Apple concluded their September iPhone 15 & Apple Watch event, here’s what they announced:
Overview
This year all upgrades are fairly minimal in the iPhones, the biggest thing for most is USB-C, which is replacing the lightning connector (After 11 years) with the standard USB-C connector that everything else uses.
The iPhone 15 Pro getting a customizable action button is very cool and useful, and finally the “Double tap” feature on the Apple Watch Series 9 is an awesome feature.
If you’re ready for an iPhone or Apple Watch upgrade, I definitely would get these new models instead of last year’s.
Here’s the details for each new announcement:
Apple Watch Series 9
– The latest Apple Watch, here are the main features:
- A brand new processor/system (SiP), which allows a number of cool new features: Siri is now much faster, as it is now processed on device.
- Siri + Health – You can now ask Siri to log health data, ask Siri almost any health related question. Coming later this year.
- Ultra wide band chip that allows you to see precisely where your phone is.
- Display now goes up to 2000 nits for sunlight, and down to 1 nit (better in dark places like movie theaters).
- Double tap – This is the coolest feature of the new Apple Watches. Imagine you’re walking and holding bags in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. Now you get a phone call and you want to pick it up. What are you going to do, tap the answer button on your watch with your nose? No! Double tap your fingers together and answer a phone call, or stop a timer, or perform any other main action by tapping your fingers.
Apple Watch Ultra 2
- Same new processor as Series 9, and double tap feature, brighter display (3000 nits)
iPhone 15 & iPhone 15 Plus
The iPhone 15 & 15 Plus essentially bring the iPhone 14 Pro features from last year to the lower-priced (than the pro-tier) iPhones.
Here are the main features over last year’s iPhone 14 and 14 Plus
- Dynamic Island – Instead of the notch at the top of the display, the camera and Face-ID unit is within the pill-shape “Island”, that allows you to see ongoing activities on your phone like a timer, delivery, phone call, and much more while within other apps.
Camera
- The iPhone 15 & 15 Plus get the 48 Megapixel camera.
- New portrait photos, automatically detect portrait mode. Unclear if this feature is coming to older iPhones as well.
- New Ultra-wide chip – You can now more precisely find friends in a crowded place, if you have each other on Find my Friends.
- Audio quality on phone calls will be improved with new noise-cancelling on phone calls.
- Roadside assistance via Satellite – An extension of the existing iPhone 14 Satellite SOS feature, you can send an SOS request for roadside assistance and provide information to get help. Launching in the U.S. with AAA.
- iPhone gets USB-C
iPhone 15 Pro & Pro Max
- Titanium design “Grade 5 titanium”, “The same alloy used on the mars rover”
- Apparently it’s nicer in the hand, and much lighter than the previous models.
- Thinner borders on the screen.
- Action button
- The iPhone 15 Pro & Pro Max replaces the mute switch with an action button, that allows you to open the camera, turn on the flashlight, or set up any quick action with shortcuts by the push of a physical button! A programmable button on the phone is definitely a cool feature
- A17 Pro Chip
- The first 3 nanometer chip in the industry”
- Apple’s biggest GPU redesign, it is 20% faster, and now supports with hardware-accelerated ray tracing — which is 4x faster than software-based ray tracing.
- Powerful new camera system
- I’m not going to claim to understand the intricacies of this new complex camera system, but here are some details about it: Seven lenses, 24 MP “super-high-resolution default”. Three focal lengths that the user can switch between: 24 mm, 28 mm, and 35 mm.
- iPhone 15 Pro features an expansive 3x Telephoto camera, and iPhone 15 Pro Max provides the longest optical zoom ever on iPhone: 5x at 120 mm.
- “Next generation portraits” on iPhone 15 Pro.
- Night mode improved with sharper details, and more vivid colors
- iPhone 15 Pro gets USB 3.0 speeds (Over USB-C)
iOS 17 is coming out on Monday. We can expect the new phones to arrive in Israel in the coming weeks.
