iPhone 15 Pro Max Unboxing & Review: 5 Things Apple NAILED!
The most advanced iPhones ever are here. With groundbreaking new features like a titanium design, customizable action button, next level cameras, serious performance boosts and more, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max bring monumental changes that refine what an iPhone can do. We’re talking advanced technologies pulled straight from aerospace engineering, cinema grade filmmaking tools in your pocket and even console level graphics power on a phone. With the iPhone 15 Pros, Apple is taking smartphone tech to the next level. And I explained the top five features of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max in this video,
but let’s get started with the unboxing. I’ve got an iPhone 15 Pro Max here sent over from Apple. This is the natural titanium color with one terabyte of storage space. These days, there isn’t a lot to these unboxings. You basically open up the box. And as you can see right up front, you find the iPhone. That titanium color is looking kind of hot right here though. I wasn’t sure how much I’d like this color, but seeing it in person and getting it in hand at the Apple event last week, I personally think this is the
one to get. Now underneath you find the documentation along with an Apple sticker. And here is also a good reminder from Apple that the iPhone 15 doesn’t
it pretty much looks black unless it’s getting hit by just the right light. If you’re in a dim room or a dark room, this just looks like a black iPhone. Oh, and Apple did also refresh their cases. This is one of those new fine woven cases. Also dark blue. Since it’s fabric, I can’t really let you know how it’s gonna age. I’ve only had it for about a week, but it is a unique kind of classy look. And speaking of design, that leads me into the first feature we need to talk about when it comes
to the new iPhones, and that is this design. This year on the Pro line of iPhones, we’re getting an all new titanium material. That’s right. Stainless steel has been retired, and in its place is an aerospace grade titanium alloy that frames the sides of the iPhone 15 Pro devices. This creates the most durable iPhone build yet while keeping them incredibly lightweight. Seriously, these iPhones feel so much lighter in the hand, which was my main complaint about the iPhone 12, 13 and 14 Pro devices. The titanium alloy allows the border widths to be shrunk down, So
we also have the thinnest bezels ever on an iPhone. And I know a lot of people are obsessed with bezels and we’ll be happy to hear that. Apple then use those smaller bezels to shrink the dimensions of the iPhone instead of keeping them the same and making the screen marginally larger. And I think that was definitely the right move. And paired with those new contoured edges, the iPhone 15 Pros feel noticeably slimmer in the hand and much more comfortable to use. But it’s not just about aesthetics. The internal redesign also utilizes 100% recycled aluminum for
improved repairability, so you get a more sustainable iPhone that’s easier to repair and built to last. Next, let’s talk about the all-new action button. I did a full video on this already because for me, this is one of the most exciting features on the iPhone in a long time. This customizable button takes the place of the traditional mute switch that’s been on the iPhone since the very beginning. The thing is, most people I know just set that toggle to mute and leave it there until they upgrade their phone, making it kind of pointless to a
lot of people. Why have a switch that someone uses just once for the entire life of the device? Now we have a button that allows you to customize your iPhone 15 Pro to do exactly what you want it to do. The default behavior is still to quickly silence your phone with a press and hold, but now you can swap this out for more useful function based on your needs. Other options include launching the camera app from anywhere for quicker shots, turning on the flashlight instantly from your pocket, or enabling a preset focus mode like work
or reading with a press. For users with accessibility needs, the action button is a game changer. It can be set to instantly enable things like live speech to read text aloud or the magnifier as a visual aid. For even more power, you can use the action button to run shortcuts. That means you can use it to open any app of your choosing or to run a series of commands in an app or even your smart home. I think this is truly a game changer and is the perfect evolution of the classic silent switch. Next, let’s
dive into the camera features. I’ll have a dedicated video coming on the iPhone 15 Pro camera, so be sure you subscribe for that. But let’s talk about the leaps in camera hardware and software that make the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max so great for mobile photography. Built into the camera app are seven built-in focal lengths through computational photography, making the camera super versatile. Now I’ve seen some people online saying you’re getting several different lenses, but that isn’t the case. You still have three, but you can choose to crop into 1.2x and 1.5x for 28
and 35 millimeter equivalents, respectively. The main 48 megapixel camera now captures even finer details at a crisp 24 megapixel resolution by default, by taking a bend 12 megapixel image with the larger quad pixels for great low light detail and combining with the full 48 megapixel image with individual pixels so it picks up all the detail. Apple’s photonic engine then goes to work applying Deep Fusion, Smart HDR, and the entire image processing pipeline to give you excellent 24 megapixel photos with zero shutter lag. Of course, if you prefer the 12 megapixel images, you can just switch
it up in settings, but I wouldn’t. Another big one in the camera this year is 48 megapixel Heath. That’s high efficiency image format. This allows you to take a full 48 megapixel image at a tremendously smaller file size. Five megabytes versus 75 megabytes when shooting a 48 megapixel shot in ProRAW. Of course, videos taken on the iPhone 15 Pro continue to be industry leading as it pertains to quality as well. Whether you’re using the camera for photos or video, you’ll come away happy with the results. Now for me personally, the coolest camera feature on these
new iPhones, both the 15 and 15 Pro, is the fact that when taking a picture, if it detects a person, dog or cat, it’ll automatically capture all the depth data, allowing you to change it into a portrait mode photo later after the fact. You can also do this by manually tapping on a subject in your photo as well. But the coolest part of all this is that you can even change the focal point of a photo later. This is like the holy grail of photo editing. And thanks to the power of computational photography, it’s here
in your iPhone. Now, everything I just mentioned applies to both the 15 Pro and Pro Max, but the iPhone 15 Pro Max boasts the biggest innovation. A tetra prism design enables a telephoto lens that achieves a 5X optical zoom range, giving you a 120 millimeter focal length with an F2.8 aperture enabling great closeups from afar. Paired with the new 3D sensor shift image stabilization technology, even shots at full zoom stay crisp and steady as the sensor shift module moves in all three directions for the first time on any smartphone. This provides up to 10,000 micro
adjustments per second, which is twice as many as the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Also for the first time, the Pro camera system meets the demands of professional filmmakers. Capturing log encoded ProRes video to external SSD drives enables cinema grade post-production workflows without having to eat into your iPhone storage. For mobile content creators, the iPhone 15 Pro Max just became the ultimate tool. Now powering all these new capabilities is the beastly new A17 Pro chip. It’s a whole new architecture built on a three nanometer process with improvements to the CPU, GPU, and neural engine. The six
core CPU is up to 10% faster thanks to these architectural improvements, making it the fastest CPU in any smartphone and rivaling speeds found even in desktop PCs. But the real news is the all new six core GPU. It introduces a totally redesigned architecture that amplifies graphics and gaming capabilities to levels never before seen in a smartphone. Demands of professional workflows like ProRes video and the new 48 megapixel camera output are easily met with dedicated imaging and video pipelines. And bleeding edge gaming features like hardware-based ray tracing create console quality visuals on an iPhone for the
first time. Now I’ll have a dedicated video coming on gaming on the iPhone 15 Pro as well. But let me just say that playing “Resident Evil Village” on a smartphone at this quality was insane. I can’t wait to see how other games like “Death Stranding” and especially “Assassin’s Creed Mirage” look with the power of the A17 Pro behind them. Next, I’m sure you were wondering how long it was gonna take me to get to it, but hey, Apple left us waiting on this one for years. It’s the new USB-C port with high speed connectivity, replacing
the tried and true lightning port. While convenient for compatibility with other Apple products and having a universal wire charging port built in, the biggest benefits are enjoyed by professional users here too. External storage and peripherals hook up effortlessly for fast, pro-grade workflows. With support for USB 3.2 Gen 2 data speeds, transferring huge files is incredibly fast. We’re talking 10 gigabits per second, thanks to the new USB controller inside the A17 Pro chip. That’s 20 times faster than what you’d see on last year’s iPhone 14 Pro. You also get DisplayPort here, so you can plug into
a monitor and output 4K at 60 frames per second in HDR. And side note, that doesn’t just apply to the 15 Pro, but you can also do that with the standard iPhone 15 as well. The iPhone 15 Pro also picks up some additional features like Wi-Fi 6E, giving us an ultra modern, fast Wi-Fi standard at six gigahertz, which also allows for two times faster AirDrop with other 6E devices. There’s a Thread Radio in the iPhone that will allow you to connect directly to Thread devices in your home without the need for a hub. That functionality
is coming soon. And a second generation ultra wideband chip with three times farther range, which enables you to use precision finding in Find My Friends. Oh, and in addition to last year’s emergency SOS via satellite, this year, Apple is adding roadside assistance via satellite, so that you can contact help if you’re stranded with no cellular service. The iPhone 15 Pro line shows Apple’s aim to continue its push towards the high-end professional market. Power users across photography, videography, and other creative fields will find excellent new capabilities that they can put to use right away. That said,
average consumers are gonna struggle to justify year over year upgrades based on what many will see as relatively iterative changes to already exceptional iPhones. Now I never recommend people upgrade their smartphone annually. Those who do, do so knowing exactly why they’re upgrading and which features stick out to them. If these are tools you use in your profession, the iPhone 15 Pro is an easy one to recommend. As always, early adopters will benefit most from leading edge Apple Silicon and camera engineering. That said, if you’re coming from an older device, like an iPhone 12 Pro, there
is more than enough here to give you that new iPhone feeling.
