Something people always say is that phone reviewers couldn’t possibly review a new device after just a few days. I’d contend that a good reviewer can do this because they’ve built up experience to know what to look for in established product categories like smartphones and they can get a good idea of how something is going to play out in the long run. I personally put up my review of the iPhone 15 Pro just one week after getting it, after all.

We’re a week away from the next iPhones being announced, instead of doing a normal, “iPhone review after one year” post, I wanted to review the things I said about last year’s iPhone and see if I still agree with those initial assessments.

On the design

My question in this review isn’t whether the iPhone 15 Pro is good or not, of course it’s good, it’s whether this is one of those special years where you’re going to buy this phone and feel really happy with it today as well as 3 years down the road. That’s hard to determine so early in the life of one of these things, but I have enough experience to get a feel for what I can tell already, as well as what I simply need more time to understand.

So, is the iPhone 15 Pro a great iPhone, or one of the great iPhones?

I’ll get into more details as we go, but at this point I do feel confident counting the iPhone 15 Pro (and Pro Max) among the great iPhones in the product’s history.

But here’s the deal…this phone feels notably different in the hand than last year, and it’s enough that it makes a notable difference in terms of usability and comfort.

Yes, 100% the 15 Pro feels way better in the hand than the 12/13/14 Pros that came before. The reduced weight is nice and the slightly curved sides add up to a phone that is more comfortable to use naked (the phone, not yourself…although technically both as well).

Due to a change of heart a few months in, I did end up getting an iPhone 15 Pro Max as well, and while I heard some people last year saying the reduced weight makes the Pro Max phone feel noticeably smaller, I completely disagree, it’s still a massive phone.

And let’s mention the color real quick. I got the natural titanium model, and I think it looks nice and classy. It really takes on the color temperature of the environment it’s in, too. Under warm lights, it has a more golden color, but outside on a sunny day under cooler light, it looks completely gray.

I still love the natural titanium look. My 15 Pro Max is the blue variant, and while I know others love that color, it doesn’t hold a candle to the elegance of the natural titanium. If I order an iPhone 16 Pro next week, you can bet it will be the natural titanium all over again.

On performance

The processor name has “Pro” in it now, they showed off basic ray-tracing running on the phone, and they bagged some pretty spectacular games coming to the device over the next 6 months. Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Death Stranding are all great games I enjoyed on my PS5 and PC, and upcoming AAA titles like Assassin’s Creed Mirage and the next The Division game are coming to the iPhone soon after they launch on other consoles.

4 of those 5 games have come out since that review, and truthfully, they’re all terrible. Look, it’s impressive they run at all, but they crash when pushed too hard (especially Resident Evil Village), they run terribly while looking bad, and they’re simply the worst ways possible to play any of these games. Cool tech demos, but I wouldn’t wish these versions of these games on my worst enemy. Any Apple silicon Mac or iPad plays these far better and have screens that make it so you can actually see what’s going on.

Also, the ray tracing functionality has gone completely unused in this first year as far as I can tell. The AAA games mentioned above certainly don’t use them, so maybe there’s some indie game that’s implemented them to some level, but if it has then there has been no press about it.

Finally, there have been a fair number of people who have experienced their new iPhones getting hot to the touch when in use on seemingly unexciting tasks. I personally felt some unusual warmth on the first day or two, which I attributed to photo processing and other background tasks going on overdrive as my phone finished setting up everything in the background.

But it’s been enough of an issue that Apple has made a statement on the matter, suggesting that it’s a software issue on iOS 17 that needs to be solved with a combination of OS and app updates. As of writing this review, Instagram has pushed out an update that should address their issue, but other apps like Uber may still have problems. It’s worth being aware of this for now, and to keep an eye out for iOS updates that hopefully address this.

A year later and I can safely say that for me personally, this is the first iPhone I’ve ever used that routinely over of the course of the year has gotten noticeably hot in the hand. Never to the point of literally burning me, but sometimes to the point of being uncomfortable. I experienced this on both the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, and I experienced it on the stable OS versions throughout the year, not just when on the iOS 18 beta this summer. If there is one blemish on this otherwise great phone, I would say it’s the thermals, which seem to successfully cool the SoC, but way too much of that heat makes it to the outside of the phone where I can feel it.

I don’t know if the issue is that the A17 Pro SoC is pushing too much power for the amount of space it has to work with in the phone chassis, but it’s a real frustration point for me and one that I hope can be improved in the next model.

On the cameras

Apple really gave the impression that the iPhone 15 Pro was getting a camera hardware update this year, but it seems like the hardware is identical to last year and all of the improvements come down to software.

I do think this is largely the case, although one of those software improvements is definitely notable.

The big thing I appreciate this year is the move to 24MP images on the main camera most of the time.

Yes, 100%, the 24MP images I get from the iPhone 15 Pro

s main lens are great, and they really feel like a jump from the 12MP plateau we were stuck at for so many years. While the new phones have what appear to be the same 48MP sensor as the previous year, the camera system is now able to do more with that data, and bins down to 24MP very well. I sometimes pinch to zoom into a picture or even just need to crop a shot to improve the framing and the extra pixels are very, very welcome.

Although while the phone does shoot 24MP images, it’s more confusing than ever what you’re going to get with different shots.

I then went on to 8 different shooting modes which produce images of 3 distinct resolutions. Just a few years ago, Apple fanboys praised Apple for being consistent with their lenses in ways other companies were not: you got a 12MP image no matter what mode or lens you were using. That world is long gone now, and it’s actually Google is is the best here, with every single lens on their Pixel 9 Pro being either 48MP or 50MP (including the selfie camera).

It sound alike a silly thing, but I’m a big fan of the ability to set my camera to default to either 24mm, 28mm, or 35mm equivalents.

Ultimately, this didn’t end up being something I really used much. I keep it at the 24mm default 99% of the time.

Ultimately, my feeling so far is that the ultrawide and 3x telephoto lenses are lateral moves from last year, but I’m invigorated by the improvements to photos from the main lens.

Yes, the 3x lens is fine, but the 5x lens on the Pro Max is actually wonderful. To illustrate this, here is a shot from the ultrawide lens from where I was sitting at a live recording of the How Did This Get Made? podcast:

And here’s a cropped shot from the 5x lens at the end of the show:

There is no way I would have been able to get something nearly as good looking on a lower zoom lens, and I was very happy to have it for this show. It’s not something I need every day, or even most days, but when I do need it, it’s amazing to have in the back pocket.

On the action button

My social feeds are full of people setting new and interesting shortcut automations to their action button, so I feel a little boring when I say I’ve just mapped mine to launching the camera and I’m pretty happy with it.

One year later and this is still what I have it mapped to. I know some people have gotten pretty creative with theirs, but apparently all I’ve ever wanted is the ability to launch my camera quickly. This has led to me being able to remove the camera icon from my home screen as well as my lock screen in iOS 18.

I have seen some people on social media consider this a downgrade from the silent mode switch that had been there on every iPhone previously, but I guess I just didn’t change that mode as often as them because I literally never miss the old switch.

On USB-C

I’ve talked to a few people in my life about the new iPhones as I do every year. Some of these people are nerds like me and others are what we in the tech space call “normal people.” I’ve yet to meet a real person who is upset about the change to USB-C, and a few “normies” who use Android have told me they’re honestly more likely to consider an iPhone now that it uses a normal port. Anecdotal data, but sharing because it’s the data I’ve got.

A year later and I think the transition to USB-C has gone over exceptionally smoothly with little no zero consumer anger over the change. I think this is largely due to the fact that USB-C is so monumentally mainstream that even technological late-adopters have numerous USB-C devices in their lives already. As a simple example, Nintendo is famously slow to adopt new technologies in most cases, and they added USB-C to their Switch console in 2017, 6 whole years before the iPhone 15 lineup.

I’m happy to see that Apple hasn’t gotten to weird with it and as long as apps support accessories, it seems you can use just about anything with your iPhone. I love that you can output a clean 4K image to an external display or TV and I love that you can plug in a hard drive or SD card and your phone will start recording video straight to the card without you needing to do anything fancy.

This has been quite nice, and while I mostly use mine to load photos from my Canon camera into Lightroom, I’ve seen some of my videography friends use it for more tasks like shooting LOG video straight to an SSD which is awesome. It’s what you’d expect from a computer, not just something running on a proprietary USB 2.0 port like iPhones had for a decade.

Final thoughts on my final thoughts

So is this going to be one of those great iPhones? I think it genuinely could be, but I’m not confident enough with this short review window to say that for sure.

A year later I feel much better saying that the 15 Pro line of iPhones is one of the greats. USB-C is a major win for consumers, nerd and normie alike, the materials and design changes are wins over a uncomfortable design we had for a few years previous, the camera upgrade to 24MP standard is very welcome, the action button lets people who want more control over their phone to get it, and battery life is notably improved over the very disappointing 14 Pro lineup.

We are also waiting to see how the titanium holds up over time. […] And how will the titanium age? Will it stay looking the same? Will it get dings easier than the super-tough stainless steel band?

As far as I can tell, the new material holds up fine, and is not notably different in terms of scratching and discoloration than the previous models.

I wrapped things up like so:

What I can say today is that I am quite happy with my iPhone 15 Pro, and if the above concerns turn out to be nothing of note, then I do think this could be one of the better-remembered iPhones in the last few years.

So yeah, I don’t think the potential downsides ended up playing out and the phone has been largely well received by the general public from what I’ve seen. It’s not the greatest iPhone ever, but it’s definitely one of the greats.