7 top new iPhone 15 features
Four of the most exciting smartphones of 2023 have now arrived, with Apple unveiling the iPhone 15, the iPhone 15 Plus, the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
A lot has changed this year, and you can check out our hands-on iPhone 15 review , iPhone 15 Pro review and iPhone 15 Pro Max review to read our first impressions of those phones. But there are some clear highlights.
Below you will find the seven most important new iPhone 15 features. In many cases, these are things that Apple has already talked about, and in all cases they are among the top reasons to consider buying a phone from the iPhone 15 line.
1. An iPhone finally has a periscope camera
Smartphone manufacturers – with the exception of Samsung – have been slow to adopt periscope cameras, a type of lens design that allows optical zoom over longer distances than a typical telephoto camera can handle.
While Samsung has offered a 10x optical zoom lens on its Galaxy Ultra phones for generations, Apple has stuck with 3x. That is, until now.
While it still can’t match Samsung’s 10x optical zoom, the iPhone 15 Pro Max does have a 5x optical zoom camera, allowing you to zoom much further than its predecessor’s 3x.
This is great for taking photos of animals, tall parts of buildings, and other things you can’t easily get close to.
2. USB-C instead of Lightning
Perhaps the most anticipated change for the iPhone 15 line was the move to USB-C. The European Union had dictated that device makers had to make this change by 2024, so it was always likely that Apple would lead the way this year. But while this may not have been Apple’s choice, USB-C is an important new feature.
This switch means you can use the same cable for most things, as the best Android phones and most other battery-powered gadgets use USB-C, as do recent iPads and MacBooks.
USB-C may also enable much faster data transfer speeds, although only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max benefit from this, with support for 10Gbps speeds.
3. All four models get a Dynamic Island
Arguably the most important feature of the iPhone 14 line was the Dynamic Island, which replaced the much-maligned notch with something actually useful and different. But this feature was originally exclusive to the Pro phones.
Now, however, every iPhone 15 model has a Dynamic Island, so you don’t have to spend a lot of money on the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max to get this exciting upgrade.
4. The action button
A feature exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro models is an action button, which is located where you previously found the mute switch.
If you just want to mute and unmute your phone like the previous switch, you can do that. But it’s also customizable, so you can set it to activate a host of other functions, like turning the flashlight on and off or launching the camera.
It’s a much more useful feature than the outgoing mute switch and it’s something that will make you wonder why it wasn’t added years ago – and why the standard models were left out.
5. A major main camera upgrade for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus
While the most significant camera upgrade for the iPhone 15 line may be the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s periscope camera, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus also received a major upgrade, with a 48MP main sensor replacing the 12MP of their predecessors.
This allows you to take photos with a much higher resolution than the camera on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. Apple has claimed that the photos taken with these new phones should be better in almost all scenarios, including portraits and in low-light environments.
6. A telephoto camera without a telephoto lens
The 48MP camera on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus isn’t just an upgrade in megapixels, it also doubles as a telephoto camera, as it can crop to capture 2x optical-quality zoom shots at 12MP.
This means that for the first time on a non-Pro iPhone you effectively have three rear cameras, including a telephoto. Technically, of course, it’s still just two lenses, but this greatly increases the versatility of the iPhone 15’s camera.
7. A super powerful new chipset
While the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus inherit the excellent A16 Bionic chipset from the iPhone 14 Pro line, there’s something new underpinning the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Called the A17 Pro, this is Apple’s latest smartphone chipset and delivers up to 10% faster CPU performance, offers a 20% faster GPU and even has the ability to power hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which should deliver impressive graphics. should deliver in future iOS games. And the performance of the Neural Engine, which powers iPhone’s smart features, has doubled.
Some of those numbers are more impressive than others. But a year after launch, the A16 Bionic can still easily rival the best chipsets in Android phones, so the A17 Pro should be a real beast.