Titanium Laden iPhone 15 Pro Announced At Apple's Wanderlust Event

On expected lines, the chief protagonist of Apple’s September Wanderlust event at its headquarters in Cupertino was the iPhone 15 model. But alongside, Apple shared updates for the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. And then there was the most hip and premium iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, which now are laden in titanium, making the world’s best selling smartphone not only stronger with its Mars Rover-able credentials but also lighter. Apple claimed these were the lightest “Pro” iPhone models ever. And all these products for the first time are launching simultaneously in India, as in the US. India has been officially inducted into the first wave of launch countries for the iPhone as manufacturing ramps up for the same in the country.

With the standard issue iPhone 15, Apple has made the screens brighter by almost 2 times, also graced them with the dynamic island notch that was first introduced in the iPhone 14 Pro models last year. It also arms it with its powerful A16 bionic system on chip which till earlier in the day was the fastest mobile chipset seen on a smartphone, despite what Android enthusiasts have believed about Qualcomm’s recent efforts. Apple also bestowed its best selling iPhone model with the 48-megapixel camera system that was seen in last year’s “pro” models, however, this comes with a twist.

Apple has made huge improvements to the software that powers the iPhone camera and given it a wide aperture at F/1.6 while also changing the way it manages the 48-megapixel wide angle camera. Core software technologies like the photonic engine and smart HDR have been updated and Apple has changed the way night mode photos are rendered. Apple is also updating the pixel binning technique and instead of binning images down to 12-megapixels, it is rendering them down to 24-megapixels by default, ensuring more detail in pictures while also updating the way portrait mode photos are handled using artificial intelligence to capture shots in a blink of an eye. There is also a 12-megapixel ultra wide camera, but thanks to the 48-megapixel camera, Apple is doing 2x crop zoom.

The batteries are expected to be slightly larger and there is also a new ultra wide band chipset which will work in concert with things like the Apple Watch Series 9 or AirTags. Apple has also added more countries that can use the satellite phone feature when no mobile connectivity is available, but looks like this feature will not be there for Indian customers. And oh, there is also USB Type C connectivity though speeds are gated to USB 2 only. It is available in 5 colours — black, blue, green, yellow and pink, which means as predicted there is no product Red edition this year, nor is there a white. These models start at Rs 79,990 and will be offered in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB variants.

The best has been reserved for Pro models. And it all starts with the SOC, which now gets “pro” in its nomenclature like the M-series chips for the Mac. This is called the A17 Pro which is made on TSMC’s latest 3nm manufacturing system, allowing for a whopping 19 billion transistors, offering according to Apple the fastest single threaded computing system on a smartphone and a neural engine that is 2x faster than the A16 bionic, able to do 35 trillion operations per second. If this was not enough, the updates to GPU are massive, with hardware enable ray tracing being enabled in a 6-core format which is 20% more energy efficient, providing better sustained performance.

What does all this translate to? Well, Apple touted games like Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage were coming to the iPhone which are currently just available on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. Apple even said these games are basically the same ones as the game consoles. This builds on top of Apple’s doubling down on gaming at WWDC where it showed off the game porting tool which enabled developers to run their Windows games designed for x86 (Intel or AMD) based processors to be run on the ARM architecture.

Apple also debuts a new action button which replaces the caller and ring toggle switch. It also adds haptic feedback. The screens are also now having narrower bezels, which means Apple has packed in the same screen sizes 6.1-inches and 6.7-inches in a narrower and slender frame. Titanium had already made the phones stronger and more premium, but the innards have also been redesigned for better repairability with a new aluminium enclosure. Apple has 4 new colours — one being the exposed titanium look in titan grey, then white and black titanium and finally a dark titanium laden blue. The frame has a brushed finish and Apple has also beveled the edges a bit.

There is a new 48-megapixel wide angle camera sensor which absorbs more pixels and gains the advantages of Apple’s new software gains in its imaging pipeline. Apple is also better utilising the LiDAR that has been part of the “Pro” line up since 2020, and this helps in portrait images in the night. This camera sensor has a f/1.78 aperture which is shallower than the standard iPhone 15 but the bigger sensor probably evens things out. The telephoto lens gets minor updates to 3x optical zoom while the ultra-wide lens gets a new coating which also improves performance.

On the Pro Max, Apple finally introduces a periscope lens for the telephoto lens which can now do 5x optical zoom with f/2.8 aperture. Apple says this is the widest aperture on a camera of its kind on a phone and also the largest sensor, which should mean this works well in low lighting. This system is also being married to a 3D sensor shift stabilisation system which could enhance performance even more. The iPhone 15 Pro models will also get the ability to record 3D spatial video for the Apple Vision Pro later this year.

On the Pro iPhones, Apple will harness the power of USB Type for USB 3+ speeds but only if customers purchase an additional cable. The iPhone 15 Pro Max is also now more expensive, starting with the 256GB SKU at Rs 159,900, with 512GB and 1TB variants also being offered. This means the iPhone Pro Max has become more expensive but it also offers more base memory. The iPhone 15 Pro now starts at Rs 134,990 for the 128GB model, going up to 512GB and 1TB.

“This is the most pro lineup we have ever created, with a state-of-the-art titanium design, the best iPhone camera system yet that enables game-changing new workflows, and the A17 Pro chip, which ushers in a new chapter of performance and games never before seen on iPhone,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

“iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max represent the best of Apple design and industry-first innovations to help enrich the everyday experiences of our users, while enabling them to unleash their creativity,” he added.