One Year (ish) with iPhone 15 Pro
Titani-yum
Time really does move at pace, it’s hard to believe we’re only a handful of days away from new iPhones. As always I like to reflect on the year that has been, with the iPhone that has been (I say as always, this is the second time, but you have no idea how well intentioned I am).
Form Factor
This year’s pro lineup marked the first material shift since the pro iPhones were introduced, moving from stainless steel to titanium. I was particularly excited for two reasons: Firstly, I had felt for the last few years that the pro models were getting just a little too heavy, my pinky had had enough. Secondly and more importantly, I just really don’t love shiny things, I’m a matte boy. I’m also a big believer in tiny details making a big difference, the subtle curve added to the edges of the iPhone 15 Pro makes it much nicer to hold in hand than the sharper 14 Pro. All of these refinements combined make this in, my opinion, the nicest iPhone yet (even better than the iPhone 4; yes, I said it).
It’s not all smooth edges though, there are two areas that the iPhone 15 Pro falls short for me, the first one is the speaker grill that was added last year with the 14 Pro, replacing the older mesh style that has been around for quite some time. This newer slit is a safe haven for dust, a protector of crumbs. Which is not something I signed up to be. I think this design would be greatly improved if they moved back to the mesh cover that we took for granted all those years. Recently a friend gifted me a little device cleaning set with the perfect tools for taking care of this (probably so I would stop talking about this problem).
The second area actually caused me to go through three iPhone 15s before giving up and concluding that this is just the way things are now. Honestly I’m surprised nobody else has written about it. A week or so after owning the iPhone 15 Pro, I noticed that on occasions the OLED screen would show these odd highlights at the edges of text and shapes, it was most obvious in brighter conditions when the device pushed into the super peak brightness mode. The caps of letters would have a brighter tip and flat solid shapes would appear to have a lighter border around them. I thought perhaps I had a defective panel so went through the replacement process sending my device back for a new one. Sadly though, the replacement device had exactly the same issue.
We don’t have Apple Stores here in New Zealand but I found myself in Sydney for a couple of days so figured I’d take a trip to the Apple Store and see if they could help me out. I spent about an hour and a half talking with the lovely staff there, trying to convince them that there was a problem, getting them to peer closely at the screen. They seemingly couldn’t see the issue, but they were kind enough to pretend I was sane and validate my feelings. There wasn’t much they could do about it as I had purchased the device online, so I returned home to NZ with my tail between my legs. The most reliably way I’ve found to reproduce it is to shine a torch at the device to kick it into super bright mode, so much to the amusement of my friend with me at the store I spent a bit of time shining my phone torch on the display models to see if they had the same problem. Seemingly they didn’t, so I wonder if where the panel is manufactured makes a difference. I took one last chance returned my device and then bought one more from a technology store here in NZ. No dice, this one had the exact same issue.
To this day, everyone I tell thinks I’m crazy and I’ve only managed to get one other person to notice the problem. It’s baffling to me, because it’s so obvious, I don’t understand why nobody else is bothered.
I did find a workaround, which is that if you turn off auto brightness in accessibility then it stops occurring, but at the expense of having to manually set your brightness all the time like an animal and you miss out on the peak brightness that came with the 15 Pro. This is how I have been living all year.
Interestingly the new iPad Pros that switched to OLED have exactly the same problem, so I wonder if it’s a trade off of the extra bright displays they’re using now. In any case, it really bothers me and I promise I’m not crazy.
Those two things aside, I really really like this iteration of Pro iPhone, it feels super refined and I’m a big fan of the natural titanium colour.
Action Button
I was quite excited about the action button when it was announced, my phone is permanently muted on principle, so I’d never used the rocker much other than just to fidget. When I first got the new phone I tried a few complex automations that did different things based on the time of day, like opening the garage door if I was near home. These were fun to play with but ultimately I’ve found I actually don’t use the button too much and now it’s just set to camera controls. I think if it was in a different position perhaps I would trigger it more, but as it is, it’s a little hard to reach which negates some of the convenience. That being said I’m glad it’s there, I think for most people it’s nice to have the added utility.
Cameras
They’re still good.
Spatial Video
Shooting spatial video has been quite fun, the main challenge for me has been remembering to actually do it, but I’ve gathered a few special clips through the year of my children and I can imagine just how neat those will be to watch a few years from now when they’ve grown up from their current stage. I’m pleased Apple were quick to provide us with other ways to capture them.
Conclusion
In summary, I’ve loved the 15 Pro. The last device I ended up with after my display shenanigans was the black model, I wish I’d been able to spend the year with the natural one as that colour is just perfect for me, I know it’s grey, but gosh it’s a good grey. Changes are very iterative these days, but all of the refinements brought in this line up really do round out the product. I’m excited for what is to come in just a day or so to refine it even further.