The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the seventeenth-generation flagship iPhones, succeeding the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The devices were unveiled alongside the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus during the Apple Event at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, on September 12, 2023.[7][8] Pre-orders began on September 15, and the devices were made available to the general public on September 22.

Like the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, the 15 Pro and Pro Max replaced the proprietary Lightning connector with USB-C to comply with European Union mandates.

Design

The iPhone 15 Pro features the first major redesign of the outer shell of the device since the iPhone 12 Pro in 2020, featuring rounded edges, a slightly curved display, and back glass. The enclosure of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max is made of grade 5 titanium, unlike the stainless steel frame of previous Pro models. The display bezels have also been reduced from 2.2 mm to 1.55 mm.[9] The phone is available in four colors: natural titanium, blue titanium, white titanium, and black titanium.[10] It is also the first premium iPhone since the iPhone X to not come in the gold color option.[11]

Color

Name

Natural Titanium

Blue Titanium

White Titanium

Black Titanium

Fronts and backs of the iPhone 15 Pro series

Specifications

Hardware

Like the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, the 15 Pro, and Pro Max replace the proprietary Lightning connector with USB-C to comply with the European Union mandating the use of this connector in smartphones with Directive (EU) 2022/2380 in 2022.[12] Apple had already started to introduce USB-C to its handheld devices beginning with the third generation iPad Pro, released in 2018.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max support AV1 video hardware decoding.[13]

In iOS 18, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will be the first iPhones to be capable of supporting the new Apple Intelligence AI features, due to the increased amount of DRAM in these models and their fast 35 trillion-operation-per-second Neural Engine.[14]

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  iPhone 15 Pro with 6.1-inch display
  

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  iPhone 15 Pro Max with 6.7-inch display
  

Chipset

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max feature the Apple A17 Pro system on a chip (SoC). It is built on TSMC's N3B fabrication process.[15] It features an redesigned Apple graphics processing unit (GPU) which adds hardware-accelerated ray tracing; during the reveal event, Apple announced that games such as Death Stranding, Resident Evil Village and Assassin's Creed Mirage (all games originally designed for consoles and PCs) would come to iOS in the future.[16]

Charging and transfer speeds

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max use USB-C with USB 3.2 Gen 2 transfer speeds (est. up to 10Gbit/s / 1.25 GB/s),[17][18] an improvement over the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 15/15 Plus base models which only have USB 2.0 transfer speeds (est. up to 480 Mbit/s / 60 MB/s).[19]

Video output

All iPhone 15 models have support for DisplayPort Alternate Mode over USB-C video output with HDR up to 4K resolution.[6]

Previous iPhone models (from iPhone 5 until iPhone 14 Pro) had a maximum supported resolution of 1600 × 900 (slightly less than 1080p) with the Lightning Digital AV Adapter due to technical constraints of the Lightning connector.[20]

Action button

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max feature an Action button, replacing the mute switch that was present on every iPhone. The function of the Action button can be configured by the user. By default, the Action button toggles silent mode. Other options include opening the camera, recording a voice memo, or toggling a focus mode and more.[10]