Apple's iPhone 15 and Beyond: Expectations for the Wonderlust Event

Now that the cat is out of the bag and Apple has announced its “Wonderlust” event for the iPhone 15 series, let’s take a look at what to expect from the biggest smartphone launch of the year.

The biggest physical change that will happen to the iPhone is the fact that Apple will be moving away from the stainless steel frame on the iPhone 14 Pro models to a titanium frame. Already with the stainless steel frame, the iPhone since 2017 has been the most premium smartphone in terms of construction. But stainless steel is heavy and it certainly is neither as strong or premium as titanium. Titanium is a whole new league of premium because it is not only stronger but lighter while also being considered almost like jewellery. And Apple will likely play this card as it will not be having a gold coloured iPhone for a while. It will likely pitch titanium like gold — which will build into the fashionista narrative for the iPhone. This is also important for the iPhone 15 Pro Max which has become very heavy in the last couple of years and many people opt for the smaller iPhones just because of its weight.

Colours for the iPhone will feature a new titan grey along with a new deep blue colour alongside staples black and silver. These colours have already been teased in the “Wonderlust” creative. There were also rumours for a new crimson colour but I think the plan for that is different. For the standard iPhone 15 models, for the first time in a while no product (RED) model is expected. I feel, as a part of its spring refresh, Apple will likely add the crimson colour for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max while and introduce a product (RED) iPhone 15 for the standard models. Apple first introduced product (RED) as the spring update for the iPhone 7 Plus so this could be a return to that cadence.

Huge performance and battery life updates can be expected. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will likely become the first gadgets to get a 3nm chipset. Apple has been working with TSMC to manufacture its next generation A17 bionic processor on its latest node. This transition from 5nm to 3nm should give a 20% performance boost while making the chipset more efficient in terms of battery consumption. Battery efficiency could be as high as 35%. Apple could beef up the transistor count by as much as 50% to 24 billion transistors from 16 billion transistors on the A16 bionic. On top of this, Apple’s GPU team has been working on enabling ray tracing which could come to fruition as well. This will mean the iPhone chip can display triple A game like graphics as the light bounces off in games like in real life.

In parallel, Apple is also planning a massive increase in the size of the battery of the iPhone. The iPhone 15 Pro is expected to have a 15% bigger battery than its predecessor while the Pro Max is expected to have a 12% larger battery. On the standard iPhone 15 models which will likely use the A16 bionic chip from last year, the battery will be 18% larger and on the iPhone 15 Plus model a 13.5% increase is expected.

The net result should be at least a 20% increase in battery life on the Pro and Pro Max and at least a 10% increase on the standard and Plus models.

Apple is also planning the biggest camera updates it has made to the iPhone. Apple could adopt a new Sony IMX90 sensor which will be almost an inch in size. To be precise this will be a 1/1.14” in size with a 48-megapixel resolution. This will represent an 11% increase in size from that of the iPhone 14 Pro models. This change alone will enable dramatically better low light performance though Apple could also be working on improving its smart HDR stack along with its night-mode algorithm which provide further enhancements.

On top of this it will get the benefits of the new improved ISP on the A17 bionic chip and likely Apple will also enhance the sensor shift stabilisation system for the larger sensor. Exclusively on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple will also update the telephoto lens with a periscope styled camera that will enable more than 3x optical zoom. This will enable Apple to catch up with the likes of Samsung and Huawei who have been providing long range zoom since 2019. Apple could provide anything between 5x and 10x optical zoom and its implementation can be expected to blow away the competition.

Reports suggest that Apple is working with Largan for this periscope lens which also supplies to Huawei. This could also help the portrait mode on the iPhone which has also fallen behind the likes of Google and Samsung.

The standard iPhone 15 models will retain a dual camera array and can be expected to adopt the primary and ultra wide angle camera array currently found in the iPhone 14 series which will mean that they will move away from a 12-megapixel camera system to a 48-megapixel camera setup.

Apple is also being forced to adopt USB Type C for the first time. On the standard iPhone 15 models, data transfer speeds could be capped to USB 2.0, but on the Pro and Pro Max Apple could be providing better speeds but don’t expect the cable that comes in the box to unlock those speeds. There are rumours of Thunderbolt support on the iPhone 15 Pro models but that may only come with a separate cable that will be available via third parties or Apple for an additional cost.

Apple is also expected to further reduce the size of the bezels on the iPhone. This could mean that the size of the screen could go up by a smidgen and Apple will be closer to its vision of just a screen. Apple could also make iterative enhancements to the OLED screen with better brightness levels and perhaps have a stronger cover glass on top.

Other than the iPhone 15, Apple could unveil the next generation Apple Watch which has been dubbed the Apple Watch Series 9. It could be coupled with a new variant of the Apple Watch Ultra. The Apple Watch Ultra could also get a spec sheet update like a new processor.

Apple has also been expected to update the iMac with the M3 chip which is also expected to be built on the TSMC 3nm process. The iPad Air and iPad mini are also overdue for updates — as both respectively could be amped up with the M2 and A16 bionic chipsets as a bare minimum of an update.