Tech Radar

1-minute news: Apple iPhone 15 Pro launches with Action button

September 12, 2023
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What's the story?

The iPhone 15 Pro might inhabit a slightly awkward place in the iPhone 15 range this year. While the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro Max got some really big upgrades, the Pro has slightly less to shout about.

That's not to say that the phone, which was announced at today's Apple September event, is without merit. It still gets some neat new features and will be available for a decent-looking price of $999 /  £999 / AU$1,849 for the 128GB model when it goes on sale next Friday (September 22). Here's all the info.

What do I need to know about it?

The big story with the iPhone 15 Pro - check out our ongoing Apple event 2023 live blog for the very latest - is that it gets the new Action button in place of the traditional mute switch. This can be used to trigger custom actions such as swapping between camera modes without delving into menus.

Design-wise, it gets more curved sides which are now crafted from titanium plus thinner edges, and of course as with the other iPhone 15 models it now charges via USB-C rather than Apple's Lightning cable. 

There's also an updated A17 Pro chipset and and it will be available in four titanium colors. But though the cameras get some upgrades too, you only get 3x zoom on the telephoto sensor, compared to 5x on the Pro Max.

What do we think of it?

While it may not have any headline-grabbing upgrades beyond the Action button (and possibly USB-C), there's enough here to make it a contender for our best phones list all the same.

That's because the iPhone 14 Pro was an excellent device which we said "may be the perfect iPhone" and much of that remains true here. It still offers more than the base iPhone 15 - for instance the extra telephoto camera and the more powerful processor - but without the extra size and price of the Pro Max. It could still be the best option for most people. 

We've not yet been hands-on with the iPhone 15 Pro, but look out for our early verdict soon.

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