The best new tech heading your way
1 iPHONE 15 / 15 PRO
From £799 (iPhone 15) / £999 (iPhone 15 Pro), apple.com
You’ll forgive us if we forego the usual preamble because there’s a lot of information to get through here.
First, the aluminium-framed 6.1-inch iPhone 15 and larger 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Plus, which draw down the A16 Bionic chip used in the last-gen’s Pro models. This brings with it better power and battery management, extra neural processing, the remarkably popular dynamic island of the 14 Pro, and the kind of advanced camera tomfoolery any new iPhone model is required to have. That would include, in this case, a 48MP quad pixel sensor in its main camera, which can cook up super-detailed 24MP images as well as chopping out its 12MP central portion for a 2x telephoto mode. New LIDAR integrations make for a hyper-advanced portrait mode, too, one that can seamlessly shift focus after the fact.
Up the scale are the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, which get a new titanium edge, bonded to an internal aluminium subframe, and swap out the silence switch for a customisable action button. These models mark the introduction of Apple’s new A17 Pro chip, which is the first 3nm processor to hit the market. Both get what appears to be a new 48MP main sensor sat on a 3D optical stabilisation module, a nanoscale coating on their lenses to reduce glare, and the ability to shoot 4K ProRaw at 60fps. Only the Pro Max, though, earns itself a telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom and a ridiculous f/2.8 aperture.
GLASSY EYED Both models use a new singlepiece glass back, which has been ultra-polished and then etched for a matte finish. It’s in five colour matched versions over the standard models – black, blue, green, yellow and pink.
BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus boast screens that can now peak at 2,000 nits, making them twice as bright as their predecessors. The Pro models don’t seem to up the brightness any further, but manage to trim the bezels while keeping the same screen size, enabling them to be slightly smaller in the hand.
KILLER CONNECTIONS Goodbye, Lightning, we won’t miss you. The new iPhone generation switches to USB-C at last, with the A17 Pro chip in the upper models supporting 10 gigabit transfers – something which will delight photographers looking to drag all those massive ProRes and HEIF images onto their computers.
2 APPLE WATCH SERIES 9
From £399, apple.com
Beyond a new 2,000 nit screen which can drop to 1 nit at night, the Apple Watch is looking inward for most of its improvements. There’s a brand new processor, the S9 SiP, which promises to be 30% faster, with a bunch more neural processing muscle allowing it to interpret far more of Siri’s r
