Apple iPhone 15 Pro review

Essentially the same four cameras as before, no 5x telephoto

The one major principal difference between the two sizes of iPhone Pros this year is the telephoto camera - the 15 Pro Max gets the new tetraprism 5x module, while the 15 Pro keeps the 3x unit of the 14 Pro. As usual, both the selfie camera and the rear trio are further assisted - whether it's the 3D ToF camera on the front or the LiDAR system on the back. In all the immediately observable ways (read, the specs), the 15 Pro's camera hardware is the same as the one on the 14 Pro, though Apple does insist there are some differences.

Starting with the main camera on the back, the 15 Pro has a 48MP sensor with 1.22µm pre-binned pixels and second-generation sensor-shift stabilization. The lens' focal length has a 24mm equivalent, and the aperture is f/1.78.

While the key numbers look unchanged, Apple is introducing a few new imaging possibilities for the iPhone 15 Pros. You can now capture 48MP HEIF/JPG images alongside 48MP ProRAW. They've also come up with 28mm and 35mm equivalent digital zoom modes, and the iPhone will let you pick one of these focal lengths as your default setting.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max debuts the first periscope camera on an iPhone. But, as established, the non-Max doesn't get that. Instead, it's the same 3x unit from the 14 Pros, with the numbers looking unchanged from the 13 Pros - a 12MP 1/3.5" imager with a 77mm equivalent lens with an f/2.8 aperture and OIS.

The ultrawide is also carried over from the previous generation, but at least that one was upgraded last year and doesn't date all the way back to the 13 Pros. It's based on a 1/2.55" sensor with a 1.4µm pixel pitch and 100% focus pixels, which is coupled with a 13mm f/2.2 lens. Macro photography is supported, of course. This camera has a new anti-reflective coating, improved HDR and better Night Mode.

The selfie camera uses a 12MP 1/3.6" sensor again with a bright f/1.9 aperture on its 23mm lens and supports autofocus. There is also OIS, which is a rare feature on a selfie cam.

Finally, the 9-LED flash from last year is here to stay - it has the LEDs arranged within a 3x3 grid. Each of those can be independently adjusted and fired. It's a true-tone flash with slow sync.

Camera app and features

The viewfinder has stayed mostly intact since iOS 16. You can see outside of the current camera's field of view thanks to the precise calibration of the three cameras, allowing you to see what will be left outside the frame in real time.

Apple's image processing includes all legacy features - Smart HDR, Night Mode, and Deep Fusion - and last year's Photonic Engine.

All enhancements, except for Night Mode, are out of the users' control. The Night Mode icon pops up automatically when a low-light scene presents itself, and you will see the seconds suggested next to the Night Mode icon. You can choose longer exposure or altogether disable the Night Mode, but you can't really force it on if the phone doesn't want to engage it.

Macro mode is available, too. Enabled by the ultrawide camera's autofocusing capability, it's an option you only get on the recent Pro models.

As usual, all cameras talk to each other, so they already know the correct exposure and tone mapping settings when you switch between them. This applies to both stills and videos.

The camera interface has 0.5x, 1x, 2x, and 5x toggles. The macro toggle appears automatically if you are close enough for such a photo. If you tap on the 1x toggle, you will zoom to 28mm equiv (1.2x), and an extra tap will get you 35mm (1.5x). As we have established, those are crops and upscales from the standard output, but pretty good ones, nevertheless.

You swipe between modes and have a couple of settings you can uncover with an upward swipe - flash, night mode, live photo, photo aspect, exposure compensation, and filters. In video mode, you can change the resolution and frame rate from the viewfinder.

Camera UI

Portrait mode is available on the main, tele and selfie cameras. There is a new Portrait feature on the new iPhones - basically, after-the-fact Portrait mode. The iPhone will detect when you capture a person, pet, or any subject that could be suitable for a portrait mode shot and automatically capture a depth map. And if you decide you want to blur the background later - you can do it from the Photos app. Neat! We guess apps like Focos might become obsolete soon.

We also noticed when the camera app was going to capture a depth map, it displayed an F shortcut on the viewfinder in the regular Photo mode. If you use it, you will capture a portrait right away without going into the Portrait mode.

RAW capture is supported across all cameras, and it can shoot in 48MP for the primary one if you have enabled Resolution and RAW control. This will add a new toggle called JPEG Max.

There is this feature called Photographic Styles, which automatically edits a photo, one element at a time (applying different corrections to the subject and background, for example). You can choose between Standard, Rich Contrast, Vibrant, Warm, and Cool. You can tune each of these modes to your liking and set your preferred one as default. It's like filters but more permanent.

Camera UI

Daylight photo quality

The primary camera on the Apple iPhone 15 Pro saves in 24MP by default, though options for 12MP and 48MP are also available. The 48MP sensor still uses a Quad-Bayer color filter, which means the 24MP photos the iPhone saves are a product of multi-shot stacking of both 12MP and 48MP images - that's how Apple detailed it in the keynote.

We were somewhat surprised by how the 24MP daylight photos from the main camera turned out. We could differentiate finer detail than in 12MP mode in pretty much everything - foliage, labels, building decorations, the mountains in the distance. There was no detail increase on moving objects, so there's only so much advanced processing that can be done on the fly.

Long story short - there is more detail to be seen in the 24MP photos, and we think it is worth saving in this default resolution. Plus - the file size difference isn't too dramatic at about 1MB-1.5MB increase per HEIF image (say from 2.5MB to 3.8MB).

From a more global perspective, the iPhone's auto white balance is usually spot on, and the color rendition is a 1:1 match to real life, which is not necessarily high praise. This conservative rendition has been Apple's choice for several years, and we're not really fans. If, like us, you're not liking the default output, you can use one of the extra Photographic Styles - for personal use, we'd go with a more saturated one immediately after we are done with the review. This is not a filter you need to select every time, but a color preset that is always used unless you change it.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), 24MP

Here's how a few of these scenes look if shot in 12MP mode - those are basically the same as on last year's iPhone Pros.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), 12MP

Apple dedicated a few moments from its nearly 1-hour iPhone 15 presentation to the new Pro models' custom 28mm and 35mm shooting modes. Technically, you get a cropped 28mm or 35mm portion from the native 24mm primary lens, and you get it in the same 24MP resolution as the default 24mm images. Apple says that with the iPhone 15 Pro, "it's like having seven pro lenses in your pocket".

It's a convenient feature for those who prefer a focal length narrower than 24mm. You tap the 1x mode in the camera to go to 28mm (1.2x) and once again to 35mm (1.5x). You can even make either the default camera focal length, which is extra convenient.

We attempted a little experiment around this new functionality. We manually cropped from 24mm 24MP shots and upscaled them up to 24MP using Photoshop's Preserve Details 2.0 resampling method. Looking at the results side-by-side, we'd say there isn't a discernible difference between Apple's 28mm shot and our simple crop-and-upscale. However, the functionality does undeniably offer a layer of convenience.

Daylight samples, main camera (1.2x, 28mm), 24MP

Daylight samples, main camera (1.5x, 35mm), 24MP

The 48MP sensor and Apple's next-level processing allow the iPhone 15 Pro to offer a 2x zoom mode with very good results. Those are always saved in 12MP, no matter the selected resolution for the main camera.

Daylight samples, main camera (2x)

The 15 Pro's 3x telephoto camera comes straight out of the previous generation, and the images it captures reflect that fact. We're getting sharp and detailed shots with a likable, natural look. The colors are accurate, the contrast is high, and the dynamic range is what you'd expect from an iPhone.

Daylight samples, telephoto camera (3x)

The thing is, with the iPhone 15 Pro Max having a 5x telephoto camera, you may be feeling like you're missing out if you opt for the smaller 15 Pro. We shot a few quick comparisons, and we wouldn't say that Max's native 5x output is that much better than the non-Max's digitally zoomed-in 5x - if at all.

Telephoto comparison, 5x: iPhone 15 Pro • iPhone 15 Pro Max

Conversely, at the 3x zoom level, the 15 Pro's 3x telephoto camera results are substantially superior to the 15 Pro Max's output that stretches the main camera's capabilities beyond what you can call a sharp image.

Telephoto comparison, 3x: iPhone 15 Pro • iPhone 15 Pro Max

The 12MP photos from the ultrawide shooter are among the better ones we've seen from such a camera, though they do have their flaws. We're not loving the high-frequency detail like foliage, which has an excessively processed look. They do offer high resolved detail, however, and outstanding sharpness all the way to the very corners. The unexciting color rendition isn't universally likable, but the consistency is praiseworthy nonetheless.

Daylight samples, ultrawide camera (0.5x)

The ultrawide camera also supports dual-pixel autofocus, and it can focus down to 3-4cm, which can be useful both for the macro mode or just general photography of nearby objects.

Macro mode is accessed somewhat unintuitively - you must be at 1x in the viewfinder, and as soon as you are really close to a subject, the phone can automatically switch to the ultrawide camera in macro mode - with a field of view matching the primary camera. This means that it will crop and then upscale, a behavior you can disable with the toggle that appears in the viewfinder (and you can keep it disabled too, in the Preserve Settings submenu).

The macro shots we snapped with the ultrawide camera are excellent - the subject in focus is rendered very well - detailed, sharp, and colorful. The contrast across those photos is great, and the dynamic range is commendably wide. The colors from this up-close are surprisingly lovely.

The results obtained that way are solid, with good detail given the way they're captured. Depending on what you're going to do with them, the narrower field of view may be more important than the absolute per-pixel detail, which does suffer from the upscale.

'Macro' samples

Alternatively, you can just shoot with the 0.5x camera in its native FoV, but that would place you so close to the subject that you'll need to be extra careful about casting a shadow.

Portrait mode

As was the case on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the 15 Pro defaults at 2x portraits, but you also have options that use the native field of view of the main camera (1x) as well as 3x coming from the telephoto.

Starting with the default 2x shots (saved in 12MP), we're getting excellent subject separation and convincing background blur. The colors are looking great, as is dynamic range. The one thing that could be better is detail when looking at the subject at 1:1 magnification, which reveals some upscaling at play. Even then, particularly in good light, you can still have some decently sharp detail.

Portrait mode samples, main camera (2x)

The 1x photos offer a wider field of view, ideal for shots with a bit more context around your subject. They're saved in the same resolution you've picked for regular photos in the settings - so either the out-of-the-box default 24MP (as we shot them) or 12MP. We reckon these turned out excellent - better than the ones we got on the 15 Pro Max for one reason or another.

Portrait mode samples, main camera (1x)

The telephoto camera's 3x zoom portraits offer possibly the best perspective for head-and-shoulders style framing, and they do that without throwing you in the far end of the room quite like the Pro Max's 5x camera does. Pixel-level detail is also better on the Pro's 3x than it is on the Max's 5x, and even in dimmer indoor conditions where other phones' telephoto cameras struggle with portraits, the iPhone 15 Pro maintains excellent quality.

Portrait mode samples, telephoto camera (3x)

Selfies

This year's Pros use the same selfie camera Apple introduced last year - a 12MP sensor with 23mm f/1.9 OIS lens and autofocus. The camera still offers two FoV settings in the viewfinder - the slightly zoomed-in 7MP crop that is equivalent to a 30mm field of view and the full 12MP mode, which has a 23mm equivalent FoV.

If you hold the phone in portrait orientation, selfies are cropped to 7MP to provide a tighter framing, but rotate the phone horizontally, and you get more of the scene with the phone automatically switching to the wider 12MP mode. You can also switch between those two modes manually by tapping on the arrows near the shutter button.

The 12MP selfies we shot on the iPhone are superb - there plenty of detail, the skin tones and color rendition overall are great, and we have nothing but praise for the contrast and dynamic range.

Apple's processing once again shows its true self as some facial features come out a bit too pronounced by sharpening and micro-contrast enhancement. While we are not fans of the skin-smoothing algorithms used by other brands, Apple seems to be on the exact opposite side of the spectrum, which is not very likable either.

Selfie samples

Low-light image quality

The way Apple handles Night mode and low-light photography, in general, has remained unchanged this generation - Night mode triggers automatically in low-light scenes and usually chooses 1s exposure for the primary camera and 2s-3s for the rest. You can choose a different exposure time or disable the Night Mode. Once disabled, it will stay this way until you enable it or restart the camera app. However, there's no way to force Night mode on - if the phone thinks it doesn't need it, that's that.

The Night Mode shots are always saved in 12MP, and so are the 2x zoomed photos, as we established. The only way to get a 24MP nighttime photo is to disable the Night Mode - or, you know, shoot scenes that are lit well enough that the iPhone deems it unnecessary, which turned out to be a lot of scenes.

Starting out with those Night mode-less photos, we're looking at somewhat dark exposures with high contrast and tonal extremes that could use a bit of extra development. In other words, these aren't the expressive shots with well-contained highlights and boosted shadows you'd get from the aggressive Night modes on the market. Instead, these are more realistic representations of reality, which can read as a compliment or a complaint, depending on where you stand. Either way, we're very much liking the color rendition - saturation is great, and the auto white balance is on point. Detail is generally very good, but it's just that you won't be seeing a whole lot of it in the shadows - give it a nudge with the slider in your favorite editing software, though, and it will show up.

Low-light samples, main camera (1x), Auto Night Mode (did NOT engage)

Next up are the scenes where Night mode did kick in, so those images come out at 12MP. Further down below are the same scenes with Night mode disabled, so you can appreciate the differences and, indeed, for the most part you can tell why the iPhone chose to use the extra processing.

The Night mode shots have notably better shadow development. Then again, we're not seeing a ton of attention given to the highlights, which are about as blown out as without Night mode. Overall, the Night mode exposure is more in line with what we'd like to get from the scene.

Low-light samples, main camera (1x), Auto Night Mode (did engage)

Low-light samples, main camera (1x), Auto Night Mode (disabled)

The above holds true at 2x zoom as well, and that makes sense - it's the same camera capturing the shots. Whether it was a scene that wasn't dark enough for Night mode, or it was one that the iPhone did choose to enhance with it, we're seeing impressive results. Detail is great - to the point that we'd say that no dedicated 2x camera on the market can rival it. Again, we'd probably take a bit more shadow development, but that could be a personal preference.

Low-light samples, main camera (2x), Auto Night Mode (did NOT engage)

Low-light samples, main camera (2x), Auto Night Mode (did engage)

Low-light samples, main camera (2x), Auto Night Mode (disabled)

The telephoto camera was even less inclined to engage Night mode - perhaps that's got something to do with the tighter framing making the overall captured scene less contrasty, or it's simply because you only want to shoot well-lit subjects in the distance. In any case, we're getting nicely detailed images - admittedly, with some noise in them, but not to a point where it's an issue. Dynamic range is good; colors are spot-on - we can't really complain.

Low-light samples, telephoto camera (3x), Auto Night Mode (did NOT engage)

That's also true in the darker scenes where Night mode did intervene. Compare that to the images with Night mode fully disabled - 3 out of 4 of those were a digital zoom from the main camera and are super soft; the last one is just plain too dark.

Low-light samples, telephoto camera (3x), Auto Night Mode (did engage)

Low-light samples, telephoto camera (3x), Auto Night Mode (disabled)

On the ultrawide, you'd probably like a more trigger-happy Night mode implementation than what Apple is giving you, because, in some scenes, you end up with just too much darkness. Brighter scenes do look nicer. Sharpness is okay, colors are great.

Low-light samples, ultrawide camera (0.5x), Auto Night Mode (did NOT engage)

In the scenes that we did get Night mode, things do look livelier and better exposed, to the point where we're wondering why we didn't get the same treatment for most of the above scenes.

Low-light samples, ultrawide camera (0.5x), Auto Night Mode (did engage)

Low-light samples, ultrawide camera (0.5x), Auto Night Mode (disabled)

Once you're done with the real-world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Apple iPhone 15 Pro stacks up against the competition.

Apple iPhone 15 Pro against the iPhone 14 Pro and the Galaxy S23 in our Photo compare tool