Yesterday, Apple held its Wonderlust hardware event, where the company unveiled a handful of things, most notably the iPhone 15 lineup. While the biggest buzz came from Apple's decision to ditch the Lighting port on its smartphone in favor of USB-C, the thing that caught my eye the most was the exclusive features found on the iPhone 15 Pro models. In particular, the gaming-centric features available on Apple's new flagship smartphone.
iPhone 15 Pro places a much bigger emphasis on the "Pro" moniker compared to the other models. But the new A17 Pro chip and its gaming-centric capabilities show that Apple is looking to take a more serious approach to its hardware and how it fares in the gaming space.
IGN had the opportunity to go hands-on with the iPhone 15 Pro, and the brief time we had combined with what we saw in terms of the iPhone 15 Pro's performance, leaves us eager to see the full potential this device has and what it means for Apple's gaming iniativies going forward.
iPhone 15 Pro is night and day compared to iPhone 14 Pro
The iPhone 15 Pro weighs 6.6 ounces, lighter than its predecessor, the iPhone 14 Pro, which weighed 7.3 ounces. While this change might sound minimal, the weight difference between the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro is night and day. Holding up the iPhone 15 Pro for the first time after the keynote event and feeling how light the phone is in comparison to my iPhone 14 Pro is nothing short of impressive. Even with a case added, the iPhone 15 Pro is still an extremely light device that feels good to hold in your hand.
This is thanks to the new titanium frame that is somewhat twofold: aside from the fact the titanium frame is lighter than the previous stainless steel found on the iPhone 14 Pro, the new aluminum frame allows this to be a more durable iPhone.
The iPhone 15 Pro also makes upgrades to the cameras. It has seven lenses, with the main camera offering 48 megapixels that now support three focal lengths: 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm. The sample photos contained inside the iPhone 15 Pro models were breathtaking and detail-oriented. The photos showed a lot of detail and no saturation in colors. Apple notes the night mode photos will also get improvements, and it will be interesting to see how night mode has been improved from last year when we review the iPhone 15 Pro at a later date.
The iPhone 15 Pro lets users take portraits without having to enable portrait mode on their camera. Quite simply, when editing a photo in your photos, the iPhone 15 Pro can change photos into a portrait, including the option to adjust the focus as well. While more testing needs to be done, the initial adjustments made to two people in a photo that was transformed into a portrait look impressive. It is a feature that will certainly be a fan-favorite and will hopefully become a staple on all iPhones in the future due to the convience and ease of editing these photos.
Camera upgrades aside, the iPhone 15 Pro includes one more exclusive feature not found on the iPhone 15 or 15 Plus: the Action Button. Replacing the mute switch that performs only one task, being the option to turn on and off the ringer on your phone, the iPhone 15 Pro's Action Button adds more versatility. By default the Action Button allows you to enable or disable Silent Mode on your iPhone 15 Pro — three haptic vibrations go off on the device when you enable Silent Mode and one when you disable it.
However, the Action Button is remaplable; by going into Settings you can adjust the Action Button to do a different task such as a quicker way to access your flashlight or your camera and an option to add more complex features that you can setup using Shortcuts. It's a bummer that the Action Button still retains that one-function design as the mute switch, it would have been interesting to have the Action Button do differet tasks by performing different presses or actions (e.g. two quick presses allows you to launch your camera or flashlight).
iPhone 15 Pro looks like a powerful gaming device
The biggest surprise with the iPhone 15 Pro is the emphasis on gaming. While iPhones have offered games for years, the iPhone 15 Pro is setting a new precedant to become the first iPhone to support games that were originally made and ran natively on gaming consoles like the Xbox Series X/S and run natively on the phone and not on a cloud gaming service like GeForce Now.
It's powered by the A17 Pro chip, which features a six-core GPU. This new GPU lets the iPhone 15 Pro not only support hardware-based ray tracing, but is capable of running games like Resident Evil Village and Assassin's Creed Mirage. We saw a brief hands-off look at Resident Evil Village running on an iPhone 15 Pro. Not only did the game run at a stable 30FPS, but the visual fidelity and overall performance was impressive. This is not a case where AAA games that are five or more years older are running on the phone. All the games that have been confirmed to run on the iPhone 15 Pro have come out in the last few years, with the oldest title, Death Stranding only releasing in 2019.
While further testing needs to be done on how this impacts battery life and to find out if overheating may be a problem, the idea that games made with a home console in mind are running natively on a smartphone is intriguing, and comes as consoles become more expensive.
The iPhone 15 Pro is out on September 22, with preorders beginning this Friday.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
