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Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2015
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Everything gets ridiculed on the internet, that's not a real argument, but that's rather your modus operandi, I'm noticing. Regardless, your comparisons mean nothing to me as I'm using the pro model. The base 15 models exist for the demographic that in no way care about those things.
That video is also irrelevant. I'm convinced that guy has zero idea how to use an iPhone as he takes the longest route possible in every single example to skew things toward the Samsung side. Also, who actually uses quick replies? Those are available on iPhone and have been for quite some time. On top of ALL of that, even if it takes more steps, MUCH more of iOS's UI/UX allows you to do almost everything you need with a single hand....which is rather damn important to most people who only use their phones while on the go. The only ones I know that use their phone as their sole computing device don't really use technology that much anyway or cannot afford to (such as teens/etc.)
Aside from all of that, as a developer, I can say that it's much more of a pain to develop for iOS (didn't see that coming?) BUT I fully understand why and it shows upon using their phones. I would hate this on PC, but on a phone it's great having a curated ecosystem where every app you grab on the app store is almost guaranteed to work (of course there's always exceptions). The frustrating thing about working on their stuff is you do have to do things THEIR way and pass their criteria...but with that comes a much better experience for the user. Again, there are exceptions, but almost every major app out there is a much better experience on iOS than it is on android...so in terms of UI/UX that is a huge part of it.
On my test phones (S23 Ultra, Latest Pixel, etc) they all suffer from the rather fragmented ecosystem in their apps. Hell, there's an issue with Android keyboards that cause them to crash or act irregular in a few scenarios which I encountered in specific React text components (though, lately it has gotten better). That being said, I've never encountered such an issue in iOS as bad as your KEYBOARD crashing and becoming unusable. Android has a lot of quirks like that which greatly diminish the experience...especially when you get into customizing things (which is rather the major selling point of android). Also worth noting, unless you go with pixel (which OBJECTIVELY is a fantastic phone if you prefer android) the hardware/software relationship with android phones just don't hold a candle to Apple's. Does that come with limitations? Yes. Though in my opinion, it's a net positive tradeoff.
All of that and you still missed the entire point...this shit is subjective. Most people love iPhone because it just does everything you need out of the box with little fuss. Don't claim that we aren't being objective when your bias is so obvious that you continuously get called out on it in every thread.
But hey, you do you, I'm just going to sit here and enjoy this iPhone 15 Pro, while you continue to try to convince people not to be happy with their preferences
Moving on...
Day one review of 15 Pro coming from a Pro 13 as a daily driver
Picked mine up yesterday. Despite some T-Mobile speedbumps, that was the smoothest phone transition I've ever done. Turned on the new phone, did the steps, waiting 15 minutes (because the apple store's internet was a bit slow from all the congestion) and boom, was like picking up my old phone with everything just good to go. What really surprised me the most was all my authenticators transferred over automatically, everything was signed in, all was configured and good to go. Rather nuts how far that process has come. Sure some of that can be attributed to the app devs, but still damn seamless.
As for the phone itself:
Battery: Even after it having around 60% upon opening, doing the entire transfer process, reloading all apps, updating, and then playing around with it much more than I usually do, by end of day battery was around 45%. This is including playing quite a bit of Slay the Spire (didn't know that was on apple arcade till yesterday)...battery life seems miles ahead of my 13 Pro, and even with that phone I only had to charge it every 3-5 days depending. I think with as light as my usage is, I might get a week+ out of this phone between charges.
Performance: The phone is noticeably snappier compared to my old 13 pro. In apps, going back to things that are on standby it's just "boom", up and running without the typical half second blink I used to be accustomed to. Though this also could be attributed to it's ability to keep a lot more apps active due to the extra processing power or extra RAM...hard to say and I haven't looked too hard into it, but it doesn't seem to matter how many apps I go back that it just continues as if it was the last one I was on. All in all, everything runs just fantastically no matter what I'm doing, and apple carplay even is noticeably faster. All in all, fantastic.
Gaming: This thing is a beast. Not much more to say. Played Slay the Spire, DeadCells, and some Genshin Impact....smooth as butter and cooling didn't appear to be an issue at all, but I didn't play for an extended amount of time, just 20 minutes here and there while taking the dogs outside. Gaming on iOS has come a long way, and it appears they've added extensive controller support, but I haven't tested that yet...will report back
Phone calls: New noise isolation settings during calls is amazing, in the crowded Apple store with all the noise, people could hear me clearly as if I'm in a room by myself. There's a wide spectrum and isolation setting while in a call that you can flip, works pretty great. Other than that, pretty standard. I'm traveling soon so we'll see if the wireless antennas have gotten better.
Camera: It's a beast. Point and click, it does the work for you, you get the 24MP by default and it automatically adjusts to portrait mode if the situation calls for it..making for some easy pictures. Later if you care, you can edit the picture in rather surprising ways, such as changing the f-stop, exposure, etc...usually things you have to do while taking the photo, so it's nuts that they are getting all of this in a quick shot and somehow keeping the pictures under 2MB...just nuts.
Screen: So hard to say if it's just me, but the screen feels more....grippy than my old 13. It looks beautiful, it can get WAY bright if that's your thing, colors pop...not a ton of new stuff but overall great.
Sound: I didn't see anything about speaker improvements but something is different. On the 13, the audio always sounded lopsided and flat, but this phone sounds much more punchy and balanced. No idea what happened, I cannot find anything technical about it while browsing the internet, but it does appear I'm not the only one that noticed.
Build: For the phone itself, this phone is very noticeably lighter than my 13 pro, and much lighter than all of my test phones. It's very comfortable to hold, though the new titanium frame is an skin oil magnet, but if you use a case, not really a big deal. It has a great in-hand feel and feels very well balanced compared to older models. My fiancee has an iphone 13 mini and it feels similar in density to hers, despite being heavier and larger. Really hard to describe till you hold one yourself, I'd even wager this alone after using for a day is a significant reason to upgrade. Buttons are VERY clicky, much to my pleasure, if feels much more ergonomic thanks to the rounded corners, and it's just very refined.
Overall: Smartphones have reached the point where there's really not much more to add to them. Most new innovation always seem to be edge cases or just not significant (to me)...I think the last feature I was really excited about was carplay and android auto; everything else has been just iterative at best. The iPhone 15 Pro feels like it acknowledges this, so instead of "innovating" by adding some potentially useless features, etc...they have taken what works great, improved on those aspects and fine tuned it. This all comes together rather fantastically to sum up to an excellent update to an already solid phone, and I'm very happy with this upgrade. I will admit there's nothing to be wowed about when first picking up and using this phone...but then after some time using it, you start realizing just how much better it is overall. It's a bunch of minor improvements that just come together for a very solid update; doesn't appear all that amazing at first glance or in marketing, but it objectively a much better phone. It perfects (or very nearly so) across the board which at the end of the day, is primarily what you want from a phone upgrade. Done are the days when every generation has a killer new feature, leap in functionality, etc. I suspect we aren't going to see anything truly impressive until AR, and we see that already getting started...but that seems a ways away before being mainstream.
