There are two fancier models of iPhone, the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. They’ve got the same sized screens as their less expensive counterparts, yet they seem bigger because Apple has slimmed the bezel around the screens by a few millimeters. Apple has also changed up the materials, replacing the stainless steel body of the phone with titanium that’s been given a brushed finish. Apple says the new material makes the phones lighter and harder to smash. The Pro models get a beefed up processor—Apple’s A17 Pro chip—which the company says gets faster performance and better battery life. There’s also a change to the iPhones ring button on the side of the device. Now, the button can be used to launch apps like the camera or recorder. The Pro phones get a more refined (and boring) color palette, coming in black, white, blue, and “natural” titanium.
Photograph: Apple
All iPhone models now have Apple’s dynamic island, which turns the front-facing camera pinhole on the screen into a responsive bubble that can display notifications. (The feature was introduced on the iPhone 14 Pro last year.) The iPhone 15 starts at $799 and the Plus is $899. The pricier phones start at $999 for the Pro and $1,199 for the Pro Max.
Apple Watch
Photograph: Apple
There are two new Apple Watches, the Series 9 and Ultra 2. The base model Series 9 got a new S9 chip and a new ultra wideband location-sniffing chip like the ones in the new iPhones.
The S9 chip enables a couple other interesting new features. One, Siri requests can now be processed on the device itself, which in theory means simple requests like making a note or checking the calendar don’t have to travel to the cloud and can be processed without a data connection. More notable is the new Double Tap gesture control. Tapping together the thumb and index finger of your watch hand twice in quick succession activates the primary button in an app, so you can double tap to end a call, silence an alarm, or start and stop a timer.
The Series 9 Watch has a display that gets twice as bright as the previous model (up to 2,000 nits) and also as dim as one nit. The Series 9 still gets a not-great 18 hours of battery life.
