with the same four storage options: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. The base 128GB model seems a little underwhelming now; especially as the iPhone 15 Pro Max has ditched the 128GB model and starts at 256GB.
Here are some of the key specs of both models so that you can see how they compare at a glance.
Apple iPhone 15 Pro Apple iPhone 14 Pro SoC Apple A17 Pro A16 Bionic Display 6.1-inch, OLED, 2556 x 1179, HDR, 2000nits, 120Hz 6.1-inch, OLED, 2556 x 1179, HDR, 2000nits, 120Hz Storage 128/256/512GB/1TB 128/256/512/1TB Camera (Rear, Front) 48MP main, f/1.78; 12MP ultrawide, f/2.2; 2x telephoto from main; 12MP 3x telephoto f/2.8; 12MP front, f/1.9 48MP f/1.78 main, 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide, 12MP f/2.4 telephoto,12MP front f/1.9 Dimensions 146.6 x 70.6 x 8.25mm, 187g 147.5 x 71.5 x 7.85mm, 206g Colors Black Titanium, White Titanium, Blue Titanium, Natural Titanium Space Black, Silver, Gold, Deep Purple IP Rating IP68 IP68 GPU 6-core 5-core Material Titanium Stainless Steel
Design
At first glance, the design of the iPhone 15 Pro looks exactly the same as the iPhone 14 Pro, with the same triple camera layout on the back and the same flat edges that have been around since the iPhone 12 and hark back all the way to the iPhone 4. However, there is a subtle change on the iPhone 14 Pro that makes a big difference. Instead of the flat sides of the iPhone meeting at the front and back with quite an abrupt edge as on the iPhone 14 Pro, the iPhone 15 Pro has slightly rounded edges, which make the new model feel more comfortable to hold.
The iPhone 15 Pro is also a little shorter and narrower than the iPhone 14 Pro, but also a little thicker. The change isn't huge, but it's enough that your iPhone 14 Pro case isn't going to fit the iPhone 15 Pro.
As well as being a little smaller, the iPhone 15 Pro is significantly lighter, at 187g compared to 206g for the iPhone 14 Pro. This is thanks to the fact that the iPhone 15 Pro replaces the stainless steel of the iPhone 15 Pro with aerospace-grade titanium. It's a little more matte than the fairly shiny stainless steel of the iPhone 14 Pro and does look and feel a little more premium. However, I made the mistake of not learning from buying a Midnight blue MacBook Air, which is a fingerprint magnet, and went for the Blue Titanium model. While not quite as bad as the Midnight MacBook, the titanium sides of the iPhone 15 Pro do pick up fingerprints fairly easily.
There are two significant design changes in the iPhone 15 Pro. The first is that the Ring/Silent switch which has been a staple of the iPhone since the first model launched in 2007 is no longer there. The slide switch has been replaced by a push button known as the Action button, which is something that first made an appearance on the Apple Watch Ultra.
This Action button can be customised, so although it's possible to use it as a Ring/Silent switch, you can also use it to open the Camera app, take a voice recording, turn on your torch, set a Focus mode, open an accessibility feature, or run a shortcut. It's a genuinely useful feature; with the ability to run shortcuts, you can make the Action button do almost anything, or even do several different things.
The other big change, and the one that made all the headlines when the iPhone 15 range was launched, is that the Lightning port has been replaced with a USB-C port. While this choice was forced upon Apple by the EU, it's a welcome change for most users. It means that you can charge your iPhone with the same cable you use to charge everything from an Android phone or an Amazon Fire tablet to a Nintendo Switch or even your MacBook. It also allows high-speed data transfers from your iPhone 15 Pro if you use a USB 3.0 cable, at up to 20 times faster than what can be achieved with a Lightning cable.
Display
Both models have a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display, with ProMotion offering refresh rates up to 120Hz and as low as 1Hz. Both displays offer a max brightness of 1000 nits in typical use, which can go as high as 2000 nits peak brightness when outdoors. The Always-On Display that was introduced with the iPhone 14 Pro also features on the iPhone 15 Pro.
There's no notch at the top of the display; the iPhone 15 Pro keeps the Dynamic Island that was introduced with the iPhone 14 Pro models. The Dynamic Island is now found on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, too.
The only real noticeable difference between the displays is that the black border around the edge of the display is a little thinner on the iPhone 15 Pro, which is how the iPhone 15 Pro fits the same 6.1-inch screen into a slightly smaller chassis.
While there are no significant upgrades to the display in the iPhone 15 Pro, the iPhone 14 Pro already had a gorgeous-looking display and the colours look equally vibrant on the iPhone 15 Pro.
Hardware
Inside the iPhone 15 Pro, there have been some significant upgrades. The A16 Bionic chip from the iPhone 14 Pro is replaced with a new A17 Pro chip. This is Apple's first chip to be built on a 3nm process, compared to the 5nm process used in the A16 Bionic chip. This means that the A17 Pro is able to pack in a staggering 19 billion transistors, which results in a 10 per cent increase in CPU performance over the A16 Bionic. The Neural Engine is also up to twice as fast. In real terms, you're not likely to notice a huge difference in performance for day-to-day tasks.
Where this new chipset does make a huge difference is in its graphical performance. The GPU in the iPhone 15 Pro is up to 20 per cent faster. It's also now a 6-core GPU, compared to the 5-core GPU in the iPhone 14 Pro, and can provide hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Combined with the upgrade in RAM from 6GB on the iPhone 14 Pro to 8GB on the iPhone 15 Pro, it means that the iPhone 15 Pro is capable of running console-quality games. With popular titles such as Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village, Assassin's Creed Mirage and Death Stranding Director's Cut all slated for release, the iPhone 15 Pro may be the first iPhone that I use for playing games more graphically challenging than Candy Crush.
Another useful hardware upgrade in the iPhone 15 Pro is an updated ultra-wideband chip. This chip is able to communicate with other devices that contain the same chip from longer distances than is possible with the U1 chip in the iPhone 14 Pro. It allows the iPhone 15 Pro to offer Precision Finding features to locate other iPhone 15 users. It also means you can use an Apple Watch with the same chip inside, such as an Apple Watch Ultra 2, to locate your iPhone 15 Pro using Precision Finding.
The other major hardware difference has already been touched on. The introduction of the USB-C port offers a few useful benefits. You can now charge your Apple Watch or AirPods Pro from your iPhone 15 Pro with the appropriate cable. It also means that you can get USB 3 transfer speeds of up to 10Gb/s, which is around 20 times the speed you can get on the iPhone 14 Pro, at just 480Mb/s. This not only means you can get large files off your iPhone much quicker, but it also opens up new possibilities for shooting ProRes video, which we'll take a look at in the next section.
Cameras
The specs of the cameras on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro are identical. There's the same triple-camera design, with a 48MP main camera (f/1.78), a 12MP ultrawide (f/2.2) and 12MP telephoto (f/2.8). The telephoto lens on the iPhone 15 Pro has a 3x optical zoom, the same as on the iPhone 14 Pro. If you need a longer zoom, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a new periscope lens that can give up to 5x optical zoom.
Whilst the hardware is the same, what the iPhone 15 Pro does with it has changed. By making use of the magic of computational photography, the iPhone 15 Pro offers three different lens options for the main camera. You can use the default 24mm lens, but you can also switch to a 28mm or 35mm lens, too. In reality, the iPhone 15 Pro is cropping and upscaling the image, but when you're shooting it means you can quickly choose between a selection of focal lengths.
Another feature of the iPhone 15 Pro is that you can turn photos that you shot using the standard Photo option in the Camera app into Portrait photos after the fact. That's because when your iPhone 15 Pro recognises a person or a pet in the frame, it will automatically record depth information, even when you're not shooting in Portrait mode. You can then edit the photo and apply the Portrait effect, and even select which object in the shot should be in focus. It's a useful feature as I'll often wish I'd take a shot in Portrait mode long after I've taken it.
As mentioned above, the USB-C port allows for much faster transfer speeds. That means that the iPhone 15 Pro is able to shoot video in 4K ProRes at 60fps by recording to a portable SSD. Since the iPhone 14 Pro can't match those transfer speeds, it can only shoot 4K ProRes at 30fps, with the video being saved to your phone's storage.
Battery
In terms of Apple's stated battery life, there's no difference between the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro. Both offer up to 23 hours of video playback, up to 20 hours of streaming video, and up to 75 hours of audio playback. Neither device can match the battery life of the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which can usually make it to the end of the day with a significant amount of battery life left, but in everyday use, I find that I can usually just about make it to the end of the day without needing to charge with the Pro models.
There's also a new optimised charging option on the iPhone 15 models, with the ability to limit charging to 80 per cent. However, it means that your iPhone 15 Pro is never fully charged and when trying out this feature, I found that I'd need to charge again before the end of the day. Whether having to charge twice a day is better or worse for the battery than charging to 100 per cent is hard to tell.
Fast charging speeds are also the same for both models, with the ability to charge up to 50 per cent in 30 minutes using a 20W power adapter.
iPhone 15 Pro vs iPhone 14 Pro: Worth the upgrade?
There are some major changes to the iPhone 15 Pro when compared to the iPhone 14 Pro that make it worth the upgrade. The new Action button is a useful feature that has already become second nature to use. The USB-C port makes life a little bit easier when finding somewhere to charge, although it does mean that I have a lot of Lightning cables with very little to do other than charge my ageing Magic Mouse now and again.
It's the upgraded chipset that's the real game changer, though, and quite literally. Being able to play Resident Evil 4 (for possibly the millionth time) on my iPhone is something I'm genuinely excited about, and if you're looking to play console-grade games on your iPhone, you're going to need an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max to do it.
Apple iPhone 15 Pro
That said, if you're not too fussed about gaming or having an Action button, there's a lot about the iPhone 15 Pro that hasn't really changed. It's the same display, the same camera system, albeit with a few new software enhancements, and a very similar design. The battery life is almost exactly the same, too. If you're not intending to take advantage of the graphical power of the iPhone 15 Pro, then you might not find enough in the iPhone 15 Pro to make it worthwhile upgrading just yet. It's certainly not the same bump in features that you got when upgrading from the iPhone 13 Pro.
