Apple iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max announced with titanium bodies and an Action Button

Apple’s latest high-end iPhone model is more than an ‘S’ upgrade but not quite a redesign.

Apple just announced its new high-end iPhones: the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. It’s made of titanium, it has an Action Button, and Apple promises it’s the most powerful smartphone Apple has made.

This year’s Pro has a 6.1-inch screen, and the Pro has a 6.7-inch display — same as the new iPhone 15 and 15 Plus. Both are powered by the A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has the fastest performance in any smartphone and can even challenge some high-end PCs. Along with a redesigned GPU, Apple seems to think these devices could be poised to level up the kinds of games you can play on your phone. (Of course, Apple likes to talk a lot about high-end gaming, and the results... don’t always keep up.)

Both phones, of course, have a USB-C port on the bottom, rather than the old Lightning port. But in the Pro’s case, it could be for more than charging: Apple says the 15 Pro is the first phone with 10Gbps transfer speeds, which will make getting photos and videos (or large files of any kind) off your phone vastly easier.

All that power is inside a new, stronger enclosure, which Apple promises is some of the toughest stuff you’ll find on a phone anywhere in the industry. Just based on what we’re seeing in the video so far, it doesn’t look hugely different, but it’s a big change nonetheless. The new devices come in white, black, blue, and “natural” colors. And naturally, Apple is extremely proud of the complex engineering behind the process.

The Action Button, which replaces the ringer switch on the left side of the iPhone Pro, is a new button that you can customize to run shortcuts, bring up accessibility features, open the camera, turn on the flashlight, and more. By default, it’s still a ringer switch — but you’re going to want to use it to do more.

The ringer switch is dead. Long live the Action Button.

 

The Pros both have Super Retina XDR displays with ProMotion and support both the always-on display and the new StandBy mode in iOS 17.

Greg Joswiak, Apple’s marketing chief, promised that the 15 Pro and Pro Max have Apple’s best cameras yet — the equivalent of seven distinct lenses. That includes an upgrade 48-megapixel camera that supposedly takes better low-light photos, captures less lens flare, and uses Apple’s AI systems to take full-res HEIF photos. You can now change your default lens, and shoot at multiple focal lengths — 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm — within the main camera. You can also get up to 5x optical zoom, the most Apple has ever offered, to 120mm focal length. Fans of Samsung’s latest cameras won’t be blown away by the specs here, obviously, but they’re a big upgrade for iPhone users.

The 15 Pro and Pro Max have upgraded cameras with better zoom and super high resolutions.

Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the new devices at Apple’s Wanderlust event at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, though the rumor mill has (as always) been going for months. In terms of how you’ll actually use your iPhone, some of the largest changes this year will be in iOS 17: the new StandBy mode could change the way you use your phone when it’s off, interactive widgets could redesign a lot of homescreens, and features like Live Voicemail and Contact Posters might have you actually making phone calls every now and again.

Apple followed roughly the same rubric it has for the last few iPhone launches: the base models get the stuff from last year’s Pro — like the Dynamic Island and some of the camera tech, even the A16 Bionic chip — and the Pros are the guinea pigs for Apple’s big new ideas.