The wait is over – it’s Apple event day!
It’s iPhone 15 day!
As I write this story we are only around 6 hours away from the event, so today I am going to run through all the very latest details of what we expect to be hearing about later today at Apple’s Wonderlust event.
Looking first at the iPhone 15 Pro lineup, here is what’s confirmed.
Lighter & stronger
What seems like quite a small change for the iPhone 15 Pro & Pro Max should make quite an impactful difference to the two higher-end iPhones.
The stainless steel, fingerprint magnet frame on these two phones will be replaced by a brushed finish, titanium band instead. Not only should it handle & feel better – there are two other very important points to mention here.
Titanium is brutally tough and yet lightweight too. So we are expecting the heavyweight iPhone 15 & Pro Max to be around 10% lighter than this year’s phones and be stronger with better drop protection. One simple change – two big benefits!
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That lens
We now have more details on the Periscope zoom lens we have heard so much about.
The lens which will only be found in the Pro Max due to size restrictions may only be getting a 6x optical zoom which is double that of the iPhone 14 Pro but it will have a massive 30x digital zoom which is double the current Pro iPhones.
Expect many zoom shots of the moon on Twitter in the next few weeks with the slug line – shot on iPhone then!
USB-C & inside iPhone 15
The worst-kept secret that we’ve known now for nearly a year is that the entire range this year will have a USB-C connector on it – finally.
For those spending the extra money on the iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, the news is even better though as the port will be unlocked to offer full Thunderbolt 4 speeds of data transfer. That means, with the correct cable, data transfer speeds of around 40Gbps should now be possible – that is a massive jump up which should make moving large ProRes files from your iPhone 15 Pro to your Mac that much quicker and realistic.
The majority of people now charge wirelessly and that is getting improved this year as well. Apple has been integral to the recent changes in the QI II charging standard which should see wireless charging speeds improved by around 20 watts – which is a pretty meaningful improvement.
Inside the Pro iPhones, there will be the new 3-nanometer A17 Bionic chip which will not only doubtless be blindingly fast, but also will double up to give the iPhone 15 Pros a much-needed improvement in their battery life. There will also be a new U2 spatial chip that will give even more precise directions for finding lost AirTags or AirPods and just generally improve the FindMy experience in general and again help with an improvement to the battery life.
And finally, the price. We have heard all sorts of stories and rumours about the prices for this year’s iPhone 15s. According to Trendforce, the 15 Pro will still be $999 but the Pro Max will now start at $1199 – although laughably with only 128GB of storage.
iPhone 15 & 15 Plus
The names of the lineup will be unchanged – which means we are not getting an Ultra model this year.
Although the USB-C port is coming to these two phones data transfer will remain at USB 2.0 speeds which makes sense for the two non-pro phones.
There were stories circulating recently saying that frosted glass on the reverse was going to make its way to these two phones this year – that story has now died a death – but they will have the Dynamic Island feature.
Both the main camera and the Ultra Wide Camera will be improved on iPhone 15 and 15 Plus.
The main camera will be a slimmed-down version of the camera used in the 14 Pro which means it’ll see a massive jump from 12 megapixels to 48 megapixels. The Ultra Wide & Telephoto lenses will also get a decent pixel bump as well.
The confirmed 5 colours for the iPhone 15 & 15 Plus this year are now black, white and a pastel pink, yellow & blue. The phones will have the A16 Bionic chip inside and will share that new U2 spatial chip with the two pro phones. The entry 15s will still only have a 60Hz screen and the prices will be unchanged from this year.
Bits & Bobs
Away from the iPhone though, there will be a few other bits on show at today’s event.
Apple Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra Series 2 will both get new processors and an improved Optical Heart sensor which is aimed at giving better reliability for heartbeat readings. Both watches will also get the new U2 chip too. Colour-wise, there will be a black Watch Ultra and a pink Series 9 watch.
Contrary to rumours though, Satellite Connectivity will not be coming to the Watch Ultra this year though – and don’t expect any iPads at today’s event – they are promised to be shown at another event scheduled for October.
Now, although there won’t be a ‘one more thing’ moment today, there will be something else – and possibly a little more exciting than we had originally thought.
We’ve known for some time that AirPods Pro II will be getting a new case with a USB-C port, but there may be some more AirPods news that we hadn’t known about until the weekend.
Mark Gurman tweeted that the attending media will be invited to four events at Apple Park later today. An iPhone 15 & 15 Plus event, a 15 Pro & Pro Max event, a watch event and an AirPods event.
It seems unlikely that even Apple could spin out a 30-minute presentation just on a new case, so maybe, just maybe we’ll get a new pair of AirPods 3 or even possibly the AirPods Max may get some new colours. It just seems odd that AirPods have been given their own briefing…
But the wait is all but over. In a few hour’s time, Apple will reveal all – what are you most looking forward to?
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